A fruitful clime is Eiré's, through valley, meadow, plain,
And the fair land of Eiré, O!
The very "Bread of Life" is in the yellow grain
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Far dearer unto me than the tones music yields,
Is the lowing of her kine and the calves in her fields,
And the sunlight that shone long ago on the shields
Of the Gaels, on the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Donnacha Rua Mac Namara
Mac Namara Family tree
It is difficult to know where to start a project like this .
I am tempted to take the scenic route , but the more tortuous one is probably the more honest . I am reminded here of our visits to Mullagh in the late 50’s with Auntie Nelly and Tomas and all of us heading off in a Volkswagon Beetle ;The choice then was between the corkscrew hill or via Lahinch .They usually choose the corkscrew for some perverse reason . My joy was unconfined when we reached the top of the hill , for as the Percy French line has it .. all the rest is downhill. It is similar with this journey ; you could choose the scenic or the scholarly route .
Essentially I wanted to trace the family tree, but the more I looked the more I saw the forest that it is .
As one gets older the distant past seems to become more important as it drifts away from us ; away to a place we can never revisit other than in the capsule of collective memory ; this is often more colourful than perhaps were the facts at the time ; even the stories of doting grandfathers however well intended tend to be embellished ; made more heroic ; more ennobling more sacrificial ; more enduring than they actually were. We can never be sure . We can take comfort only from the fact that they were told to us but can we ever be sure of the past.
As you listen to the news today , you may hear the reporter of the most recent story give the gushing essence of his story before adding '' and the background to this story is ...'' and that’s where history begins ; but you must first ask 'who wrote the background.' if it is unchallenged then the history is not even that it is just a narrative of selected facts which collated in a particular way could even be tendentious , propaganda , or just dam lies.
An so it tends to be with this narrative .
Already there’s a problem ; A king in the 3rd century..; a son who forms a clan ; they from a sort of cabal in East Clare and team up at some time with Brian Boru to defeat the Vikings , (but the history such that it is suggests that they only fought for Scattery Island )
Then we take a quantum leap forward to the 16/ 17 century . Here we meet some seemingly noble if confounding and confounded souls.
But now the characters seem more real ; they fit in to a picture of history.
The Rising of 1691 and the battle of Vinegar Hill are recounted in folklore and famously in the eponymous haunting ballad .Here it is said that Fireball fought , survived , went to France . joined the French army and pursued a career of glorious battle until , at some quiescent period , there being no battle raging which moved him sufficiently , he took to duelling . Being a marksman he killed many of his adversaries when his honour was sullied , but he eventually was hanged for his excesses and is buried in Quinn Abbey ,which was built for the monks by his forbears. His is the stuff of legend , of pride and shame at the same time ; a rogue a swash buckling cavalier , ill-tempered thug , and a fearless soldier ; a man with the temperament of martyr saint and despot
I see for example many of the notorious flaws of Fireball so manifest in myself and to a lesser degree in other members of my family ; I would desist challenging a man to a duel over a dog as Fireball once did. I would consider that a bit rash . My fantasy might take flight to a world where I might slay my vexatious adversaries but I am a coward .
Neither would I have had the faith nor the conviction of Donnacha Rua who changed his religion to widen the scope of his teaching , before reverting back again to his former creed .This requires commitment . But more than any comitment it requires a degree of passion, which is both laudable and laughable at the same time .
However embarking on a journey such as this I am prepared to meet in my past at least as many undesirables and rogues than I am nobles lords. Earls, kings etc.
Though the family name thrives in Clare and in the past hundreds of years they built many fine castles it would be fanciful and downright dishonest to trace the family back from the castle rather than take the family and try to come forward from the oldest recorded relative or backward from the current generation. Whether these lines will ever meet is as improbable as Stanley finding the heart of Africa.
Unlike other cultures we burned most of our most treasured family records during the bombing of the Customhouse during the civil war; you could say that during our civil war managed to perpetrate the most uncultivated and uncivilised attack on our public records. We now as so often before for so many things to turn to the church for the parish records of births deaths etc.
And then we leap into another unknown . The origins of my own family. My Father was borne in Balymackea , Mullagh . West Clare in 1911, his father was also borne in this house. My grandfather was borne about 1880 , and his father in 1840 ..
But Here is some data from internet research . here is where I’m at just now ; take particular heed of the links…so from here on its all plagiarised
The earliest relation of the sept was Aulomm (Oilliol Olum), ancient king of Munster, included: Éogan Mór, a quo (from whom descend
Olum was kinh of munster in the 3rd cent Dalcassion) the race of Cas, the sixth in descent from Cormac Cas, son of Oilioll Olum, King of Munster in the 3rd century. Through this line they are connected to Cashel and the other great families of the province of Munster. This great clan of Thomond (North Munster), holds several distinguished families including the chief family of the name, the O'Briens. The clan of the noted high king, Brian Boru.
