SOURCES & SCHOLARSHIP
A Clan is Kept by its Historians
Almost every historical page on this website — castles, abbeys, folklore, pedigree, inauguration — rests on the lifetime’s work of two people: Conor Mac Hale, clan historian and hereditary standard-bearer of the Mac Firbis line, and his mother Gertrude (‘Gertie’) O’Reilly Mac Hale, journalist, folklorist and co-founder of the Éigse Mhic Fhirbhisigh. Between them, across half a century of writing, they gathered, cross-checked and published the story of O’Dubhda country as it stands today. This page is their shelf — and the further primary sources they led us to.
The Mac Hale & O’Reilly Shelf
Six books, published between 1971 and 2018, that together form the modern canon of O’Dubhda scholarship. Most are out of print and held only in a handful of libraries; the family copies of each are part of the clan’s working archive.
Our Historians
Mother and son. Fifty years of work between them — and the reason the O’Dubhda record survives in readable form.
First female reporter at the Western People at the age of eighteen in 1940. Irish Press Dublin staff. Interviewed the last inhabitants of Inishmurray on the eve of evacuation. Covered W.B. Yeats’s reburial at Drumcliffe.
Author of Stories from O’Dowda’s Country (1971), the novel The O’Dowda of Castleconor (2013), and — with her son Conor — the expanded O’Dowda Country Stories (2018).
Co-founder and PRO of the Éigse Mhic Fhirbhisigh, 1974–1987 — the annual school of Gaelic learning held in Enniscrone that brought John Hume, Liam de Paor, Mary O’Dowd and Nollaig Ó Muraíle to the coast.
Author of The O’Dubhda Family History (1990), Tour Guide to the Barony of Tireragh (1994), Inishcrone and O’Dubhda Country (2003), and co-editor of O’Dowda Country Stories (2018). Publisher at IHR Publications, Stillorgan.
Descendant of the Mac Firbis learned family of Lackan — the hereditary historians whose compilation of the Great Book of Lecan in 1418 preserved the O’Dubhda king-lists that make everything else on this site possible.
Principal organiser of the 1990 Clan Gathering at Enniscrone and of the Clann Uí Dhubhda Nuachtlitir, the clan newsletter that ran from 1990 to 2015.
The Primary Sources Behind the Shelf
The works above rest on a deeper layer of primary documents, cartography and fieldwork. These are the sources we consult directly when the family histories leave a question open.
Citing These Works
Short-form citations used across the site:
- Mac Hale 1990 — Conor Mac Hale, The O’Dubhda Family History (Inniscrone, 1990).
- Mac Hale 1994 — Conor Mac Hale, Tour Guide to the Barony of Tireragh (IHR Publications, Dublin, 1994).
- Mac Hale 2003 — Conor Mac Hale, Inishcrone and O’Dubhda Country (IHR Publications, Dublin, 2003).
- O’Reilly 1971 — Gertrude O’Reilly, Stories from O’Dowda’s Country (Inniscrone, 1971).
- O’Reilly 2013 — Gertrude O’Reilly, The O’Dowda of Castleconor (Lulu, 2013).
- O’Reilly & Mac Hale 2018 — Gertrude O’Reilly & Conor Mac Hale, O’Dowda Country Stories (IHR Publications, Stillorgan, 2018), ISBN 978-0-9540028-4-8.
- Dowds 2000 — Thomas J. Dowds, The French Invasion of Ireland in 1798 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2000).
Where pages on this website draw on a particular book, a short Sources block at the foot of that page names the work and points back here.
Continue Exploring
Know a source we’ve missed?
Every clan is kept by its historians. If you hold a manuscript, photograph, newsletter or printed work that belongs on this shelf, please get in touch — we scan and credit in kind.
