Cineal Conaill & Cenél nEoghain
The Cenél Cairbre or Clann Chairbre descend from Cairbre, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Their patrimony was in what is now the barony of Carbury, in the north of Connemara country in County Sligo. One of their line, Tuathal Maelgarb, was High-King of Tara in 544. But their main representative in later times was the family of O’Brolan (O Breollain), descended from Ainmire, brother of King Tuathal, being the son of Cormac Caoch, son of Cairbre, eponymous ancestor of the clan.
The Cineal Conaill descend from Conall Gulban, son of Nial of the Nine Hostages and were possessed of the territory of Tirconaill (the land of Conall), now County Donegal. They provided High-Kings of Tara alternately with their Cineal Eoghain cousins until the end of the eighth century, the Cenél Eoghain being dominant as overlords of the Northern Uí Niell from the end of the eighth century onward. This state of affairs was contributed to by the geographical disposition of the. Cenél Conaill in mountainous and remote west Ulster. In this relatively isolated position, the Cenél Conaill in Donegal lacked the strategic geographical advantage enjoyed by the Cenél Eoghain at Ailech and in County Derry.
The Clan Dalaigh or O’Donnells (O’Domhnaill) of Tirconaill originally possessed the patrimony of Cenél Luighdheach (the descendants of Lugaid, son of Setnae, uncle of Saint Columba), their original clan-name, it having been applied to the mountainous district between the old kingdom River Swilly and the River Dobhar from Clare, in north-central Donegal: The territory around Kilmacrenan. They derive their clan-name from their ancestor Dalach, Lord of Tir-conaill, who died in 868, and who was the first of their immediate ancestors to become Lord of Tir-conaill, a dignity continued by his son Eigheachan, father of their eponymous ancestor Domhnall. They did not, however, again become chiefs of the Cenél Conaill until the thirteenth century, when they rose on the downfall of some of their Cenél Conaill kinsmen, the O’Canannains or O’Cannons (O Canannain) and O’Muldorys or O’Mulderrys (O Maoldoraidh).
Afterwards the O’Donnells established themselves as the ruling family of the Cenél Conaill and all Donegal, and continued as such for centuries, until the final submergence of the Gaelic order in the seventeenth century. The O’Donnells, as princes of Donegal, were consistently one of the most able families in the Gaelic aristocracy, and not only successfully defended their territory against both the English and native adversaries alike, but they also made their power respected throughout the north and west of Ireland. Their most famous chief was Hugh Roe (Red Hugh) O’Donnell, who escaped his treacherous imprisonment by the English at Dublin Castle (he was rescued, after his bold escape, by The O’Hagan, and with the assistance of the Wicklow clans) and later fought at Kinsale. Rory O’Donnell was with The Ó Neill in the Flight of the Earls at the beginning of the seventeenth century, while other famous O’Donnells distinguish the pages of Irish and Continental history during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A branch of the family (descended from Shane Luirg, son of Turlough O’Donnell of the Wine, Lord of Tir-conaill in the early fifteenth century) became established in Limerick and Tipperary.
The Cineal Conaill in Scotland were known as the Kindred of Saint Columba, the great saint who founded lona. This epithet was applied to all the descendants of Saint Columba’s great-grandfather, Conall Gulban, but was especially applied to branches within the clan devoted to ecclesiastical pursuits, especially in Scotland. Thus the Kindred was comprised of several early saints, and also of the hereditary abbots of Iona, Kells, Derry and Dunkeld, (Dalriata, Tyrone, Moray), some of whom were descended from the Saint Columba’s brother. The Kindred of Saint Columba remained closely connected to the Abbey at lona despite changes in political control and the distance from the Cineal Conall homeland in Donegal. In 1164 King Somerled of the Isles (under MacDonald) invited the chief co-arb of Saint Columba to accept the Abbacy of lona; but the Cenél Connaill would not allow the Columban primacy which first went from lona to Kells, and then to Derry in Donegal, the homeland of the Kindred) to pass from Derry back to the Hebrides. The Abbacy was then offered to members of the O’Brollaghan branch of the Cenél Eoghan, a Derry-based ecclesiastical family with splendid masonic skills, but their talented representative at Iona died in 1203. This left a void at Iona, an absence of the Columban Kindred, and so Ranald, next King of the Isles had no choice but to follow the Scottish example at Scone and install a foreign order, in this case the Benedictine Order, at lona, Northumbria. This inevitably led to high-strung local dissension by those who preferred the native way of the (Celtic) Columban church, which had had hereditary, non-celibate abbots of the Kindred administering the abbey estates. Finally, in 1204, the Cenél Conaill, led by two bishops and two abbots all of the Kindred of Saint Columba, raided Iona and demolished a monastery erected on Columban land by the new Benedictine abbot, and proclaimed the then Abbot of Derry, who was a descendant of Saint Columba’s brother, to be Abbot of Iona as well.
The Kindred of Saint Columba had come into the Crown of Scotland in earlier times, when Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II, King of Albany married Crinan (ca. 975—1045), Thane (temporal lord) and (hereditary) Abbot of Dunkeld, and Seneschal (household officer or administrator) of the Isles. Crinan’s line was probably a branch of the Cineal Luighdheach. The Cenél Luigheheach were heads of the Columban church in Scotland since the removal of that primacy from Jona to Dunkeld several generations before. The sons of Bethoc and Crinan were King Duncan I of Albany (killed in 1040), whose descendants bore arms of the colors red on gold; and Maldred, Ruler of Cumbria, who married the daughter of the Earl of Beornicia, and whose descendants bore arms of the colors red on silver (white). From Maldred’s son Gospatric, Earl of Beornicia (which passed from English to Scottish control during his tenture, and whose original Saxon House is represented in the male line by the Swintons of that Ilk), are descended the families of Dunbar, Dundas and Moncreiff.
The Dunbars descend from the above Gospatrick, who was also known as Earl of Northumbria and who was forced to flee that earldom, but was later given the barony of Dunbar in East Lothian by his cousin Malcolm III, Ceann-Mor ("great-head"), who was killed in 1093, Later his line acquired additional lands in what is now southwest Scotland. His descendants, the earls of Dunbar, thus became the head of an important Lowland family. In the fourteenth century their then chief married the heiress of the Randolf earl of Moray, and by 1579 the Privy Council describes the Dunbars of northwest Moray as a clan. The Dundases descend from a son of Gospatrick of Northumbria who was given a charter of the lands of Dundas in West Lothian about the mid-twelfth century. They became an important landed family around Edinburgh. John de Dundas acquired a charter of the barony of Fingask in Perthshire in 1364—65.