Tadhg Ó Cianáin

Who was Tadhg Ó Cianáin?

Tadhg Og Ó Cianáin was an Irish writer.

He was the author of Imeacht na nIarlaí/The Earls' Departure, a diary of the Flight of the Earls, kept from September 1607 to November 1608, from Rathmullen, County Donegal to Rome. It is the earliest example in Irish of the diary genre. Brady and Cleave made the following assessment:

"Tadhg kept a detailed account of the flight from Ulster and the journey to Rome, not on a high level of political reason and plans, but a plain man's view of what actually happened each day, what they ate and did, how they felt, what the various towns they passed through were like, culminating with their arrival in Rome and the subsequent arrival there of the king of France."

The miraculous survival of Tadhg's unique manuscript-copy. Tadhg in his immediate pre-flight year a resident of Portnelligan, Tynan, County Armagh, listed with six other Ó Cianáins as among the follower of Henry Óg Ó Neill in a pardon list 'fiant' of December 1602. Tadhg's property—fifteen cows, eight calves, one garron, one hackeny, twenty-five swine, all valued at £22.6s.3d—were forfeited but later returned to his wife at the intervention of the Earl of Thomond, who was a relative of hers.