Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Cinel Eoghan
When I was young, my mother’s mother, Pearl O’Neal, told me I would need to know my family. Now that I’m nearly the age she was then, I’m just beginning to comprehend the importance of what she might have meant.
As descendants of emigrants who left Northern Ireland for South Carolina in 1767, our essential story as a people travels the other direction, to Tir Eoghan (County Tyrone), where for much of the first Christian millennium, the O’Neal’s were the chief family of the Cinel Eoghan tribal grouping in Tyrone, most of Derry, and part of Donegal, that make up the western half of the province of Ulster.
Closely allied with the O’Neal’s in this ancient stronghold of Gaelic culture, were the O’Donnell’s and Gallagher’s of County Donegal, which remains a repository of Irish language and mythology just across the western border from the British-occupied portion of their historic territory—our family’s tribal homeland.
On the top of Greenan Mountain, which overlooks Lough Foyle—a forty-mile sound between Derry and Donegal—lies Grianan of Aileach, an ancient stone ringfort known as the Sun Palace, which sits atop a sacred earthwork that served as a site for O’Neill political rituals from the 5th to the 12th centuries AD.
The O’Neal’s, O’Neill’s, and other English language derivatives describing descendants of either Niall—the legendary King of Ireland who battled the Norse invaders in 919—or Niall Noigiallach, who was King of Midhe (Meath) at the mythical site of Tara around 400 AD, can all trace their family history back to AD 360, which precedes the arrival of Christianity there by roughly a hundred and fifty years.
The term “King” here meaning something more along the line of chief among chieftains, members of the various Ua Niall and Ui Niall clans nevertheless distinguished themselves repeatedly between the fourth and seventeenth centuries in leading the central, western, and northern nations of Irish Celts, especially in repelling Norse and English invasions. Hence, the surname Niall (Gaelic for “champion”) denotes a family tradition of leadership in armed conflict, culminating in the defeat of Hugh O’Neal—sometimes referred to as the last great leader of Gaelic Ireland--by the English at the battle of Kinsale in 1601.
Unaware of this connection at the time, I visited Kinsale in 1999, and walked the fields and bluffs and shoreline where my ancestors fought.
Without getting into all the details of battles waged over the centuries, suffice to say that the feistiness of the Irish I observed on my travels there, is perhaps explained in part by the interminable wars and occupations over the past two thousand years, during which my ancestors sometimes allied with Norse and Scots to drive out English, only to turn around and fight these mercenaries later.
In 1607, for instance, the O’Neill and O’Donnell chieftains found it necessary to flee to Spain, which cleared the way for the confiscation of their lands and the subsequent plantation of Ulster with English and Scottish colonists. Ironically, when my ancestors John and Margaret O’Neal and their four children left there for America on the brig Lord Dungannon, it was in response to the offer of free land by the Colony of South Carolina.
As descendants of emigrants who left Northern Ireland for South Carolina in 1767, our essential story as a people travels the other direction, to Tir Eoghan (County Tyrone), where for much of the first Christian millennium, the O’Neal’s were the chief family of the Cinel Eoghan tribal grouping in Tyrone, most of Derry, and part of Donegal, that make up the western half of the province of Ulster.
Closely allied with the O’Neal’s in this ancient stronghold of Gaelic culture, were the O’Donnell’s and Gallagher’s of County Donegal, which remains a repository of Irish language and mythology just across the western border from the British-occupied portion of their historic territory—our family’s tribal homeland.
On the top of Greenan Mountain, which overlooks Lough Foyle—a forty-mile sound between Derry and Donegal—lies Grianan of Aileach, an ancient stone ringfort known as the Sun Palace, which sits atop a sacred earthwork that served as a site for O’Neill political rituals from the 5th to the 12th centuries AD.
The O’Neal’s, O’Neill’s, and other English language derivatives describing descendants of either Niall—the legendary King of Ireland who battled the Norse invaders in 919—or Niall Noigiallach, who was King of Midhe (Meath) at the mythical site of Tara around 400 AD, can all trace their family history back to AD 360, which precedes the arrival of Christianity there by roughly a hundred and fifty years.
The term “King” here meaning something more along the line of chief among chieftains, members of the various Ua Niall and Ui Niall clans nevertheless distinguished themselves repeatedly between the fourth and seventeenth centuries in leading the central, western, and northern nations of Irish Celts, especially in repelling Norse and English invasions. Hence, the surname Niall (Gaelic for “champion”) denotes a family tradition of leadership in armed conflict, culminating in the defeat of Hugh O’Neal—sometimes referred to as the last great leader of Gaelic Ireland--by the English at the battle of Kinsale in 1601.
Unaware of this connection at the time, I visited Kinsale in 1999, and walked the fields and bluffs and shoreline where my ancestors fought.
Without getting into all the details of battles waged over the centuries, suffice to say that the feistiness of the Irish I observed on my travels there, is perhaps explained in part by the interminable wars and occupations over the past two thousand years, during which my ancestors sometimes allied with Norse and Scots to drive out English, only to turn around and fight these mercenaries later.
In 1607, for instance, the O’Neill and O’Donnell chieftains found it necessary to flee to Spain, which cleared the way for the confiscation of their lands and the subsequent plantation of Ulster with English and Scottish colonists. Ironically, when my ancestors John and Margaret O’Neal and their four children left there for America on the brig Lord Dungannon, it was in response to the offer of free land by the Colony of South Carolina.
