Irish genealogy

Irish genealogy is the study of individuals and/or families who originated on the island of Ireland.

Genealogy was cultivated since at least the start of the early Irish historic era. Upon inauguration, Bards and poets are believed to have recited the ancestry of an inaugurated king to emphasise his hereditary right to rule. With the transition to written culture, oral history was preserved in the monastic settlements. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín believed that Gaelic genealogies came to be written down with or soon after the practise of annalistic records, annals been kept by monks to determine the yearly chronology of feast days (see Irish annals).

Its cultivation reached a height during the Late Medieval Era with works such as Leabhar Ua Maine, Senchus fer n-Alban, Book of Ballymote, De Shíl Chonairi Móir, Book of Leinster, Leabhar Cloinne Maoil Ruanaidh and the Ó Cléirigh Book of Genealogies. This tradition of scholarship reached its zenith with Leabhar na nGenealach, composed mainly between 1649–1650 in Galway.

Genealogy had at first served a purely serious purpose in determining the legal rights of related individuals to land and goods. Under Fenechas, ownership of land was determined by Agnatic succession, female ownership being severely limited.

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