In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth and then the MacNeills. One particularly interesting story regarding these original McNeill gallowglass families, concerns the McNeill of Armargh. Having aquired vast holdings, this powerful family was approached by the English invaders in the 1600s , who demanded that they renounce Catholicism and embrace Henrys new religion, or suffer the confiscation of their lands. The McNeill refused, and held off the ensuing English attackers for a period of time. When it eventually became clear that they couldnt fend off the reinforced enemy much longer, seven McNeill brothers gathered their families and fled to various parts of Ireland. With prices on their heads, and the English hunting for them, some escaped to Co. Monaghan where they changed the name to MCGRAIN, others went to Galway and Mayo, where the name became MCGREAL. Two of the brothers settled in the remote mountains of Leitrim, where they took the name MCGRAIL. In the 1400s, the McNeills sent heavily armed warriors to fight as mercenaries at the behest of various regional chieftains in their ongoing internecine wars. These families were known as galloglass. (he term galloglass means a mercenery from abroad, literally Gall Oglach, i.e. Foreign Soldier. Oglach is derived from Og laoch meaning a YoungWarrior). The McGrails are a galloglass family. In one of the earliest references to their appearance THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS, records the death of a Scottish galloglass captain MacNeill, who was killed fighting for the ORourkes. The ORourkess owned vast landholdings and were the dominant clan in what was later to be County Leitrim. In the Gaelic divisions which preceded the seventeenth century, most of Leitrim, along with Cavan, was part of the kingdom of Bréifne. Leitrim became known as Bréifne O’Rourke, while Cavan was Bréifne O’Reilly. The O’Rourkes ruled the territory for more than 700 years until the final dispossessions of the seventeenth century. A number of the sept (branch of a clan) remained in the North West of Ireland and became established in Hi Fiachrach, which at one time encompassed what is now Mayo and Sligo in Connaught The McGrails were described in Milesian Families as being of the HyBrune tribe. Some sources claim that the McGrail Clan is of Dalriadan origin, and specifically from the line of King Dalriadan Fergus Mor MacEarca. This King was banished from Ireland along with 350 chiftains, in 327 AD. In the 17th and 18th Century, the McNeills sent 58 families from the Western Isles of Scotland to Ireland, and they originally settled in Antrim and Derry. This was a time of great social upheaval and religious turmoil in Scotland, where the native Catholic population was being forced to convert to the new church. Those who resisted were either banished, hanged, or burned alive. Many of the MacNeills, however, remained true to their Faith, owing in part, to the strength of their Chieftains and the might of their arms in the Hebrides and Western Isles.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 19:50:12 +0000
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