To discover in your mid-thirties that you not
only have a mother and father, but that you have eleven brothers and sisters is
quite something. It is exciting but at the same time scary. I didn’t have much information to go on, the
address for my father on my birth certificate was in Dun Laoghaire, outside
Dublin and I had no address for my mother.
The only positive link I had with mother number two was the social
worker who was actually keeping in regular contact with me and asking me to
send photographs of myself and my family to her so she could pass them on to
mother number two. Irene and myself had
long talks about whether I should try to contact her, despite the best efforts
of the social worker, who like most social workers would be going nowhere
fast. From the social workers reports, concerning
my birth, we could see that it was my maternal grandparents who were insisting that
I should be left in Belfast with the nuns, so not my mother’s decision. In the end we decided that I would try to
find my mother and basically say, ‘Hello, I’m here, if you need me or want to
meet me.’
Pat was very helpful, along with her sisters,
who used their connections to help me in my quest. I knew I was an O Neill, perhaps the most
respected name in Ireland, so it was a good start. After a while I discovered
the name of the village that my parents were living in, but more importantly it
was in County Tyrone, the homeland of the O Neill’s. I was a member of the most famous branch of
the O Neill clan. Suddenly I was no
longer a deformed little boy that no one wanted to buy; I was a member of the
leading clan in Ireland. As the social
worker continued communicating with my mother I began to research the famous O Neill’s,
I needed to know more.
This is where I discovered the link between the
O Neill Clan and the mythical Irish figure Labraid Lamh Dheary, Labraid of the
Red Hand, where the Red Hand symbol originated.
This of course is now commonly held as the Red Hand of Ulster symbol
used by many associations ranging from the crest of the GAA, the Gaelic
Athletic Association, to the Red Hand Commando’s, a Loyalist murder gang. Although the symbol is also known as the Red
Hand of O Neill, which brought about the war cry of the O Neill clan, ‘Lamh
Dhearg Abu!’ meaning ‘Red Hand to victory.’
I began to look deeper into the history of the red hand and discovered that
there are three main stories concerning its origin. The first story is perhaps the best known
where it was said that each of the four provinces of Ireland was a Kingdom and
the province of Ulster was without a King.
A race was held and the first person to touch the shore of Ulster would
be crowned King.
The story can vary from a King with three sons
to different princes from elsewhere on the island, but basically it is always a
race, with the first person to touch the shore, or touch the land of Ulster, to
be crowned King. The race is held and
one fellow sensing that he might not win cuts off his left hand and throws it
over the finish line. He wins the race
and is crowned King, there is also a suggestion that he was an O Neill. The only thing correct about this story is
that the fellow cut off his left hand for the Red Hand symbol has always been
of a left hand. There is much debate
these days about whether the symbol should be a left hand or right hand; well
let me set the record straight. The
correct Red Hand symbol was, is and always shall be, of a left hand. When the British invaded Ireland they tried
to convert the population from paganism to Christianity and so told people that
it would be more Godly to have a right hand depicted, which is where the right
Red Hand version came in to play.
The second most popular story about the origin
of the Red Hand symbol is that the O Neill clan used to hire out their army to
act as mercenaries. They would travel
far and wide fighting for whoever paid the most, as all good mercenaries do. It is suggested that at the end of each
battle the O Neill Clan would collect the left hands of the enemy dead, by the
sack full, and would be paid per hand. This
story makes no sense whatsoever, why would they choose to cut off someone’s
left hand, why not their head? The only
reason I could think of, for them to cut off the left hand of their dead
enemies, is if they already had the red hand symbol as their clan coat of arms. There is another little story that floats
about and falls in with the stories about the giant Finn Mac Cool that two giants
were fighting, why I have no idea, but one giant cut the others hand off and this
resulted in a red bloody hand print on a rock which in turn becomes the symbol
we all know today. A six year old may believe
this but as we all know, if you cut someone’s hand off, they are not very
likely to leave any sort of handprint anywhere, a bloody stump mark from their
wrist perhaps, but not a hand print.
