Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does Ceallachan of Cashel refer to and what was he like?

A: Ceallachan was called "Ceallachan of Cashel" because he conquered the town of Cashel, in Tipperary (among others), from the Vikings (Bugge 1905:121). Cashel had been the historical capital of the Province of Munster in southwestern Ireland. Professor Alexander Bugge thought he was probably from Kerry (Bugge 1905). His entry in The Dictionary of National Biography, begins by stating: "Ceallachan (d. 954), king of Cashel, called in poetry C. coir, or the just, and C. cruiaidh, or the hard, is the hero of several old popular tales of Munster" (1921-22:1302).

In the Irish medieval saga, Ceallachan was described as fair haired and also as having curly hair (Bugge 1905). According to the saga, he must have been fairly handsome since Lady Mor apparently fell in love with him and warned him on the road to Viking Dublin of her husband Sitric's plot to kill him.

In the saga, Lady Mor, wife of Sitric, and daughter of Aodh, son of Eochaidli, daughter of the king of Inis Fionnghall, was secretly in love with Ceallachan, and is supposed to have said to Ceallachan:

"I fell in love with your red face,

In Port Lairge [Waterford] on the battlefield,

With your valour as you charged through the battalions,

With your size among the Munstermen." (Bugge 1905:77).

In describing Ceallachan being shackled, Cormacan Eigas, Chief Poet of the North of Ireland and the author of The Circuit of Irelandsaid Ceallachan of Cashel (Callaghan the Just) had a "stout" leg (O'Donovan 1841). From the descriptions of Ceallachan at the Battle of Limerick he also sounded like a large, strong man (Bugge 1905:65).

On the other hand, another possibility is that he might not have looked like the description in the saga at all. Francis John Byrne has written that: "A feature of the extravagant praise characteristic of bardic poetry is that the patron, whose descent from kings and heroes is elaborated, is not only credited with martial vigor, wisdom, generosity, and deeds of valour, but that there often appears a fulsome, if conventional, catalogue of his physical beauty. A late medieval poet with a puritan cast of mind attacked his colleagues for their patent dishonesty in such matters: . . .

"Curling locks on a bald pate

you're not ashamed to fabricate;

a blinking eye, asquint and blear,

you make 'steady' and 'crystal-clear'.

Though yellow as leather and tanned with grime,

he's praised in wheedling tones by you:

'Skin like the swan's wing, bright as lime,

has our swan-king of handsome hue'."

"Certainly by this time the convention had become outworn and its true purpose forgotten. In fact these are the qualities of the bridegroom. The inaugural ode was in origin an epithalamium celebrating the wedding of king and country. . ." (Byrne 1973:16).

The medieval Irish Saga of Ceallachan is quite detailed and I have put a copy online. Click on the link to the saga to read Caithreim Ceallachan Caisil ("The Triumphs of Callaghan of Cashel"). The English translation was about 58 pages long in its original 1905 publication. The explanatory notes and introduction by Professor Alexander Bugge are much longer. Here is a small excerpt describing one part of the Battle of Limerick.

"However, when Ceallachan perceived, that the soldiers were being slain . . . and that Clan Eogan was being slaughtered, then arose his wrath, his rage, and his vigour, and he makes a royal rush, caused by fits of mighty passion, at the nobles of the Lochlannachs [Norwegian Vikings], while the noble descendants of the race of Eoghan protect him. Cellachan reached the warlike Amlaib and made an attack on the rough mail-coat of the warrior, so that he loosened his helmet under his neck, and split his head with hard strokes, so that the Lochlannach fell by him. Then Suilleban [ancestor of the O'Sullivans] with his 150 brave, valiant swordsmen arrived to his defence, and he made a breach of savage ferocity through the centre of the heroic battalion of the Lochlannachs" (Bugge 1905:65).

Q: What does the Saga of Ceallachan of Cashel describe?

