Cerball mac Muirecáin

Who was Cerball mac Muirecáin?

Cerball mac Muirecáin was king of Leinster. He was the son of Muirecán mac Diarmata and a member of the Uí Fáeláin, the descendants of Fáelán mac Murchado, of one of three septs of the Uí Dúnlainge of modern County Kildare in Ireland.

Cerball succeeded his distant cousin Muiredach mac Brain of the Uí Dúnchada sept as king of Leinster on Muiredach's death in 885. Unlike Muiredach, who was lay abbot of Kildare as well as king, Cerball appears to have been king only as one Lergus son of Cruinnén, bishop of Kildare, was killed in the battle of the Pilgrim, fought by Flann Sinna, the High King of Ireland, against the Vikings of Dublin in 888. That same year, the neighbouring king of Osraige Cerball mac Dúnlainge, who had repeatedly attacked Leinster over the previous decades in an attempt to make it subject to him, died.

The Annals of Ulster contain relatively few reports of Cerball's reign. In 902 they state that he, together with Máel Finnia mac Flannacain of Brega lead an expedition to Dublin which drove the "foreigners", the Vikings and Norse-Gaels, from Ireland.