A Brief History of County Tyrone and North Ireland

The history of North Ireland will be written by volunteers and will be displayed on this page for visitors to read. The first part to be posted here took place mostly in the 1500s and 1600s during which thousands of highland and lowland Scots or Anglo-Scots moved to, or were transported to Ulster. Their children were later dubbed by history as Scots-Irish.

The history of the plantations they moved to will appear later.

Some of those peoples who came from the Anglo-Scot border to Ulster were neither English nor Scot. For four hundred years they lived in a lawless land, made and and brutally enforced their own laws and answered to no king. Answering only to their chiefs, they are known by history as Reivers and the land that absorbed their blood is know by history as the debatable lands.

Come with me now and meet the Reivers. Chances are very good that you will find the surnames of your forefathers here. Please enjoy, Donald O'Collaugh Kelly, author.

Reivers

About The Gallowglass:

Following recent exchanges re Gallowglass I thought some of you may be
interested in the following notes compiled from notes from Edward Healy and the sources stated.

The name Gallóglaigh .. gall = foreign and oglaigh = mercenary soldier or
young fighting man.

They were supposed to be men of great stature, courageous and fierce in
battle;  they were dressed in coats of mail to the knee and were the most
dependable troops in the Irish army.

They were supposed to have come from the Isles and the Western Highlands and the Hebrides where there was Norse blood.  This Scandinavian connection is further suggested by the fact that they used the battle axe into the C16.

The Gallóglaigh were the first of the three streams of Scottish immigrants
to Ireland and their descendants continued to play a prominent role in Irish military activity  until the end of the C16.

In the Tudor period the system under which Gallóglaigh were hired and
supported formed the model for the ONew Scots¹ mercenaries.  They also
fought side by side with later Scots forces.

Scottish mercenaries had not been part of the old Gaelic system until about mid C13. 1247 first sign of Hebridean Gallóglaigh as a mercenary element in the Irish wars. 1290 first specific use of the word Gallóglaigh .
Some Gallóglaigh families were MacDonnells/MacDonalds and MacSweeneys (mid C13) And MacSheehy (mid mid C14). 

Other Gallóglaigh families were MacDowal, MacDougal, MacCabe and MacRory.

They spread throughout Ireland and are mentioned frequently. eg Out of the County of Mayo came to me to Galway first seven principal men of
the Clandonnells all by the profession mercenary soldiers by name of
galloglas.¹  Sir Harry Sidney 1576.

Up to the time of the Norman invasion there had been no standing force at the command of the Irish leaders and so the English men-at-arms found little difficulty in overcoming their yeomen opponents.  Trained fighting men were introduced from Argyll and the Outer Islands to aid the Irish.

Life in the Isles was hard and the fighting men stayed on.  Some were
rewarded by grants of land, but they remained a class apart as they were not free as in Ofreeman¹ but also not unfree.The family of mercenaries that was to become personally attached to O Neill was Clan Domhnaill, Gallóglach.

The Tyrone sept of the MacDonnell gallóglach, the official hereditary
mercenaries of the O Neills settled at Knockinclohy in County Tyrone on O
Neill¹s demesne lands and continued service till the end of the C16.

The Irish king, great or small, received a personal demesne to support him
in his office out of the royal land, from which his nearer kin also had to
be provided for.  Along with that he got tributes and military service of
his country and the right to quarter mercenaries (amuis) on the whole
territory by right of Buannacht. 

This very word, buannacht, which is applied to the maintenance of a Gallóglaigh when billeted upon the people of a lordship is a Norse loan word.  By the middle of the C14, native born Irish troops organised in imitation of the Gallóglaigh were called by the distinctive name of Obuannachta.

It is significant that in O Neill¹s time we find the Irish army, hitherto an
army, hitherto an army of amateurs wearing neither helmets nor mail, aided for war by an imported professional soldiery from Argyle and the Isles. Their headquarters were for many centuries centred round Knocknacloy in the Parish of Donoughmore. 

The MacDonnells, O Neill¹s officialmercenaries who gave their lives in O Neill¹s and Ireland¹s cause on many a bloody field were quartered there.  Coming as professional soldiers in the 1260s, their activities can be traced up to the final tragedy.

And the place wherein were nine battalions of Gallowglasses in compact
array of battle, there escaped not alive of them but one thin battalion
alone.¹  Battle of Knochdoe  1504 in Annals of Ulster.

We have reference to them in the Annals under the year 1523, when the O
Donnells entered Tyrone and burned the entire countryside as far as
Dungannon.  The town of MacDonnell, Cnoc na Cluithe, was burned and a
splendid garden there was cut down and destroyed. 

The MacDonnells were the imported Gallowglasses of O Neill and had been given permanent tenure of territory on this rather barren section of O Neill¹s Lucht Tighe   SO the household and demesne lands of O¹Neill himself.¹

Reaching up from the village of Cappagh, Knocknacloy is heather covered,
sparsely populated and forbidding.  The above garden which the O Donnells destroyed had been created through the industry of the MacDonnells.  It was a herb garden which produced soothing herbs for wounds received in battle, and gave rise to the alias for Knocknacloy that still survives, Cnoc na Lothar.

This was the HQ of the Sergeant at Arms of O Neill, who supported his
chieftain in his battles and campaigns right up to the Battle of Kinsale
(1601), and played a part in the local scene throughout the C17.

The Gallóglaigh were the strangers who down the years were to receive
sustenance on O Neill¹s Lucht Tighe and who found some kind of permanent inheritance there at Cnoc na Cluithe.  Probably because they were fighting men they get copious mention in the various annals.

From the day they settled in Donoughmore they took their place in the social arrangement of the O Neill kingdom.  MacDomhnaill was clearly his chief constable of Gallóglaigh, the leader of those blood relations of his who, crisis after crisis, crossed the narrow seasfrom Argyle and the Isles to appear on the Irish scene, and the leader too, we may presume, of those native levies who were organised in imitation of these.

MacDomhnaill may never have reached the status of freeman.  He was
recognised as of noble lineage however and his place in the social scene
seems to have been with the bards and the chroniclers.  His duty was to
fight and rarely did he die in bed.  The MacDomhnaills were with O Neill in all his battles and many were wiped out at the Battle of the Pass of Swilly.

"Vast numbers of O Neill¹s forces perished at that place, either slain or
drowned: the most eminent of these were Brian, son of Henry, son of John O Neill and his brother: MacDomhnaill, the Gallowglach, O Neill¹s constable, and a great number of the MacDomhnaills along with him."

In the list of Ulster traitors confederate with O Neill in 1595 to whom
pardon was promised if they surrendered are the names of the O Neills, O
Quinns, O Hagans etc, and the strength of the forces they led under Tyrone. The most interesting entry concerns the Gallowglasses.

"The Gallowglass beneath the Blackwater called Sluttsurley 200.  The
Gallowglass this syde the Blackware called MacDonnel¹s son 100."

The former were the Donoughmore MacDomhnaills and the appellation
"Sluttsurley" ­(Sliocht Somhairle) derives from Somhairle MacDomhnaill, who heads another branch of the family tree.

Well might the annalist bewail the Flight of the Earls. (1607).

Sources: Notes of Edward Healy based on
OScots Mercenary Forces in Ireland¹, Hayes-McCoy 1936
Domhnach Mor (Donoughmore) .. An Outline of Parish History,  Eamon o
Doibhlin, 1969.

Estate Records," by Judith Eccles Wight
 http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/ancmag/1957.asp
Administrative Divisions in Ireland"
 http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/2435.asp