A: The Saga describes many details of his life including his preparation for kingship. There are descriptions of battles, treachery, and a suggestion of romance. The Saga of Ceallachan of Cashel was a popular Irish saga and many copies exist. The story would probably make a good swashbuckling Hollywood action/adventure/romance movie. Ceallachan was a popular king and his life was celebrated in poems and sagas that were copied many times. Even his political enemies' saga expresses considerable respect for him and much later the annals described him as a celebrated king. He was not, of course, particularly popular with the monks of Ui Neill dominated monasteries or the rulers of northern territories that he raided during forays into enemy territory. These annals (from outside of Munster) have tended to be the sources cited by contemporary Irish revisionist historians who explicitly have stated their agenda to portray the Vikings as less threatening and more assimilated than they are portrayed by the various Irish sagas. Historians who draw upon the Annals of Ulster to get a fair picture of a king of Munster (who raided Ui Neill dynasty monasteries) would be somewhat akin to a historian of the Vietnam War going to the writings of Ho Chi Minh to get all of his information about LBJ. The level of confidence or doubt one has in statements expressed by Ui Neill dynasty ecclesiatics or the court historians of Donegal in their annals or the negative judgments coming from armchair critics living a thousand years after the events occurred is probably best left as a matter for your own good judgment. Ceallachan was apparently well liked and well thought of by his own people in the years following his death.

Q: When did he live and what was his date of death?

A: According to Geoffrey Keating, Ceallachan of Cashel's reign lasted ten years (G. Keating, 1913, History of Ireland, vol XV, London: Irish Texts Society, p. 205). The Frys claimed that he ruled from c. 936 to 954 AD (1988:53).

Ceallachan of Cashel d. 952/54 A.D.

"Having survived attempts on his life by Dalcassians and Danes he was struck by lightning [during a thunderstorm]" (Newman 1983:62).

It might be noted that a death from lightning or drowning are special hazards for anyone wearing chainmail.

"...Cellachan of Cashel, the son of Buadachan, died a laudable death at Cashel Anno Domini 952" (Bugge 1905:115).

The Annals of the Four Masters indicates 952 AD and the Annals of Ulster indicates 954 AD.

At present the most frequently seen scholarly estimate with adjustments seems to be that Ceallachan died in 954 AD.

Q: Where did the saga's manuscripts come from?

A: In 1814, during repairs to Lismore castle, workmen found a wooden box inside a walled up passage. Inside the wooden box was a crosier, now in the National Museum, Dublin, inscribed with the information that the crosier was made for the bishop of Lismore who died in 1113 and the Book of McCarthy Reagh, popularly known as the Book of Lismore. One of the sections of the book was the saga of Ceallachan, now known as Caithreim Ceallachan Caisil. Other parts of the book included stories about the Lives of Saints, the reign of Charlemagne, and the travels of Marco Polo.

On June 20, 1629 the Book of Lismore was in Timoleague Abbey in the possession of Michael Clery, one of the authors of the Annals of the Four Masters. According to Whitley Stokes (1890), "The Book of Lismore was compiled from the lost Book of Monasterboice and other manuscripts in the latter half of the fifteenth century, for Finghin mac Carthaigh Riabhach and his wife Catherine, daughter of Thomas, eighth earl of Desmond" (Stokes 1890:v).

Other copies of the saga's prose and poems survived independently. The original prose story is thought to have been written in the twelfth century. The poems may have been composed earlier and may possibly have come from the tenth century.

Q: Is the Saga a work of fact or fiction?

