Mageoghegan (Mac Eochagáin), Conall

Mageoghegan (Mac Eochagáin), Conall (fl. 1620s–1630s), Gaelic annalist, was born in the late sixteenth century in Co. Westmeath, the son of Niall Mageoghegan (d. 1596). Members of his family were lords of the territory of Kinaleagh (Cinel-Fhiachach) in Co. Westmeath (latterly the barony of Moycashel); despite the small size of their patrimony, they were a prominent Gaelic dynasty in the fifteenth century. Conall's branch of the Mageoghegans was known as the Sliocht Hugh Boy, and his father was chieftain of the family. His great-grandfather, Connla Mageoghegan (d. 1588), was also a prominent chieftain, who secured a grant of Kinaleagh from the English administration in Dublin in 1583 and was recognised as lord of Cinel-Fhiachach. By the end of the sixteenth century the Mageoghegans had fallen on hard times, in 1580 the Annals of the Four Masters recording that ‘it was wonderful how small the inheritance of the Cinel-Fiagha was at this time’ (AFM, v, 1726–7). This loss of land continued into the time of Conall's generation. Conall's brother Ross was made a ward of court, and by 1631 Conall himself was no longer resident in Moycashel but in the barony of Kilcoursey.

Little is known of Mageoghegan's early life. His uncle Richard Mageoghegan was slain by the English at the siege of O'Sullivan Beare's castle at Dunboy in 1602. Conall is first recorded in 1627, when he translated an ‘ould Irish book’ into English, a translation later known as the Annals of Clonmacnoise. These annals cover the years from early Irish history to AD 1408, with some gaps because of the ‘many leaves [that] were lost or stolen’, as Conall himself stated. They are a valuable source containing much information on the history of the Gaelic lordships along both sides of the Shannon, although Conall's work has been criticised for having an anti-Munster bias. Mageoghegan finished his Annals of Clonmacnoise on 20 April 1627, at the Castle of Lemanaghan, Co. Offaly, and dedicated them to Turlough MacCoghlan.

Mageoghegan was a friend of many contemporary Gaelic scholars. Mícheál Ó Cléirigh (qv), the chief of the Four Masters, is known to have visited his house at Lismoyny and may have stayed with him for a period in November 1630. Pól Ó Colla wrote of Mageoghegan in 1644 that he ‘prized and preserved the ancient monuments of our ancestors’, going on to describe him as ‘one who was the industrious collecting Bee of everything that belongs to the honour and history of the descendants of Milesius’ (O'Curry, Lectures, 163). Mageoghegan may also have facilitated access to sources used by Geoffrey Keating (qv) in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn; it is possible that Keating obtained a loan of the Book of Lecan from Mageoghegan, who himself had it on loan in 1636 from James Ussher (qv).

A number of other manuscripts are associated with Mageoghegan. He regarded the ‘Psalter of Cashel’ as an important source for Irish history of the early period, and his genealogy is recorded in a second manuscript. The British Library's Add. MS 30512, a theological tract dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also has a number of annalistic notes by Mageoghegan; for example, under 1592 he recorded the death of a Thomas Mageoghegan, and for 1635 the ‘great marvel’ of an abnormally large shower of hailstones in Co. Offaly that killed some crows and injured a number of farm labourers.

Other biographical data about Mageoghegan is unclear. It is unknown if he ever married or had children and it is uncertain when he died, although he was certainly still living in the mid 1630s. His legacy as an annalist is a substantial one, especially as the original old Irish manuscript he worked on was subsequently lost, making his Annals of Clonmacnoise all the more valuable. His translating a manuscript from Irish into English was very innovative for his time.