Donegal Stuff

Morva

Does anyone know the name of Donegal Town prior to the whole Viking thing? Like 523-534 a.d.? I've been researching this for what feels like centuries and can't get an answer anywhere. HELP!:eek:

YogiBear

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans]The passing of the name Tir Conaill into distant history has an unfortunate story behind it. The change commenced in the year 1584 when Sir John Perrott assumed the deputy Lordship of Ireland. Within a year, he had assembled a parliament in Dublin which, according to the Four Masters included the following Septs: Hugh O"Neill, chief of Tir Eoin; Hugh O"Donnell chief of Tir Conaill; John Og O"Doherty, chief of Inishowen; Turlough O"Boyle, chief of Boylagh and Owen O"Gallagher, O"Donnell"s marshall. [/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans]The parliament passed a decree which stated that the area has to be known henceforth as Donegal (Fort of the Strangers). This measure was strenuously resisted by O"Donnell who refused to accept any interference in the running of Tir Conaill to the effect, he forbade the entrance of the English sheriff into his territory. However, by the time the Flight of the Earls had occurred some twenty years later, the name Donegal started to prevail in the vernacular.[/FONT]

YogiBear

http://www.donegaltown.ie/Article_Details.aspx?article_id=3&tscategory_id=3

Here's a link to the story
www.donegaltown.ie is the website and perhaps you could contact them and ask them if the above answer isn't what you were looking for !

Morva

YogiBear wrote: »

http://www.donegaltown.ie/Article_Details.aspx?article_id=3&tscategory_id=3

Here's a link to the story
www.donegaltown.ie is the website and perhaps you could contact them and ask them if the above answer isn't what you were looking for !

Your help was very much appreciated! Thanks for taking the time to find that information for me. The link was extremely interesting - I've been out of touch with my Irish history for too long, but since I started working on this book, so much of it is coming back - and even more of it is new. By the way, have you ever come across the surname MacDara? Anyway, thanks again for the Donegal help - you're wonderful!

YogiBear

No prob.
MacDara.. Personally I don't know anyone by that name..
Here's a link that may be of help.
http://www.ireland.com/ancestor/

Although I just did a Surname search on MacDara and it's not showing any results.
McDara comes up with 11 results though
http://www.ireland.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?fuseaction=Go.&Surname=McDara&UserID=

It may be an old name?.. Best of luck with it anyway!

EamonnKeane

There's a school called Mac Dara's in Templeogue, they might know a little