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Updated: June 3, 2025
Considering what a stout fighting race they proved in later ages fighting often when submission would have been the wiser policy it is curious that in early days these O'Neills or Hy-Nials seem to have been but a supine race.
At last a time came for their oppression to be cut short in Ireland. Two valiant defenders sprang almost simultaneously into note. One of these was Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of the O'Neills, the same Malachy celebrated by Moore as having "worn the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader."
In the preceding generation one of the most powerful of the O'Neills refused to pay any mark of respect to a Roman Catholic gentleman of old Norman descent. "They say that the family has been here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he had come yesterday."
The sceptre of Ireland, from her conversion to the time of Brian, was almost solely in the hands of the northern Hy-Nial, the same family as the O'Neills. All the kings of the sixth and seventh centuries were of that line.
The O'Neills, like their neighbors the O'Donnells, descendants of Domnall, had been one of the great forces of tribal strife for eighty generations, and they now saw their lands confiscated and given over to strangers. But they were only representatives of a feeling which was universal; an indignant opposition to arbitrary and tyrannous expropriation.
It had belonged to the head of the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing. But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his eyes with his ragged sleeve and said: "Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a man, and then nobody shall never lash you."
'Thank Gawd," says I, 'ye didn't have a good hand, I says, 'or I might have to call in th' wreckin' wagon. Thim Kerry men shud be made to play forty-fives with boxin'-gloves on. "I read about th' ordher, but it slipped me min' las' night. I was down at a meetin' iv th' Hugh O'Neills, an' a most intherestin' meetin' it was, Jawn.
Lord Clonbrony, who had benevolent feelings, and was fond of his tenantry, was touched; and, when his son ceased speaking, repeated several times 'Rascal! rascal! How dare he use my tenants so the O'Neills in particular!
The Norman Fitz meant "son of," and the numerous names beginning with Fitz have this origin. Fitzpatrick originally meant the "son of Patrick," Fitzstephen the "son of Stephen," and so on. The Irish prefix O' has the same meaning. The ancestor of all the O'Neills was himself the son of Neill. The Scandinavian Nillson is really the same name, though it sounds so different.
An ancestor of the O'Neills, anxious to obtain the reward, at once cut off his right hand and threw it on the coast, which henceforth became his territory.
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