UA CATHAIN (Medieval Ireland)

The Ua Cathain (later Anglicized O Cahan, eventually O’Kane) lineage (like the Ui Neill, a branch of the Cenel nEogain) first appear in the annals in 1138, when they were already rulers of the territories of Fir na Craibe, Fir Li, and Ciannachta, forming most of the northern part of the present County Derry. The southward shift of the center of power in Tir nEogain following the final replacement of the Meic Lochlainn by the Ui Neill as kings after 1242 was to favor their rise to independent status, as was their cooperation with elements within the Ulster colony. Although Magnus Ua Cathain and fourteen others of his lineage fell fighting against the colonists with Brian Ua Neill at the battle of Down in 1260, his son Cu Muige (later called from this circumstance Cu Muige "na ngall," "of the foreigners") was immediately made chief by Sir Henry de Mandeville, seneschal of Ulster, against the claims of a rival. Thereafter he remained Sir Henry’s ally in his struggle against his fellow colonists in Ulster. Subsequently the Ui Chathain seem to have cooperated with Richard de Burgh, the "Red" earl of Ulster (to whom they paid an annual tribute of forty cows), and in 1312 Cu Muige’s son, Diarmait Ua Cathain, styling himself "king of Fir na Craibe" surrendered to the earl the territory of Glenconkeen (in the southeast corner of County Derry), which the earl immediately regranted to Henry Ua Neill, ancestor of the Clann Aeda Buide. After the collapse of the earldom, the Ui Chathain became again vassals of the O’Neills, the most powerful and most refractory, with intervals (in the early fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) when they were forced to submit to the control of the aggressively expansionist Ui Domnaill of Tir Conaill. The uneasy relationship between the Ui Neill and the Ui Chathain, the former seeking to maximize their control, the latter to minimize it, was to reach its climax after 1603, in the few years before both were destroyed by the Plantation of Ulster.