Cormac Cas was King of Thomond around the fifth century and he spawned a tribal grouping known as the Dál gCais or Dalcassians which dominated Munster until the final suppression of the old Gaelic order in the seventeenth century. Twenty-three generations later and in direct descent from Cas we find Cumara, Chief of Maghadhair in county Clare. Cumara is a contracted form of Conmara - hound of the sea. His son, Domhnall, who died in 1099, adopted the surname Mac Conmara, or son of Cumara, thus becoming the very first MacNamara. The name has survived relatively unmodified as MacConmara in Irish and Mac (or Mc) Namara in English, to this day.
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/people/fireballmac.htm
Plenty of info on him there.
You can try for Donnchadh Rua also, though you will need to try several
different spellings. There is a bit on him here under Donagh Rua McNamara:
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/education2.htm
though there must be a lot more. THere is also a bit here:
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/literature/clare_poets/donnchadh_ruadh_mac_conmara.htm
Sons of Ail ill Aulomm (Oilliol Olum), ancient king of Munster, included: Éogan Mór, a quo (from whom descend the) Éoganachta (of Munster); Cian, a quo Ciannachta of Eile (in Tipperary), Breagh (in Meath) and Glinne Gemhin (in Derry); Cormac Cas, a quo Dál gCais in Déis Tuascirt (in Clare). Tigernach, a quo Cenel Cerdraige.
Take a blessing from my heart to the land of my birth,
And the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
And to all that yet survive of Eibhear's tribe on earth,
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
In that land so delightful the wild thrush's lay--
Seems to pour a lament forth for Eir6's delay--
Alas! alas! why pine I a thousand miles away
From the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Me;
(timothy ) donal Mc Namara b. Galway ireland 1949. my father Maj James(jimmy) b Mullagh Clare 1911 married Kathleed joyce Kilcinnell galway 1946 4 children My grandfather Timothy b1877 married Meade - 4 sons 2 daughters; great grandfather Pasy M Kitty O shaugnessy Patsy was b 1840 and was the son of Thady McN and Mary Murrihy Ive been trying to start some kind of narative of the family tree but the lines run into the sand. partly the problem is that during our civil war twe destroyed many of the documents relkating to births deaths and marriages - these were then held in the custom hse . dublin which was gutted .only church and parish records remain. there is of course the somewhat less reliable and sometinmes fanciful sourse material which can be derived from tradition and lore; here it is impossible to decipher fact from fantacy and history becomes blurred in the retroscopic myopia of self interest ; or a sort of collective family vanity. Take Fireball mac n - who bought at the battle if vinegar hill - 1798 rebellion ; was a fearless soldier; a flamboyant bully ; a duelest of note who having had nelson plead his case was hanged for his excesses and is burried in the graveyard in Quinn abbey , which had been built for the monks by his forebears. or Donnacha Rua mmc n ; a poet , mystic ; teacher scholar, who stidied in rome changed his religion to expand his teaching and give vent to his yearning ; he was finally excomunicated before writing one of the most famoaus and moving poems of his generation Ban Chnoin na h eireann - the fair hills of eireann ; this poem is a keening lament ; writtten in Irish / gaelic and as such loses much in translation ; also much of what is written and does survive translation is allegorical - it is essentially a withering commentary of the tyranny of the brittish and its opression which he as a scholar most keenly and acutely fely. it should be also read in the context of the ancient bardic mode of the harpers of ireland - this would fit into the lament or the suantri mode , as distinct fro the suantrai or geantri - the music of the dance and the lullaby so which ever way you turn in the narative of the mcn 's i fear you will meet this maze where there are many fire breaks and a sort of scorched earth impass in between - jusy to mangler a few metaphors.
These were sometimes crude and rablasian in their context . The old ireland is often represented as a witch and the liberated or liberating ireland as a virgin ; but an eager virgin ready to reward thoe who acquitted themselves on the ballte field . Other allegories are less gentle ; In the haunting air an buachaill chaoill dubh - roughly translated as - the long dark haired unstraightened lad - the allegory is obviously a vividly sexual one . even this translation doesnt stand up as it were .
So with many of the laments , the soulful ballads the country is represtnted as 4 green fields ; or the rocks of ban - and the impossible toil of trying to make fertile this rocky divided barrenesss is recounted to an aspirant son of the soil .
The bardic harpers were a special breed ; they dined with the gentry ; wrote songs in their praise - referred to as plankstys by O Carolan 1670-1730
The harpers preserved the 3 bardic modes - the songs of happinesss - the songs of sadness - and the songs for soothing sleep ( suantrai Seontrai , geantrai ) and many of their airs were collected at the Buntings Belfast Harp festival and for ther first time were written down in musical notation. Most of the harpers were blind , often from birth and as in O Carolans case from small pox . They were often taken in by a wealthy family who acted as their patrons - a sort of Celtic de Medici arrangement . In O Caroland case his de Medici s were a mc dermott
-roe family from roscommon
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