A: Both. Like many sagas, it is both historical narrative and historical romance (fictional entertainment). In today's terms, it is part fact and part fiction and part political propaganda. How much and what parts are fact or historical narrative and and what parts are fiction or historical romance will probably be endlessly debated. Certainly there was a Ceallachan of Cashel, King of Munster, in the tenth century who was involved in several military expeditions and the saga describes what people in the twelfth century would like him to have been like. How close the saga is to the real person is something everyone will ultimately have to judge for themselves. At this point it is a "scrambled egg" that is rather difficult to unscramble. In my personal experience most real people are not saints, devils, nor ideal heroes (although there apparently was a Saint Callaghan, or Ceallachan who was a monk at Clontibret i.e. a native of Clonturbet, County Monaghan. His Feast day is Sept 24th. There may have been a second Saint Ceallachan also. No history available. Feast day April 22nd. See the Ancient Order of Hibernians website). Many heroic sagas, however, are great stories and that is probably the criteria it was judged by in the Middle Ages.

As the archaeological discoveries in Greenland and Newfoundland (based on the Norse Sagas) have demonstrated, any historian who dismisses medieval sagas as completely "made up," or legends, does so at their own risk. When Heinrich Schliemann demonstrated that Troy actually existed, a number of historians had to retract everything they had written about the Iliad as a work of fiction. Irish historian Francis John Byrne has noted that, "Comparative studies in epic literature have shown that legends of an heroic age usually embody a kernel of historical fact" (Byrne 1973:48). Many of the details of the Saga of Ceallachan also suggest that it is an historically based document with some exaggerations (see e.g. Bugge 1905:X-XVIII).

Q: What is the range of scholarly opinion about the saga?

Opinions have varied widely about the saga over time? Respected scholars like Donnchadh O Corrain, think it is in the genre of "dynastic propaganda texts" (O Corrain 1998:443), a perhaps overly sinister sounding label, and some think it is improbable that it is historically accurate. Donnchadh O Corrain concluded that it tells us a great deal about the politics of the twelfth century, but really not very much about the tenth. O Corrain's critical analysis of the saga is problematic for me partly because of his difficulties with identifying the name of the individual in the saga with a name on the genealogical lists and what strikes me as overconfidence that he has actually identified the right person in both documents in an era with no surnames, inconsistent dates or no dates, multiple spellings, and frequent use by many people of the same given names. As Byrne has pointed out "Pedigrees were often remodelled for political ends" (Byrne 1973:11). O Corrain also begins his summary of what he claims the saga said with an error which suggests that he did not read the saga all that carefully. O Corrain, in summarizing the saga makes the statement that "He [Ceallachan] is the only king according to the writers [of the saga] who defended Munster against the Vikings from the reign of Artri mac Cathail to the reign of the great Brian" (O Corrain 1974:7). The saga actually did not say that. What the saga's author said was just the opposite. Contrary to O Corrain's summary, the third sentence of the saga begins, "But from the time of Airtri to the good time of Cellachan they [the Vikings] found battles and conflicts" (Bugge 1905:570). Perhaps what O Corrain may have been reacting to was the reference by the saga's author to the writings of the medieval historians of the time. "It seems from the writings of the historians that from Airtri to noble Brian the heroes or territories of Munster were not freed, except what the nimble-sworded Ceallachan did to defend them" (Bugge 1905:58-9).

Q: Are good are the historical sources other than the saga?

O Corrain frequently admits the genealogical lists are themselves historical sources that can be confused, contradictory, at odds with the annals, and subject to problems of accuracy and trustworthiness because of earlier manipulation. Some of the names match up well, such as Suilleban, and some he claims do not. The saga does not give calendar dates of the events described. The genealogy lists also do not list dates for most of the people. This was a period of idiosyncratic spelling. The saga, for example, spells one individual's name three different ways. The entire exercise of comparing the characters in the saga to genealogy lists (with various levels of trustworthiness) would probably be considered incredibly tedious to read by most casual readers who would most likely just skip to his conclusion. O Corrain repeats his theme so often (that in his opinion some of the saga characters do not match up with his interpretation of the geneaology lists) that someone not reading his exercise carefully might not realize the underlying number of assumptions one would have to make to accept his analysis.

