Irish Heraldic Traditions
Arms first
arrived in Ireland with the Normans, who brought with them all the social structures on
which European heraldry depended; up to then, although some evidence of the use of
military symbolism among the Gaels survives, heraldry in the true sense did not exist.
Norman heraldry shows clearly its military origins, with a preponderance of clear, simple
devices, (known as "ordinaries") designed for easy recognition. Examples of
these are found in the arms of the de Burgos, de Clares, Fitzgeralds and other families of
Norman extraction.
A separate heraldic tradition is found in the arms of the Anglo-Irish. This can be
dated to the mid-sixteenth century, when the Tudor monarchs of England began to address
themselves seriously to taking possession of Ireland, and establishing the full panoply of
English law. Accordingly, the Office of Ulster King of Arms, with authority over all arms
in Ireland, was set up in 1552, as part of the household of the Vice-Regal Court, the
administration of the English King's deputy in Ireland. Inevitably, the early records of
the Office contain many examples of Anglo-Irish heraldic practice, characterised by great
elaboration, with individual shields often containing as many as a dozen charges,
reflecting the preoccupation of the Anglo-Irish with family relationships. Whereas Norman
arms are clearly military, the arms of the Anglo-Irish are part of a much more settled
society, concerned above all about status.
The third tradition of heraldry in Ireland relates to the original inhabitants, the
Gaelic Irish, and is more problematic, since heraldry was a natural aspect of the social
life of both Normans and Anglo-Irish, but originally had no part in Gaelic society. The
characteristics of the arms in use among the important Gaelic families do have a number of
common features, however. In part this is due to the role of genealogy in early Irish
society. The myth of a common origin was a potent means of unifying the different Celtic
and pre-Celtic peoples of Ireland, and the enormously elaborate Gaelic pseudo-genealogies,
tracing every family in the country back to the same individual, were designed to
reinforce that myth. In addition, on a more mundane level, the nature of Gaelic law meant
that, in effect, what you could own depended on who you were related to. These two
factors, the importance of the origin myth and the property rights of the extended family,
are reflected in the heraldic tradition which grew up in Ireland from about the fifteenth
century.
Unlike the military simplicity of the Normans or the conventional elaborations of the
Anglo-Irish, the symbols used in the arms of Gaelic Irish families tend to relate to
pre-Christian myths, often in quite obscure ways. Thus, for example, the Red Hand of the
O'Neills, now also associated with the province of Ulster, in heraldic terms a dexter hand
appaumé gules, also occurs in various forms in the arms of other Gaelic families. The
reason would appear to lie in the name of the son of Bolg or Nuadu, the Celtic sun-god, in
some accounts the divine ancestor of all the Celts. This son was known as Labraid
Lamhdearg, or "Labraid of the Red Hand". The association with the ancestral
power of the sun-god is clearly a very good reason for the choice of symbol.
In a similar way, the stag which appears in the arms of many Munster families -
MacCarthy, O'Sullivan, Healy and many others - relates very clearly to the kingship myth
of the Erainn peoples. In this myth, the legitimacy of the ruling house is confirmed when
a stag enters; the animal is hunted, and the border of the territory is defined by the
chase; the future ruler is the individual who eventually slays the stag. What the many
families displaying the stag in their arms have in common, is that they were originally
part of the great Eoghanacht tribal grouping which dominated Munster until the time of
Brian Ború. The stag was self-evidently an appropriate choice of symbol.
As in Ulster and Munster, so in Connacht the arms of the ruling family, the O'Conors,
and of a whole host of others connected with them - Flanagan, O'Beirne and many others -
all display a common symbol, in this case the oak tree. Again, the reason lies in
pre-Christian belief, in the old Celtic reverence for the oak, and its resulting
association with kingship; the medieval sources record ruling families having at least one
sacred tree outside the family's ring-fort.
As well as the association of heraldic symbolism with pre-Christian myth, the nature of
the property relations within the extended family meant that arms were used in ways quite
different to those practiced among the Normans and Anglo-Irish. In particular, most of the
arms were regarded as the property of the sept (defined by Dr. Edward MacLysaght as
"a group of persons inhabiting the same locality and bearing the same surname"),
rather than being strictly hereditary within a single family, as was and is the case under
English and Scottish heraldic law.
In summary, two of the three heraldic traditions in Ireland, the Norman and the
Anglo-Irish, form part of the mainstream of European heraldry, while the arms found among
the Gaelic Irish have particular characteristics which set them apart.