Armigerous Clans

[O'Callaghan]

Perish the thought indeed, although one would have thought that the phrase "proper Highland gentlemen" would have been more appropriate. The reason that strict controls are necessary is to prevent montebanks, charlatans, and outright scoundrels from laying claim to dormant or non-existent chiefships. Even with such controls in place the occasional fraud does slip through the cracks-- a good case in point is that of the self-styled "McCarthy Mor", a fraudster who managed, over a ten year period, to produce dozens of forged documents to shore up his claim. It should be pointed out that these forgeries were extremely well crafted. They were done, apparently, by his partner, a Mr. Davidson, who was a well-trained and highly skilled restorer of antique documents.

But not all charlatans are as sophisticated in their attempt to gain recognition. In fact, most of their clumsy, ill-conceived schemes unravel almost as fast as they can come up with the lies they hope others, with less intelligence than they have, will believe. These fraudsters leave in their wake a collection of badly engraved tea pots, ancestral portraits done in acrylics, and ancient family bibles with pedigrees written with ball point pens. They now rely on the magic of photo shop, without having either the art or artistry to create anything even remotely believable.

This is why Lord Lyon has raised the bar, and clearly set forth the requirements that need to be met if one is to be recognized as a chief. Hopefully the wide dissemination of these requirements will at last bury these two-bit con men somewhere in potters field with the word FRAUD carved on their tombstone.

However, the Lord Lyon has nothing to say about recognising the Macarthy Mor (Great Macarthy), because he would be the chief of an IRISH clan, not a Scottish one! BTW, there's no difference between Macarthy/MacCarthy/McCarthy. The IRO (Irish Records Office) records Irish arms, and used to also recognise chiefs of clans, but abrogated that last function precisely because of the particular scandal alluded to here.

According to the IRO when it used to involve itself with these matters, the chief of an Irish clan was defined as the hereditary descendant of the last elected chief. This definition sounds odd, and even contradictory, but it can only sensibly be taken to mean the heir by primogeniture of the last chief to have been elected by a derbh fine under tanistry. As that is still the person that would be entitled to the arms of the chief, and as they still record Irish arms, it is debatable whether they have removed themselves from recognising chiefs to the extent that they pretend to have done. It's more the case that they are no longer working on identifying any new surviving lines of the chiefs.

As the IRO only ever recognised about twenty chiefs, then only the heirs of those chiefs can really say that they are chiefs today, at least with any certainty. The heirs of the recognised Irish chiefs do incude The O'Callaghan (note the definite article defining the title), although he is Spanish (and for that matter is also a Spanish Don, so a noble of two countries).

Far more Irish clans existed at one time, and there are old maps showing the locations of Irish clan lands, marked with legends in the form 'Pobul i Callaghan' (people of Callaghan, I think?) and so on, but most were disposessed of their lands, and often the heir isn't known. This contrasts with Scotland, where it was the ordinary members of the clan that were thrown off the land, rather than the chiefs as in Ireland.