THE CLAN O'SHANNON
Crest by Mike O'Shaughnessy
Surnames can be traced back to personal names given or taken to denote someone’s place in their society before the introduction of surnames, and the name O’Shannon goes back to the Gaelic name ‘Seanchu,’ usually translated as meaning ‘small, old, wise.’ This name denoted one who traveled around with important personages (such as kings or nobles) to record their deeds and the history of their family (births, marriages, deaths, etc.) The ‘small’ referred to the race of the Cruithne (Picts), who were called the Little People by the Celts.
Modern research has allowed many Irish families to trace their heritage back to Eremon, son of the Celtic hero King Milesius, who brought the Celts to Ireland from Spain. However, the importance of the Cruithne in Irish Celtic history has sometimes been overlooked. Modern DNA techniques have now confirmed that the Picts were in fact descendents of the Basque people of the Pyrenees mountains in western Europe. Several emigrations of the Basques to Britain occurred over thousands of years, and these were interspersed with migrations of others, such as the Beaker People and the Erainn (La Tene), to combine in Britain into a nation that resisted invasions by the Vikings, Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons for hundreds of years.
When Eremon reached Ireland, he found it possessed by a people he called the Tuatha De Danann. ‘Tuatha’ is a Celtic word that means ‘small kingdom,’ and the Tuatha De Danann are now known to have come from the Basque region of western Europe some time before the Celts. Both groups possessed advanced metallurgy techniques from that area and admired each others’ weapons. After many evenly matched battles, the Tuatha were finally overcome, but because of their bravery and honor, their lives were spared by Eremon. Not wishing to allow them to remain an armed fighting force, the Celts integrated them into their society in other roles, one of which was as recorders of their important events, called ‘Seanchu.’
The enumeration of the generations of rulers from Eremon have been listed on several Irish sites, but the major distinctions between Irish clans started with Eochaidh Muigh-Meadhoine, the 124th monarch of Ireland. Eochaidh ruled as King of Connacht from 358 AD to his death in 366 AD. He was of Firbolg blood (a dark-haired seafaring race from the eastern Mediterranean, as yet unindentified), and his first wife, Mong Finn, was a descendent of Eremon and the Cruithne. Their children included Brion, Fergus, Fiachra and Oilioll. With his second wife, Eochaid had another son, Nial Noiglallach (Neil of the Nine Hostages). Each son gave rise to a line of chiefs, kings and high kings of Ireland. Oilioll, for example, gave rise to the Dalcassians, whose descendents included the famous High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, who finally defeated the Vikings in Ireland in 1014 AD. The son Fiachra Folt-leathan (Fiachra of the flowing hair), High King after Neil of the Nine Hostages, gave rise to his own dynasty, the Ui Fiachrach, through his son, the High King Daithi. Daithi, the last pagan king of Ireland, ruled from 405 AD to 426 AD, and he had twenty-four sons. He was killed by lightning while invading Europe, and is buried under a standing stone called King Daithi’s Stone, on the Isle of Aran (aka Holy Island, or the Island of the Seven Churches) in Galway. The descendents of his sons ruled in Connacht from the fourth to the seventh centuries.
The Ui Fiachrach divided Connacht into a northern country, ruled by the Ui Fiachrach Muaidhe and a southern country ruled by the Ui Fiachrach Aidhne (also called the Hy Fiachrach). The Ui Fiachrach descendent King Guaire Aidhne the Hospitable was King of Connacht in the 7th century. He was an extremely wealthy king who freely gave great wealth to many, so that it was said that his right arm was longer than his left. His son Aoedh (Hugh) ruled after him with the Cinel Aodh na Echthge (‘Hugh’s People from the Aughties’ - a mountain range). Fifteen generations later, among the Ui Fiachrach Aidhne, a chieftain of the Cinel Aodh na Echthge named Seachnasaigh gave rise to the sept of O’Seachnasaigh, which became O’Shaughnessy.
The O’Shaughnessy’s displaced the O’Cahill’s and O’Clery’s to become the dominant sept of Ui Fiachrach Aidhne, and they ruled in southern Connacht, with their center of power in the town of Gort in Galway. Gort Castle was their main stronghold, and they had others at Castle Ardamullivan and Castle Fiddaun, also in Galway. After the English invaded Ireland during the reign of Ireland’s last High King, Toirrdelbach Conchobhair (O’Connor), in 1169 AD, the O’Shaughnessy’s held the territory of the Cinel Aodh as a buffer zone between the Gaelic O’Briens and the Earls of Thomond in the south and the Anglo-Norman Burkes in the north. The ‘Composition Book of Connacht’ (1585 AD) lists their territory as ‘O’Shaughnessy’s Country.’
