O'Dorchaidhe of Gaillimh, i. e. the O'Dorceys or Darcys, of Galway. This family have taken the name and arms of the D'Arcys, and are now considered an offset of the D'Arcys of Meath; but this is a perversion of history which the Editor feels himself called upon to notice and correct. It is clear from Mac Firbis, who wrote in the College of St Nicholas, at Galway, in 1645, while the celebrated lawyer Patrick Darcy was living, that they then considered themselves to be of the ancient Irish race, though they were not able to supply him with more than eight generations of their pedigree (and there can be little doubt that these were supplied by Patrick the lawyer), viz., from James Riabhach, the head of the family in Mac Firbis's time, up to Walter Riabhach, the first of the family who, ‘according to the people of Galway themselves,’ settled in the town of Galway. In the last edition of Lodge's Peerage was published a pedigree, patched up by one of the family, who very ingeniously engrafted this family on that of the D'Arcys of Meath, and accounts, by a bold assertion, which is not proved, and which cannot be true, for the manner in which they obtained possession of the estate of O'Dorcey of Partry, in the county of Mayo. This pedigree, which is most ingeniously put together, deduces the descent of the Darcys of Galway from Sir John D'Arcy, who was Chief Justice of Ireland in 1323. But that the reader may clearly see where the forgery begins, this fabricated line is here annexed:
1. Sir John D'Arcy, Chief Justice of Ireland in 1323.
3. William, born 1330.
3. John.
4. William.
5. John.
6. Nicholas, captain of horse, who married Jane, daughter and heir of O'Dorcey, of Partry.
7. Thomas.
8. Conyers.
9. Nicholas.
10. James Riveagh I., of Galway, who died in 1603.
11. Nicholas -----------------------------------------11. Patrick, the lawyer.
12. James Riveagh II.
This forgery could never, in all probability, have been detected, were it not that the honest and laborious Mac Firbis had committed the real descent of the Darcys of Galway to writing, before the family attempted to conceal their Milesian origin. It is curious to observe in this memoir, published in Lodge's Peerage, a perfect agreement with the line given by Mac Firbis up to Conchobhar (the grandfather of James Riabhach the elder), which the fabricator anglicises Conyers; but here the forgery commences, for this Conyers was the son of a Patrick O'Dorcey, not of a Thomas D'Arcy, as the fabricator would have us believe. The name Thomas, however, is given by Mac Firbis in the next generation, and it is evident that both had the same Thomas in view; but instead of making this Thomas the son of Walter Riabhach, the first of the family who settled in the town of Galway, as Mac Firbis was informed by the family themselves in 1645, the fabricator makes him the son of a Nicholas Darcy, captain of horse (and uncle of Sir William D'Arcy, of Platten, in the county of Meath), who, ‘being stationed in the county of Mayo, married Jane, daughter and heir to O'Duraghy’ [O'Dorcey], ‘of Partry, in that county, who brought him the large estate of that family.’ Where is his authority to prove this marriage, or that O'Duraghy had large estates in Partry at the time in which he makes this Capt. Nicholas flourish? Here he undoubtedly engrafts the pedigree on a false stem, and then easily mounts up to Sir John D'Arcy, Chief Justice of Ireland, by the true generations of the Meath family. This was a poor shift to erect a respectability for a family who were already respectable enough by allowing them their true descent. The wish to be considered English also prevailed among the Kirwans of Galway, but the Editor never heard that they went so far as to fabricate a pedigree to that effect; he has been told, however, that the late Major Kirwan, of Dalgan, was constantly in the habit of stating that his own name was originally Whitecombe, of which Cíor bhán was but an Irish translation; the name Kirwan is, however, in Irish O'Ciardubhain, not Cíor bhán, but the family was never of any celebrity in Ireland until they made fortunes in Galway as merchants and shopkeepers. Not so, however, the O'Dorceys, they were chiefs of the territory of Partry in the year 1417, when Giolla Iosa Mor Mac Firbis wrote his topographical poem.
Should it be objected that the Christian names occurring in the line of pedigree given by Mac Firbis are English, such as Nicholas, Walter, James, &c., and that these names suggest a strong argument in favour of the fabricator of the pedigree published in Lodge's Peerage; to such objection may be replied, that English names are also found among other families of undoubted Irish origin, which names were derived from their intermarriages with English families; that this surname was O'Dorcey in Mac Firbis's time, not D'Arcy, and that the Christian-name Nicholl was in use among the O'Dorceys, of Partry, as early as the year 1306. — See Mageoghegan's Translation of the Annals of Clonmacnoise, at the year 1306. — See also the pedigree of O'Mochain above, in p. 42, from which it appears that the names Gregory, Simon and Nichol, were in use among that family even in the fourteenth century.