ABSTRACT
The Ua Catháin (later Anglicized O Cahan, eventually O’Kane) lineage (like the Uí Neill, a branch of the Cenél nEógain) first appear in the annals in 1138, when they were already rulers of the territories of Fir na Craíbe, Fir Lí, and Ciannachta, forming most of the northern part of the present County Derry. The southward shift of the center of power in Tír nEógain following the final replacement of the Meic Lochlainn by the Uí 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 Catháin and fourteen others of his lineage fell fighting against the colonists with Brian Ua Neill at the battle of Down in 1260, his son Cú Muige (later called from this circumstance Cú 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 Uí Chatháin 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 Cú Muige’s son, Diarmait Ua Catháin, styling himself “king of Fir na Craíbe” surrendered to the earl the territory of Glenconkeen (in the southeast corner of County Derry), which the earl immediately regranted to Henry Ua Néill, ancestor of the Clann Áeda Buide. After the collapse of the earldom, the Uí Chatháin 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 Uí Domnaill of Tír Conaill. The uneasy relationship between the Uí Neill and the Uí Chatháin, 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.