The power of England caused a division among the rulers in Ireland; some submitted and paid homage to the English, and some defied them. The power and wealth of the O’Shaughnessy’s declined after they repeatedly backed the Irish against the English. In the 17th Century, Dermot O’Shaughnessy joined the Confederation of Kilkenny, and as a result his estates were confiscated by the Cromwell Regime in England. Much of their property was regained with the Restoration, only to be lost again in the Williamite forfeitures. The last chief of the name, William O’Shaughnessy (1674-1744), served in the Irish Brigade; he was a colonel in Clare’s Regiment, and attained the rank of Marshall, having served in the Brigade for almost fifty years, beginning with the Battle of the Boyne.
The territory of Aidhne was the scene of many of Ireland's greatest ancient legends: Queen Maeve (Medb) of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge) ruled there; Fin McCool (Finn Mac Cumhail) defeated Uinche at Kinvara (Ceann Mara) and pursued Diarmid and Graine through the woods of Doire Dhebhoth, later known as Chevy's Chase. In the 20th century, the territory included the home of W.B. Yeats at Thoor Ballylee.
For several centuries, the O’Shaughnessy’s were holders of the famous Crozier of St. Colman. This crozier was used as a means of inducing defrauders to give up illicitly acquired goods to their rightful owners, and was held by the O’Shaughnessy’s from the time of Bishop O’Shaughnessy of Kilmacduagh (died 1223 AD). It is now in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland. The O'Shaughnessy's gave the land for Kilmacdaugh Abbey to the Bishop, and it was the burial place for many of the O'Shaughnessy's. Although the Abbey is now a ruin, it has a tower that is considered to be the tallest standing tower in Ireland.
The Kilmacduagh Abbey
Photo by Mike O'Shaughnessy
Later contributions of the O’Shaughnessy’s included Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy (1809-1889), a surgeon and chemist who introduced cannabis to western medicine and the telegraph to India. Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy, a singer and poet, coined the term “movers and shakers” in his famous ode:
ODE
by Arthur O'Shaughnessy
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
THE RIVER SHANNON
"The noble name of Sinann seek ye from me,
Its bare recital would not be pleasant,
Not alike now are its action and noise
As when Sinann herself was free and alive."
Translated from the Irish of Cuan 0' Lothchain
Sinann was the daughter of the earned Lodan, who was the son of Lear, the great sea-king of the
Tuatha De Danann colony of Erinn, from whose son and successor, Manannan, the Isle of Man
derives its name and ancient celebrity. In those very early times there was a certain mystical fountain
which was called Connla's Well. Over this well there grew, according to the legend, nine beautiful hazel-trees, which annually send forth their blossoms and fruits simultaneously. The nuts were of the richest crimson colour, and teemed with the knowledge of all that was refined in literature, poetry and art. No sooner, however, were the beautiful nuts produced on the trees, than they always dropped into the well, raising by their fall a succession of shining red bubbles. Now during this time the water was always full
of salmon; and no sooner did the bubbles appear than these salmon darted to the surface and ate the nuts, after which they made their way to the river. The eating of the nuts produced brilliant crimson spots on the bellies of these salmon. The fish were supposed to have become filled with the knowledge contained in the nuts, which, it was believed, would be transferred in full to those who had the good fortune to catch and eat them.
It was forbidden to women to come within the precincts of Connla's wonderful well; but the beautiful Lady Sinann, who possessed above every maiden of her time all the accomplishments of her sex, longed to have
also those more solid and masculine acquirements which were accessible at Connla's well to the other
sex only. To possess herself of these she went secretly to the mystical fountain; but as soon as she approached its brink, the water rose up violently and burst forth over its banks, overwhelming the Lady Sinann in their course. Her body was carried down by the torrent, and at last cast up on the land at the confluence of two streams. After this the well became dry for ever; and the stream which issued from it was known by the name of the Lady Sinann or Shannon.
When the O’Shaughnessy’s came to the United States, some of them, including my family, changed their name to O’Shannon. In 1312, the Shannon’s became a Sept of Clan McDonald of the Isles when Scotland’s Robert the Bruce invaded Ireland. The McDonald’s are the largest Clan of Scottish royalty.
The MacDonald tartan that belongs to the Sept Shannon.
Other Shannons: Another Irish clan who also sometimes took the name O’Shannon were the O’Shanahans. These were Dalcassians descended from Cosrach, brother of Cineadh (Kennedy of Thomond). Cosrach was the son of Donchadh Cuan, King of Connaught in 768, and the grandfather of Seanchan, founder of the sept of O’Seanchain, which became O’Shanahan.