For more on the lively and unresolved general debate about the saga in secondary materials, go to the Unresolved Questions page. There have been a broad spectrum of scholarly opinions. As with all historical writing there are some careful, scholarly, and thoughtful historians, such as Bugge and O Corrain, who state their conflicting conclusions forcefully, and others who merely have repeated verbatim some monastic opinion from one of the annals or the opinions of other historians. A couple however have concocted some surprising views based on their apparent misreading of the primary historical sources.

The saga was not written by contemporaries of the events described but, according to Ellis, was commissioned by Cormac III, King of Munster, (a MacCarthaig) in the early 1100's ( Ellis1998).

What many people today do not realize is that literature written in the past was often a deliberate and unselfconscious mixture of fact and fiction. Caesar described unicorns in his book on the Conquest of Gaul and Tacitus did the same kind of thing in Germania when he described the "uniped" - a one legged animal that supposedly slept by leaning against trees! Authors writing in early genre's did not sort books into our present firm categories of history and fiction. As Myles Dillon wrote in Early Irish Literature: "Epic and romance go hand in hand in Irish literature . . . A story was just a story, whether the matter was legend or history, and the boundary between the two was of less interest in medieval times than it is today" (1948:1).

Q: Where does the saga fit in the Irish literary tradition?

Williams and Ford (1992), historians of Irish literature, have suggested that this saga was something of a transition saga between the early medieval sagas that were more closely tied to the historical sources of the time and the later medieval romance stories.

J.E. Williams and Patrick K. Ford (citing Dillon) point out in The Irish Literary Tradition that it was the custom of Irish kings, like those of India, to maintain poets to record their activities and sing their praise in poetry (1992:49). These poets were sometimes called "sagamen."

Q: Were the poems written at the same time as the prose?

As Professor Bugge has pointed out, there are some differences between the poems and the prose in Caithrem Ceallachan Caisil, and some of the poems may have been composed earlier than the prose. For all we know today, at least one of the poems could have been nearly contemporaneous with the events. This may be the case regarding the poem about the Battle of Limerick which is introduced within the saga with the statement, "Therefore to testify to this the poet sang the following words in relating the slaughters and triumphs, and in enumerating those who were killed of the great Lochlannochs and those who were slain of the Munstermen in this great battle . . ." (Bugge 1905:66).

Unscrambling the egg, or evaluating exactly how much of a saga is fact and how much is fiction and when evrything was written, a thousand years afterwards may be a difficult, if not an impossible, task. O Corrain has quoted Irish Historian Francis John Byrne on this thorny problem as it appears in earlier Irish history as follows: "Saga-materials of which Professor Byrne makes extensive use present even greater problems. His principles in the use of saga are clearly stated. He wrote in 1965: 'Actual events and perhaps real persons are reflected in the literature ... but the process is irreversible: we cannot reconstruct history from the sagas' (Historical Studies v. 39). Here he warns that 'where we have no contemporary documentation to guide us and reveal the extent of poetic distortion . . . it is impossible to reconstruct the actual course of events from saga-material' (p. 48). . . . He justifies his own use of these sources:"paradoxically the historian can only make use of sagas when he realizes that they are largely mythology; as such they illuminate deep-lying concepts of ancient Irish kingship' (p. 62)" (O Corrain 1980:151; citing Byrne 1965:39,48,62).

Q: What do tenth century sources say and are they reliable?

Contemporary documentation from the tenth century such as the annals, and the Eoghanact genealogies also have their own problems of bias, lack of completeness, and questions about their trustworthiness. For example, the numbers of people killed in battles appears exaggerated and rounded off to the nearest 500 or thousand, dates provided for the same event in different annals disagree with each other and dates may be unreliable, events for an entire year may have been recorded at the end of the year, authors of the entries may be repeating hearsay or half-truths, authors may slant the descriptions from a monastic viewpoint, authors may not be aware of events all over the country, and definitions of terms have changed over time. For example, the word "slaughter" meant killed and was often used to refer to people killed during a pitched military battle. The "place of slaughter" is the battlefield (Bugge 1905:64). When Donnchuan fights Flannabra in the saga, the way it is phrased is: "Flannabra, son of Ciarmacan, was captured by them, and there was made a great slaughter of his people, and the Ui Conaill were overthrown in the battle" (Bugge 1905: 73). It does not necessarily mean "massacre of defenseless innocents" as it has come to mean in the 20th century. It may have had a connotation that no prisoners would be taken. The saga says that "Ceallachan . . . said to Donnchuan that he should not kill the king of the Ui Conaill if he happened to fall into his power. Donnchuan gave his word that he should spare no one in battle or conflict even if he had been a friend of his before" (Id.).

