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Report on the The O Long of Garranelongy Chiefship
Background
Previous
researches established that the Genealogical
Office/Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland granted courtesy
recognition to a number of bogus and questionable Gaelic Chiefs,
including Mac Carthy Mór
and Maguire of Fermanagh, and there are many unanswered questions
concerning the way in which recognitions were issued in the period
1989-95. While the recognition of
Terence MacCarthy as
Mac Carthy Mór was declared null and void, no decisive action
was
taken in relation to the Maguire and other debatable chiefships, and
the Office of the Chief Herald simply abandoned its role in
recognising chiefs in 2003. There
now follows a report on the claim to the chiefship of O Long of
Garranelongy.
Chief Herald's certificate
of recognition of O Long of Garranelongy 1989
(from Bord Fáilte/Irish Tourist Board brochure, Tracing
Your Ancestors Ireland)
In August 1989 then Chief Herald Donal Begley issued the above illustrated certificate granting courtesy recognition to Mr Denis C Long as 'The O Long of Garranelongy' (the version pasted into the Register of Chiefs contains the Chief Herald's signature). Once again serious discrepancies, want of documentary evidence and indeed crude forgery have been discovered in relation to the proffered pedigree of O Long, which are detailed in the present report.
Pedigree of O Long
The most substantial available
published pedigree of the currently
recognised O Long is from the pen of Terence MacCarthy, the now
'abdicated' Mac Carthy Mór, and this alone is a sufficient cause
for concern. The claimant to the O Long Chiefship was a member of
MacCarthy's 'Niadh Nask' Order, and is reported to have presented to
'our unquestioned Prince' a replica 'Crown of Munster' during a
ceremony in Cashel in 1996 (Cashel '96,
pages 41-42). MacCarthy's article on O Long, in a collection of essays
entitled An
Irish Miscellany, lists a total of 50 generations of chiefly
descent, from Eoghan Mór, died circa 192 AD, through
Longadh, who lived about 640 and from whom the surname Ó
Longaidh is said to derive, down to the claimed current Chief,
Denis Long. The piece is a typically Terentine production, fluently
and, to non-experts at least, persuasively written, citing sources in
an apparently scholarly way, but on closer analysis it is found to be
seriously flawed. In the first place, attention has been drawn to the
fact that there are12 generations between Cathal, died
1063, and John, died 1653, which gives an implausibly long average
generational gap of about 50 years, whereas the expected figure would
be 30-35 years (message on Newsgroup rec.heraldry, 27 January 2000).
The sources cited by MacCarthy in
general simply do not support
the pedigree he presents, and it is suspected that he started by
expanding imaginatively on information found in one of the sources in
particular, an article by Collins in the Journal of the Cork
Historical and Archaeological Society for 1946. Thus MacCarthy
casually refers to John O'Long, Chief of His Name, and his son Darby (Miscellany,
page 199), but on checking the cited page of Collins, we find that the
latter makes no mention of chiefly status and states that the 'precise
relationship' of Darby and John to previous O'Longs 'is not known'.
Again, MacCarthy claims that during the Penal Era the O'Longs 'remained
in Canovee and Garranelongy enduring all and surviving all' (Miscellany,
page 201), whereas Collins merely notes that their lands passed from
their possession during this time, and that 'owing to the paucity of
records . . . little is known of their vicissitudes'.
This is a pattern with which we
are well familiar as a result of
investigations into the Mac Carthy Mór and Maguire Chiefships: a
veneer of pseudo-scholarship masks persistent fabrication and
distortion of genealogical and historical data. In examining the work
of bona fide authorities, one is struck by the lack of substantial
surviving sources relating to the O'Longs of County Cork. Thus Diarmuid
Ó Murchadha states that there is little to indicate the origin
of the family, as the eponymous Longadh's father was the 'mythical
Corc' (Family Names of County Cork, page 224). Neither Collins
or Ó Murchadha, or MacLysaght in an article on the surname in More
Irish Families, make any reference to a documented chiefly
succession of O'Longs into our time, which adds to scepticism
concerning the pedigree put forward by MacCarthy. Following a hunch and
a tip-off, I checked that great resource of 'clans' fabricators,
O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees, and found that nearly all the names
in generations 7-40 of MacCarthy's O Long pedigree appear simply to
have been lifted from lineages of O Donoghue Mór and O Donoghue
of the Glen (volume 1, pages 194-95).
