Aodh Mag Uidhir, remembered as Aodh an Einigh, ‘Hugh of the hospitality’, was a son of Pilib na Tuaighe (‘Philip of the battle-axe’, d. 1394), king of Fir Manach, and a brother of Pilib’s successor, Tomás Mór. His epithet was earned: when the Annals of Ulster record his death they single him out as the most hospitable son of a sub-king of his day, and the one most talked of in Ireland.
In 1428 he made the pilgrimage to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela. He died on the night he landed back in Ireland, at Kinsale, on 11 August 1428, and his nephew Tomás Óg, son of the reigning Maguire, who had travelled with him, carried his body to Cork for burial.
Tradition credits Aodh with building the first castle at Enniskillen, on the river crossing between the upper and lower loughs. The castle certainly stood by 1441, when Tomás Óg was forced to cede it to a rival kinsman. Geinealaighe Fearmanach records ten sons of Aodh an Einigh.
Sources and further reading
- Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy and B. Mac Carthy (Dublin, 1887–1901), s.a. 1428
- Emmett O’Byrne, ‘Maguire (Mág Uidhir), Pilib (Philip)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy, 2009), doi.org/10.3318/dib.005373.v1
- Emmett O’Byrne, ‘Maguire (Mág Uidhir), Tomás Óg’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy, 2009), doi.org/10.3318/dib.005375.v1
- Geinealaighe Fearmanach, ed. in Analecta Hibernica 3 (1931), and the Society’s family tree