In some sources like the Annals of Ulster, however, there are references like "A slaughter of the Deise was committed" which may have meaning as a "massacre" depending on how an Irish translator understands the original phrase but this sounds like Ulster propaganda particularly with the claim that he slew 2000. The Annals of the Four Masters indicate the source of the conflict had to do with their political submission to the Ui Neill even though they were ostensibly part of Munster. It reads that, "A slaughter was made of the Deisi by Ceallachan and the men of Munster, because they had submitted to Muircheartach, son of Niall; and he slew two thousand of them." According to the saga, after fighting the Vikings of Waterford, Ceallachan's men proceeded "thence to the country of the Deisi and take hostages and pledges of Domnall son of Faelan. There was concluded a matrimonial alliance and made friendship with him, and Gormflaith, the daughter of Buadachan, was given to him" (Bugge 1905:71). Did the Deisi break an alliance and ally themselves with the Ui Neill when the Ui Neill later showed up with an army?

In reading annals written by Ceallachan's enemies you are reading history from their point of view and undoubtedly there was another side to this story. Some historians have viewed the annals uncritically but there are many entries that openly display the particular individual viewpoint of the authors. According to Francis John Byrne, who wrote Irish Kings and High Kings (1973:203) the Ui Neill were much better dynastic propagandists than the kings of Munster. A comparison of the Annals of Inisfallen (probably written until 1092 by Diarmat Ua Flainn Chua, bishop and head of the monastic school at Emly, Co, Tipperary, Munster according to Byrne 1979:12)) with the Annals of the Four Masters (written in Donegal) shows how inflated the numbers were by the latter and also how the king of the Desies was part of the slain. This suggests that this was a military battle rather than a "massacre of innocents" which is the impression one would get from the Ulster account. The Annals of Inisfallen record: "A slaughter of the Deisi by Cellachan, king of Caisel, in which Celechair son of Cormac, king of the Deisi, and four hundred along with him, fell."

Another thing that should be noted are the various dates given by different annals (934, 939, 940, 941AD) for the same event. Byrne indicates with regard to the Annals of Inisfallen that: "Each annal is preceeded by 'K1', standing for the Kalends (1st) of January, usually followed by data giving the day of the week and the age of the moon on that day; by comparing this information with Easter tables, the year could be deduced from its place in the cycle. Dating with the year stated in 'A.D.' terms came into general use in Ireland only gradually during the course of the 11th and 12th centuries" (Byrne 1979:12). O Corrain added 2 years to the Four Masters and 8 years to the Annals of Clonmacnoise to correct them, which then agree with the dates in the Annals of Inisfallen. For an earlier date he added 6 years (rather than 8 years) to the Annals of Clonmacnoise to obtain agreement with the Four Masters (O Corrain 1974:4).

If the Annals of Innisfallen were commenced around 1015 AD then they are the compilation or annals closest in time and space to the events described in the 940's (P.W. Joyce 1903). For the sake of historical balance, it is perhaps unfortunate that "a book of annals called thePsalter of Cashel, . . . compiled by Cormac Mac Cullenan . . . has been lost" (P.W. Joyce 1903:526).