Turning to the more modern
portion of the pedigree, using conventional records of birth and
marriage I succeeded in documenting the ancestry of Denis C Long back
to William Long who lived in the mid-nineteenth century. No doubt the
pedigree could be traced further back, but I could not locate any
sources connecting the current claimant with the last recorded chief in
the seventeenth century. It was therefore necessary to try and
establish what if any testing of evidence was conducted by the Office
of the Chief Herald before granting recognition to an O Long chief.
Following some fairly insistent enquiries, Deputy Chief Herald
Gillespie eventually provided the following startlingly negative
information in April 2000: ‘There is no registered pedigree of O
Long at this office. O Long has never had arms granted or confirmed to
him by any Chief Herald.' Chief Herald O Donoghue himself responded
even more dramatically in May of the same year: ‘I am advised
that no documents relating to the grant of courtesy recognition to O
Long can be traced in the Genealogical Office.' Of course I
communicated my concerns also in April 2000 to Denis C Long, and he
replied that he was not in possession of relevant documents but would
seek information on same, since which time there has been no contact.
Surely there must have been a file in the Office of the Chief Herald
containing correspondence, copy certificates, receipts for fees and
other documents relating to the O Long case? What has happened to this
file and its contents?
Arms of O Long
As before noted, the Office of
the Chief Herald has neither granted nor
confirmed O Long arms officially, although it can be seen that arms do
feature on the certificate of chiefly recognition. It has not been
possible to authenticate the illustrated arms, which would be blazoned
thus,
'Vert, three lions rampant or (gold)'. Ó Longaidh,
pronounced 'oh-longy', is one of a significant number of Gaelic
surnames whose anglicisation took the form of a similar sounding
English surname, in this case Long. The entries for the arms of Long
families in Burke's General Armory nearly all feature a
single lion rampant argent (silver) as the central charge, with the
exception of the very last entry which is identical to the arms in the
certificate, reading 'Vert three lions ramp. or.' (page 621, column 1).
O'Hart gives the exact same blazon for Longan, Gaelic Ó
Longáin, a sept unrelated to the O'Longs but also sometimes
Anglicised as Long (Irish Pedigrees, 1, page 517). It is
therefore reasonable to ask whether the arms of O Long were merely
assumed.
Developments
A copy of the original version of
the present report
was sent to the Chief Herald of Ireland on 1 May 2000, but it was not
acknowledged. There was no significant development in the case
until former MacCarthy supporter Peter Berresford Ellis stated
in 2002 that documents in Mr Long's possession showed that professional
genealogists Eileen O'Byrne and Eilish Ellis had prepared pedigrees on
behalf of
the Genealogical Office in the 1980s and 1990s, and furthermore
that Paul Gorry had now been
employed by Mr Long to review his case (Erin's Blood Royal, New York 2002
Edition, page 157). The exposure of Terence MacCarthy's hoax in 1999 of
course meant that his 'research' in support of Mr Long's claim to
chiefship was worthless, and the above mentioned 'missing' file in the
Office of the Chief Herald adds to an impression of utter irregularity.
The next development of note
occurred in November
2005, when Mr Thomas Sweeney, claimant to the title
of Mac Sweeney Doe, stated on his website at http://www.sweeneyclanchief.com/id27.htm
that a 'professional genealogist' and an 'internationally recognized
scholar' had confirmed that Mr Long was O Long of Garranelongy. In the
latter part of 2006 Mr Sweeney confirmed the identities of the
individuals in question:
Mr [Paul] Gorry's painstaking work confirmed Denis O Long's descent from the last recorded Chief of the Name of O Long of Garranelongy in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Denis O Long then went a step further and obtained a second professional opinion, this time from Dr Kenneth Nicholls, an internationally acclaimed medievalist, lecturer and author. Dr Nicholls' findings agreed with Mr Gorry's. Mr Gorry is a full-time consultant genealogist and member of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland, and is recognized as a chiefly pedigree expert.