And so we come to the third story concerning
the origin of the Red Hand symbol and in particular the connection with the O
Neill Clan and why the symbol on their shield it is known as the Red Hand of
Ireland. Quite simply the Chief of the
Clan O Neill, the King of Ireland was chosen by God. Now please remember that we are talking about
an Irish King who would follow, maintain and uphold the Brehon laws. Nowadays when you mention King many people automatically
associate that position with wealth, but in Ireland the King is a leader and
more importantly is chosen by the clan council of O Neill’s. So it’s not a job for life, if you are no
good the council can and will remove you and put another in your place. So there may be three or four people available
from which the council can choose a new leader but to be one of the chosen few
there are a couple of qualifying necessities.
First of all you have to be an O Neill, born of the Tyrone O Neill’s and
only those born with a deformity on their left hand, only those marked by God,
can form the pool from which the High Chief of the Clan O Neill, the true King
of Ireland is chosen.
So you can imagine the excitement when I was
born in Belfast. Some people may suggest
that no one wanted to buy a baby that was deformed, but I don’t think the nuns
had put me up for sale, I think they had informed the double top secret cabal
who from that moment organised my life so that when the time came I could step
forward and make my rightful claim on the throne of Ireland. I really had been protected by a battle
hardened snatch squad of Carmelite nuns who knew that I wasn’t some deformed
little bastard but that in fact I was their future King. I am sorry to have given you all a history
lesson today, but I did say that I would prove, without doubt, that I actually
am the High Chief of the Clan O Neill and therefore the true King of Ireland. For those of you who quibble, or question my
authority, please take it up with God, for wasn’t it he himself who chose me in
the first place?
It will come as no surprise to you all to learn
that I was now inundated with telephone calls asking me to appear on television
in Northern Ireland. The BBC wanted me
to fly into Belfast and while sitting on the Black Mountain, overlooking
Belfast, wanted to interview me, with me looking all windswept and
interesting. Unfortunately it wasn’t
about me being King. I had been able to
narrow down my search to my mother’s family, that’s mother number two. I had a handful of numbers and people that I
could call so I did. The second person I
spoke to would have been my cousin. I
had to explain to her who I was and she explained that there was a rumour about
me in the family, but that I had been a secretarial course. This would have been the excuse mother number
two would have given for her absence from her village.
I now had the exact location of my mother and father;
I even had their telephone number at my fingertips. It ripped my head apart wondering what to do,
whether or not I should contact them. After
all I wasn’t a threat, I just wanted them to know that I was all right and
hoped they would be too. In the end I decided
that I was making far too much of the situation, this was my mother we were
talking about. I dialled the number and
found myself speaking directly with mother number two. In the back ground I could hear children so I
asked that if it was not a convenient time if she could give me a time that would
be more convenient I would call again so that we could speak without
interruption. To hear your own mother
say that, yes it wasn’t convenient, but that it would never be convenient, was
a little bit of a shock. But it wasn’t the
first time I had a parent say to me, don’t ever contact me again, don’t phone,
write or visit.
It took a week or two before a letter came
through Maria, the social worker in Belfast, from mother number two stating that
she wanted to have nothing to do with me and I was not to contact her
again. I was still getting used to the idea
that I had parents and brothers and sisters so to lose them all before I had
even come to terms with finding them, put me in a little head spin, to say the
least. And as for the BBC, well the social
worker had gone to university with some BBC producer who now wanted to make a programme
on people searching for their birth parents in Northern Ireland, now that the
law had changed. They wanted one person
who had found their parents and who was having a fantastic time catching up
with them. There was another person who
was still searching for their parents and who would describe their feelings and
emotions as they went through the process.
And then there was the third person, me, who had actually found and
contacted their birth parents and who had been told to stay away.
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