Facts and traditions collected for a family record

96 FACTS AND TEADITIONS.
present counties of Cork and Kerry ; and from him were descended the O'Connells
of Kerry.
The O'Connells had large possessions in Kerry, chiefly in the barony of Iveragh,
and branches of them were also settled in the county of Clare. After the Crorn-
wellian wars, and the Revolution, a great part of the extensive possessions of the
O'Connells were confiscated ; but there are still many very respectable families
of the O'Connells in the counties of Kerry and Clare ; and of this ancient family
the head is the celebrated Daniel O'Connell, of Darrynane Abbey, in the county
of Kerry, who retains in his possession ancestral estates which never were for-
feited during a tenure of sixteen hundred years."
" Annals of the Four Masters," p. 51 : —
" The territory of Tir Conaill (Tyrconnel, or Donegal) got its name from Conall
Gulban, who took possession of it in the beginning of the fifth century. He was
son of the monarch Niall of the Hostages, and from him the territory obtained
the name of Tir Conaill, or the country of Connell, and his posterity were desig-
nated Kinel Conaill, or the race of Connell, a name which was also applied to the
territory. Tir Connell was formed into the County Donegal by the Lord Deputy
Sir John Perrott, in the reign of Elizabeth, about 1585."
P. 609. — " The names Donegal and Tirconnell are Latinised Dungallia and Tir-
Connellia, and sometimes Conallia."
P. 52. — " The O'Donnells in the twelfth century became princes of Tir Connell
being descendants of Conall Gulban. They took their name O'Domhnaill, or
O'Donnell, from Domhuall, or Donal, one of their ancient chiefs. Conall Gulban
was son of Niall of the Hostages."
p, 436. — " Niall was monarch of Ireland for twenty-seven years, and ruled from
a.d. 379 to 406. He was ancestor of the O'Neills and O'Donnels."
As the O'Connells resided for more than a thousand years in Kerry
and Limerick, and but few, if any, of them in the north of Ireland, there
is no reason whatever to suppose that the M'Connells could be in any
way connected with them subsequent to the third or fourth century.
The family of the O'Donnells is also perfectly distinct from the M'Con-
nells, and has been so for quite as long a period as the O'Connells.
After all the evidence that has been brought forward, it is impossible
to come to any other conclusion than the one already stated, that the