My father was a Bolland. His father was a Bolland. ‘I’ am conventionally labelled Bolland. Patriarchal, indexical. Nailed.
But, signs are always slippery with respect to the signifier let alone the signified. The Bolands became Bollands through a transcription error in 1869.
But Boland, in any case, was Bolan when it first arrived in Scotland from the West of Ireland in the 1830s and Bolan was, in fact, Ó Beólláin back in Sligo, mangled into English and deracinated from its immediate Connacht roots.[2]
Online, my much-removed cousins debate whether these Ó Beólláins descend from Beollán mac Ciarmaic, King of the Lake of the Goats or from Helgi Bjolan Kettillson[3], the Gal-Gael King of Mann. Helgi, brother of Aud the Deep-minded, was an early settler of Iceland. He is reputed to have moved on from Mann after some ‘set-backs’. [4]
Since my closest ‘ancient’ DNA match is a Gal Gael Viking buried on Iceland around 935 years ago[5], this speculation is not entirely implausible.
Helgi’s son, by Kaðlin Hrólfsdóttir Møre de Normandie, was Ciarmac Ó Beólláin – so perhaps we can have it both ways. And there are those intriguing avatars buried by the Bishop Seat in Kiltashean 650 years ago: Kiltashean is in Roscommon but that’s not a kick in the shirt from Sligo.
Etymologically, Beólláin is believed to be related to ‘beul’=mouth. But maybe ‘bjol’=ball.
Helgi the Prince or Helgi the Mouth? Helgi the Poet or Helgi Bigbaws?
My lineage quickly splits from the sept that engenders Capetian kings and the Dukes of Normandy (though more of them elsewhere). They go their way: ‘our’ label sticks in the West of Ireland.
Ó Beólláins settled into septs in Clare and Sligo, a hypothesis supported (a little) by the Kiltashean burials and a remote DNA match to a member of the Burgh/ Burgos dynasty- the contested and contesting Anglo-Norman rulers of Sligo from the 12th Century.
A branch of Ó Beólláins hijacked religion. Some followed Colum Cille to Scotland as co-arbs[6] of St. Maelrubha at Applecross in Ross-shire.[7], others remained in the far West of Ireland, becoming Eanarchs at the Abbey at Drumcliffe.
But the patriarchal labelling obscures the other diverse threads contributed through the matrilineal lines and their respective matrilineal and patrilineal threads.