Osraige
Ossory · the deer people, from os, a deer
Osraige, in English Ossory, said OSS-ruh-yeh. A kingdom.
Kilkenny and west Laois. A kingdom that spent a thousand years being fought over by Munster and Leinster, and outlasted both.
The name
the deer people, from os, a deer
Where
County Kilkenny and the western half of Laois, along the valley of the Nore.
In today's counties: Kilkenny (Cill Chainnigh), Laois (Laois).
When it mattered
Independent from 859 under Cerball mac Dúnlainge, and a power in the southeast for three hundred years after.
Osraige sat in the gap between the two great southern provinces, which is the worst address in early Ireland. It began inside Leinster, was taken over by Munster, and for centuries was counted as Munster's eastern edge while behaving like nobody's.
The ruling line were the Dál Birn. Their great man was Cerball mac Dúnlainge, who in the middle of the ninth century played the Vikings and the Irish kings against each other well enough to pull Osraige out of Munster's grip in 859 and hold it as a kingdom of its own.
A later king, Gilla Pátraic, gave his name to the family that followed: Mac Giolla Phádraig, which English made into Fitzpatrick. The Normans broke most of the kingdom in the twelfth century, but the northern end survived as the lordship of Upper Ossory, and the Mac Giolla Phádraig held it until the Tudors turned it into a barony.
What is left of the name
The diocese of Ossory still carries the name, and so does the barony of Upper Ossory in Laois.
Names out of it
Families on this site that belong to Ossory. A surname is not a pedigree, and plenty of people carry these names for reasons that have nothing to do with the old kingdom.
- Fitzpatrick (Mac Giolla Phádraig)
- Brennan (Ó Braonáin)
- Delaney (Ó Dubhshláine)
Next to it
- Laigin (The Laigin)
- Na hEóganachta (The Eóganachta)
- Loígis (Laois)
- Na Déise (The Déise)