Cead Mile Failte!

Welcome to my Celtic Heritage page! For the next 31 days I’m going to focus on my Celtic/Irish heritage/Genealogy/obsession, with a post a day curated and collected here.

Inspired by listening to “Bitesize Irish” and “Letter from Ireland” podcasts, I’ll share a Gaelic or Irish word of the day, a tidbit about Ireland, or the Irish culture like a song, or poem, a picture, and maybe a recipe or two. I’d like to appeal to all the senses, to immerse myself in all things Irish/Gaelic. Its one thing to immerse yourself, but I want to think about it more like bathing in it which is more of a relaxing warm way of thinking about this.

So, why am I doing this? Well, my heritage goes back to Ireland — eventually. I haven’t traced it to any one place officially yet, but my Ancestry.com DNA results tell me that I’m 27% Northern England/Scottish/Irish. It changes occasionally, and lately it’s been leaning more toward Scottish/Welsh, but I think that has more to do with the male Y chromosomes being more dominant. While my Irish is through my paternal side, its actually my father’s mother’s family (darn elusive X chromosomes). In my 30 year genealogy search, I have traced the Bryants from my grandmother in Sebree, Kentucky back to early settlers of Orange and Granville counties in North Carolina to somewhere in County Clare in Ireland. They were, as you might guess, originally O’Briant/O’Bryant/O’Brient but somewhere along the line, they added a T on the end, and dropped the beginning O.

In Ireland, a male’s last name would begin with Ó or Ua meaning descendant of, or Mac meaning son of. The Ua Bryans are very proud of their heritage, because they are descended from the great king of Ireland, Bryan Boru who drove the Norsemen out of Ireland at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. The surname O’Bryan was first found in County Clare along the banks of the River Shannon in the early 10th century. Genetically, the clan was a Dalcassian tribe. The Dál gCais (pronounced doll CASH) traced their line back to their progenitor Cormac Cas, who is said to have lived in the 2nd to 3rd century.

Now that you’ve got a little background, lets get on with the post.

The first word of the day is appropriately, Cead Mile Failte – “Welcome” or, more literally “One Hundred Thousand Welcomes!” Its pronounced: kayd meel FALchuh. Or if you’re just being casual, simply failte.

That’s all for today, Go raibh maith agat! Thank you! Its pronouced: guh ruh MAH a-guut.