On a point of accuracy, while Kenneth Nicholls is a
justly acclaimed scholar, he does not in fact hold a doctorate. In view
of Mr Sweeney's attacks
on my scholarly credentials, which he has described as
'self-proclaimed' and 'unexceptional', it is perhaps remiss of him to
fail to point out that Mr Gorry holds no degree and has no published
scholarship on the subject of Irish chiefs (I have now placed my own
curriculum vitae online).
Mr Long was requested by
letter on 28 November 2005 to
provide details of any new documentary evidence available, so that I
could review
same fairly, but no reply has been received. The reported validation of
Mr Long's claim to chiefship by Mr Nicholls places the present
writer in the difficult position of appearing to challenge the
authority of a superior scholar. Furthermore, it is a fact that in the
aftermath of the Mac Carthy Mór scandal a
respected Cork scholarly journal
effectively endorsed Mr Long's claim to chiefly status by publishing an
article on Irish chiefship by him under the style 'The O'Long' (Journal
of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Volume
105,
2000, pages 240-41; the same journal also uncritically publicised the
claims of the bogus Duc de Clancarthy-Blarney in 1907, Volume 13, pages
166-68). However, I would be most
surprised if a scholar of the calibre of Mr Nicholls or the learned
editor of the Cork journal
really believes that Mr Long is descended from the last recorded Chief
of the Name, in that I doubt strongly that any documentation exists to
prove this. If I am wrong, this can easily be demonstrated by
publishing the full text of Mr Gorry's report and Mr Nicholl's alleged
endorsement.
The O
Long case has also been tied up in a complicated series of Freedom
of
Information applications and appeals by the present writer relating
to bogus and questionable chiefs, which process is now in its
seventh year. In March 2006 the Office of the Information Commissioner
felt obliged to criticise the National Library for its handling of
another case,
FOI/2001/18, on the grounds that its decision 'fell well short of the
requirement placed on it by section 8(2)(D)' of the FOI Act, which
refers to the provision of clear reasons for refusal of
information. Encouraged by this finding, the writer persevered and in
May 2006 at last received from the National Library a significant
quantity of records relating to the O Long chiefship. A fair proportion
of the released records are copies of the present writer's report and
associated correspondence. It is clear that Mr Long supplied copies of
older documents missing from the Chief Herald's files, but these are
not included in the release, as they predate the coming into operation
of the FOI Act in April 1998. There are also references in the released
records to the research carried out on Mr Long's behalf by Paul Gorry
and Mr Kenneth Nicholls, but aside from a copy of a preliminary
and
therefore limited report of Mr
Gorry dated July 2000, no substantial reports in support of Mr Long's
claim to chiefship are included or cited. Additionally there is a
memorandum of
Chief Herald Brendan O Donoghue dated 12 August 2003 recording details
of a meeting with Mr Long, which notes that he had been informed that
it was 'entirely a matter for himself to decide whether to submit the
produce of his research work', but that 'anything so submitted might
have to be disclosed in the event of an FOI request'. There are no
further relevant records on file after that date.
Attached to the last mentioned
memorandum was a single-page,
minimally sourced pedigree, clearly presented by Mr Long to Chief
Herald O Donoghue on 12 August 2003. This pedigree is interesting
in that it differs significantly from the pedigree reproduced above and
accepted by Chief Herald Begley. In the first place, it is no longer
claimed that there is direct descent from John fitzDermot O'Long, Chief
of the
Name, who died before 1654, in that John Long, who died before 1686, is
now described as the latter's 'nephew' rather than 'son' (but he is
also stated to be a grandson of a Thomas rather than a Dermot).
Secondly, a generation has been
added between the two Darby Longs, namely a John Long of Killorum
House. Thus it is tacitly accepted that the pedigree which appears on
the 1989 certificate of chiefship above is erroneous. While not the
most
legible document, this newly found pedigree is now reproduced below, as
representing the best available statement of the current genealogical
basis to the claim of Mr Denis Long to be a Gaelic chief.
