Erin Go Bragh!

Happy Saint Paddy's Day to our favorite Irish FAV girl! We hope you enjoy New York’s legendary celebration (which most likely will turn into inebriation before the sun is out).

St. Patrick being its patron saint and today being a Friday of Lent (i.e., no meat), the Archdiocese of New York has granted dispensation to all its parishioners so they can feast on corned beef on this most Holy Day. And for green beer and Guiness – well, you don’t need dispensation for that. (Although I think St. Patrick would be the last person to have corned beef on a Friday of Lent...)

Since Delia bleeds green in her vein, a little history of the Gallaghers and Buckleys, brought to you by O’Shepherd:

Gallagher is the most common surname in County Donegal to this day, and is the fourteenth most common name in all of Ireland in the statistical list compiled from birth registrations. Most of these were recorded in the ancestral stomping grounds of the northwestern counties of the Ulaid, now Ulster and part of Connacht, the majority being from County Donegal, the original homeland. The sept seemed to drift from a primary military heritage to ecclesiastical service as time passed.

And religion seems genetic for the Gallaghers...

No less than six ÓGallaghers were bishops of Raphoe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of these, Laurence Ó Gallagher, who held the see from 1466-1477, was anything but a saintly prelate, while the well-remembered Most Rev. Redmond Ó Gallagher (1521-1601), Bishop of Derry, the prelate who befriended the survivors of the Spanish Armada and was forced to disguise himself as a shepherd in order to escape the prevailing religious persecution, was eventually captured and became one of Ireland's leading Catholic martyrs. A later Bishop of Raphoe, the famous Most Rev. James Ó Gallagher (1681-1751), was famous for his sermons (usually preached in Irish), which when published, ran into twenty editions. His published psalter was second only to Saint Colmcille's writings in popularity. In America, Father Hugh Gallagher (1815-1882) had a most colorful career as a "frontier priest."

A Mormon Gallagher?!!!

Not all Gallaghers remained faithful to the Catholic Church. An ancestor of the earliest Gallagher to settle in America, William C. Gollaher, (brother of Benjamin Austin Gollaher, boyhood friend of Abraham Lincoln), moved from his native Kentucky to the vicinity of Navuoo, Illinois, and after meeting America's first home-grown "prophet-seer" Joseph Smith, Jr., became one of the earlier members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ("Mormons") and was obliged to migrate west to the Great Salt Lake Valley when early Mormons were driven from their homes by mobs. (From this Gallagher web site)

I don't think Mrs. Gallagher will be happy to know that "Buckley" is an English derivative. At least, most Irish folks I know do not like the English...

The common English surname Buckley derives from a number of places of the name, and was used as the anglicisation for the Irish O Buachalla, derived from buachaill, meaning ‘boy’ or ‘herdsman’. In seventeenth century records, the surname is principally found in Co Tipperary, but today counties Cork and Kerry have the largest concentrations. Numerically, it is one of the most frequent Irish surnames; almost three-quarters of the Buckleys in the country live in Munster, however. Other, rarer, anglicised versions of the name are Bohilly, Boughla and Boughil. One well known Corkman of the name was Dermot Buckley, one of the last of the eighteenth century Rapparees, or highwaymen, whose exploits around the Blackwater valley were legendary.


In honor of County Limerick, a little Delia limerick:

There once was a girl named Delia
Surfer blonde chick from Kaleefornia
Now New York is home
But she still hangs in Rome
Shooting pool with the Roman Curia.

Keywords: Delia Gallagher