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Clans and Families of Ireland and Scotland
IX. The Gaels


of the O‘Flahertys, the Clann Choscraigh, included the families of MacGarry (Mag Fhearadhaigh) and also the MacHughs (MacAodha). The MacGarrys or Garrihys were seated at Moygarry in County Sligo as late as 1585. The name spread into Roscommon and Leitrim as well, and in some cases became O’Garriga (O Gearaga or O Giorraighe), and was mistranslated from this form into English as Hare. The MacHughs were seated in the old O'Flaherty territory in the barony of Clare, County Galway.

Another branch of the Ui Briuin Seola, of which the O'Lees (O Laoidigh) were chiefs, also settled in western Connacht. The O'Lees were erenaghs, or hereditary abbots, of Annaghdown, and produced a number of distinguished ecclesiastics. They are better known as a medical family, and were for many centuries hereditary physicians to the O‘Flahertys, and sometimes to the Royal O'Conners as well. As early as the fifteenth century the family had produced a complete course in medicine, written in Latin and Gaelic. They were widely disbursed towards the end of the sixteenth century, and in north Connacht used the form MacLee.

The Ui Briuin Breifne carved out a territory for themselves between Lough Allan and the river Erne in central Fermanagh in the late eighth century. They expanded east of the Shannon and into the wastelands of Cavan in the ninth and tenth centuries, and afterwards played an everincreasing role in the politics of the midlands. Their chief families were the O'Rourkes (O Ruairc), kings of West Breffny (County Leitrim), and the Muintear Mhaolmordha or O’Reillys (O RaighailIigh), lords of East Breffny (County Cavan). The O'Rourkes were, prior to the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman invasion, overlords of the Ui Briuin Breifne in Leitrim and Cavan, and ruled over a territory which at its widest extent stretched all the way from Drumcliff in Sligo to Kells in Meath. Three of their chiefs, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, were kings of Connacht as well. After the Anglo-Norman invasion, their cousins the O’Reillys became lords of East Breffny, which became known as Breffny O’Reilly, while the O'Rourkes were lords of West Breffny, thenceforward known as "Breffny O’Rourke." The O’Rourke kings took a leading part in the wars against Elizaheth I in the late sixteenth century, from which wars they suffered severely. They did, however, retain considerable property down to the Cromwellian confiscations of the mid-seventeenth century, after which many of them rose to distinction in the military service of continental powers, especially Poland and Russia.

The Teallach Dhunchadha (Household of Dunchadh) or MacTernans (Mac Tighearain), also known as Tierans or MacKierans (Mac Thighearnain) descend from Dunchadh, eighth-century ancestor of the O’Rourkes. Their clan name was given to their territory, now the Barony of Tullyhunco in the west of County Cavan. The Teallach Eachach or MacGoverns (Mag Shamhradhain, also known as Magaurans, descend from Eochaidh, son of Maonach (Maonach was a brother of the Dunchadh mentioned above). The patrimony of the

Note received from Hugh McKiernan
You may like to correct a small error in the last paragraph regarding Dunchadha. He wasn't an ancestor of the Ruarc - a quo O'Rourke - but of the teallach Dunnchadha or Mac Thighearnain line. One must go back another few generations to find a common ancestor - Feargna, son of Fergus. Feargna's two sons , Breanainn and Aodh Fionn begat Dunchadha and Ruarc respectively, Dunchadha having lived and died several generations before Ruarc.. The (unaspirated) Mac Tighearnain were the even more distant Clann Fergaile closely related to Maguire (Fergal a quo clann Fergaile was the king of Fermanagh) and a third sept, also Mac Tighearnain were descended from Tigearnan O'Connor great grandson of Turlough Mór, the high king of Ireland.


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