Sometimes the leaders of the monasteries that Ceallachan plundered were members of a powerful clergy and were probably also members of the dynasties that were his political enemies. Clonmacnoise was in Ui Neill territory. He did not plunder his own churches. Irish monasteries in the Middle Ages were even known to have raised troops and had battles with each other (O Corrain 1972:83-89). In 760 AD there was a battle between the monasteries of Clonmacnoise and Birr and in 764 there was a battle between the monasteries of Clonmacnoise and Durrow. Five monasteries were sacked by Feidlimid mac Crimthain, a monk who became king of Munster (c. 820-841 AD) and there was an increasing secularization of the church during this period (Id.). O Corrain has noted that, "It is clear that long before the Viking wars the plundering and burning of monasteries was commonplace in Irish society" (Id. at 86).

Q: If this is "historical fiction," what, if anything, can be learned from it?

It is a wonderful window into the mind and value system of the Middle Ages (either 10th or 12th) and contains a wealth of descriptive details about dress, the details of warfare, a king's inauguration ceremony, and the relationships of people. According to the text of Caithrem Ceallachan Caisil, a learned medieval king was expected to know the sagas and the stories surrounding the history of his ancestry. This was one of the ways of unifying his people and exhorting his soldiers to fight. The text describes and models valued behavior such as bravery, loyalty, learning, and fierceness in battle. Since this "word painting" of Ceallachan was commissioned by one of his descendants, it should perhaps not be entirely unexpected that his portrait was painted in an excessively flattering light.

We are very fortunate that the saga has even survived and that we are able to read it a thousand years after Ceallachan of Cashel's death. Those who are interested in the origins of their surname do owe a debt of gratitude to the scribes, poets, and historians of the past. We are not here to 'bask in our ancestors' reflected glory' (as Maire Ni Mhaonaigh so humorously put it) but are curious about where our surname came from and have an interest in history. Maire Ni Mhaonaigh seems to me to have missed the more significant point that a learned and competent medieval king was expected to know and to use the knowledge of his ancestry to unify his people, maintain his bond with them, and exhort them to action and bravery before battles. Two political leaders would recall a mutual ancestor and their ancestor's accomplishments during important decision-making conferences and in order to make and cement alliances. It was an important skill for a king and everyone who elected him knew it. Two political leaders 'basking in an ancestor's reflected glory' was no trivial matter in the Middle Ages and could result in war or peace between groups with competing interests, and life or death for soldiers. It should not be trivialized by ethnocentric historical commentaries today. An appeal to dynastic kinship and dynastic relationships was the basis for an appeal for military assistance in a real pinch.

According to the saga, after Ceallachan's inauguration, battles were fought at Limerick, Cork, Cashel, and Port Lairge (Waterford) with the "Lochlannachs" (Norwegians, or "Vikings," and on occassion used as a more comprehensive term that includes Danes). Ceallachan was then treacherously captured by Sitric, King of Viking Dublin (or "Ath Cliath," the most powerful Viking town) who had offered his sister in marriage. A series of battles ensued resulting in Ceallachan's release and Sitric's death by drowning during a pitched sea battle on the Viking warships in the harbor at Dundalk, north of Dublin. Ceallachan had been "bound to the mast" by the Vikings who were going to sail east and kill him when the men of Munster and a fleet of ships arrived to rescue him.

Q: When was the saga written?

A: The prose in the Saga of Ceallachan was probably written in the early 1100's and was transcribed several times into the 15th century. One of the three scribes in the 15th century involved in copying earlier manuscripts into what is now called The Book of Lismore was a friar named O' Buadachain. Ceallachan was the son of Buadachan. Various copies, including a section of the Book of Lismore survived, and were compared by Professor Alexander Bugge to make his translation. Some scholars think the later Norse and Icelandic sagas may have been modeled on this and other Irish sagas and the writing of Caithreim Ceallachan Cashel may have been motivated by the appearance of a saga written in the same style about Brian Boru.

(Footnote: So far I have been unable to locate a plug in for Irish language characters to add the appropriate markings in Adobe PageMill and HTML. I will have to correct this at a later time.)

The Callahan Genealogy and History Facebook page.