The following two e-mail messages were recently received from G.K.:

Dear Patrick:

Nice website. I see you're building your origins and history section. A few suggestions:

1. by about 300 B.C., the Celts held almost all of Europe as far east as the Ukraine, as far north as Denmark, as far south as northern Italy, as far west as Ireland and Iberia (Spain & Portugal), plus central Turkey (remember St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians? - that's them in central Turkey);

2. the major divisions of the Celtic languages at that time were P-Ceitic (Gaullish, Anatolian, British Celtic also called Brythonic) and Q-Ceitic (Irish in Ireland and Celt-Iberian on the Iberian peninsula);

3. Then the Roman conquest, invasions by Scandinavians (now called Germans, although the original Germanii was named for a Celtic tribe it means'True Men' in Gaullish), invasions by Slavs, and invasions by Turks (in Anatolia) reduced the Celtic countries to the western fringe of Europe by the 6th century A.D.;

4. Today, Celtic languages are still spoken in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall (a revival), the Isle of Mann (part-revival, part living tradition), and Brittany. The Galicians of northwest Spain have a living Celtic tradition in music, dance, folklore, but their language is mostly a dialect of Spanish instead of a dialect of Celt-Iberian;

5. About the only god that all the Celts knew or worshipped was Lugh. Just about anything in Europe that begins with Le- or Lo- or Ly- or La is named after him: London, Lyons (France), Leyden (Holland), Liebnitz (Austria), Lake Lucarno (Italy if I remember right), Lake Lugano (Switzerland if I remember right), Lugos (Spain), etc.,

6. But the Celts were much bigger on ancestor-gods than standard pantheons of gods on the Greek model. My tribe, the Connachta after whom Connaught is named, worshipped our ancestor-god Conn. He's "the god my people swear by" as the ancient Celts used to say and he's the guy my genealogies go back to.;

7. You, however, despite being based in Connaught, are not of the blood of the Connachta. The O Gadhra ("O'Garas") and the O Headhra ("O'Haras") are the Luigne (the Lugh-ne, or 'Lugh-descendants'), a separate earlier tribe who claimed descent from the pan-Celtic god Lugh mentioned above;

8. The Luigne are counted in the ancient Irish genealogies among the Erainn. This invasion group gave their ancestor-goddess' name, Eire, to Ireland. Certain scholars believe these represent the second major Celtic invasion of Ireland and date their invasion to the 5th to 3rd centuries B.C., coming from Gaul to Britain to Ireland-,

9. The barony you come from, Luigne or Luighne, is named after your tribe and has been your tribal territory since well before the 5th century A.D.. You held onto it when my ancestors, the Connachta, conquered Connaught in the 5th century A.D.. The English misspelling and mispronunciation of Luigne is Leyney;

11. Many Irish families can link their genealogies to their clans and pre-Christian tribes. That makes our genealogies pretty much the oldest in the world, tied only by the genealogy of the Japanese imperial family. They, like you, have traditionally claimed descent from a god.

Then, in response to a question about which was the true pedigree 0f the O'Gara clan :

Good question. Probably the toughest question about your ancestry, because it gets right to the heart of which genealogy related to your tribe is the true genealogy and which is the false genealogy. T. F. O'Rahilly devotes much print plus a full appendix (Appendix V) to your tribe's genealogy in his EARLY IRISH HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY* (1946), in part because of this question.

*(This should be available thru University Libraries or Interlibrary Loan in US.)

The answer is complicated, so let me come at it this way:

1. T.F. O'Rahilly proposes 4 major Celtic invasions of Ireland:

Cruthin (around 8th-5th century B.C.),

Erainn (around 5th-3rd century B.C.),

Laigin - also known as Domnainn and Gailionn/Gailing/Gaileng (around 3rd-1st century B.C.),

and Goidel/Gaeil (around Ist century B.C. - 1st century A.D.;

Most scholars see this as a pretty good model, although some question the dates, the extent to which the Goidel or Gaeil are actually a combination of the Connachta plus other tribes attached using fictional genealogies, and whether certain tribes fit into this invasion group or that invasion group based on conflicting traditions, which is exactly the issue with the Luigne;

3. More specifically, according to the 'official genealogies' published by the Ui Neill from the 7th century on (as the Ui Neill tried to justify their kingship of all of Ireland on the false basis that all the tribes of Ireland are related by blood to the Ui Neill), both the Gaileng and the Luigne are made to descend from Cormac Gaileng. But given that the 'official genealogies' were created to propagate a false genealogical doctrine, they often aren't reliable. Also, it makes sense that a people called the Gaileng would descend from a guy named Cormac Gaileng. But why would a people called Luigne ('Lugh-descendants') descend from a guy named Cormac Gaileng?;

4. Accordingly, it's not surprising that we have another tradition that has the Luigne descend from Lugaid (a common Irish form of Lugh) Ligairne, son of Daire Sirchrechtach. Now we've got a tribe called 'Lugh's Descendants' actually descending from a guy called Lugh/Lugaid. Further, Lugaid's father Daire is a well-known Erainn god, and don't forget that pagan Irish tribes defined themselves by 'the god my people swear by' or 'the god my people adore.' Also, Lugh (later commonly spelled Lugaid in Ireland) shows up often in the genealogies of the Erainn but hardly at all in the genealogies of the Laigin - he just wasn't a very popular Laigin god, unlike Labraid or Bresal. Relatedly, a people called the Dal Luigne ('Share of the Descendants of Lugh') who formed a part of the Desi in east Munster were specifically said to be 'di Ernaibh' ('of the Erainn). Also, coming back to that question of why name a people called Luigne after a guy called Cormac Gaileng, O'Rahilly points out that the 'official genealogists' also recognized this as a problem and eventually plugged the gap with a guy by the name of Luaidne son of Fedlimmid Rechtmar (father of Conn Cetchathach), which makes the Luaigne members of the Goidel/Gaeil. But this fellow is unknown in the earlier genealogies (I can't find him in anything until the 15th century Book of Lecan, written by a kinsman of mine) and the new 'official' idea that the Luigne were suddenly a branch of the noble Gaeil was hard for just about everybody else to swallow. It had been doctrine for centuries that the Luigne of both Connacht and Brega/Meath/north Dublin were aithech-thuatha ('subject peoples') and Fir Bolg ('Men of Bags', a catch-all name for earlier non-Goidelic peoples of Ireland), and the Luigne of Meath/north Dublin were called sentuatha Temrach [which O'Rahilly points out means'the old (i.e., pre-Goidelic) peoples of Tara']. So O'Rahilly seems to have a pretty firm foundation for concluding that the Luigne are actually of the Erainn, not of the Gailioin/Gaileng;

5. So what caused the Gaileng and the Luigne to be lumped together in this way? Well, as O'Rahilly points out, these were close allies in the service of both the kings of Tara and the kings of Cruachu (the ancient capital of Connacht). The old sagas and myths constantly have them fighting side by side against various invaders or in various invasions. Further, not only did they live side by side in Connacht (the Luigne leaving their name on the barony of Leyney in Sligo and the Gaileng leaving their name right next door on the barony of Gallen in Mayo), but they lived closely together in Meath where the baronies of Lune and Morgailion note portions of their former territories. So, for the 'official genealogists', perhaps giving them a common ancestor (who in turn was made to be related to, and therefore owe allegiance to, the Ui Neill) was a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

P.S. I forgot to note in my earlier email that, as your excerpts from the Annals note, the O'Gadhra are called the'Lords of Sliabh Lugha.' Sliabh Lugha means 'Mountain of Lugh.' and is a mountain in your territory.