MATERNAL ANCESTRY ....
My mother, Mary (or Maura, as she was styled in Gaelic) Lydon, was born in Ireland on July 10th, 1910, in the hamlet of Killikatiane, in the village of Tourmekady, County Mayo, one of the ten children of Michael Lydon and Bridget Cusack.
The "Lydon" name is extremely unusual in Ireland, even in Connaught, its province of most frequent occurence. It is indisputably of Norman French origin and and the name has a number of Gaelicized cognates, including O'Loidean, O'Lotain,all of which are said to be derrived from the name's original spelling, "Lodan." As mentioned above, the name has very little history in Ireland outside of counties Mayo and Galway; Among those who bore the surname or one of its cognates are:
The Abbot O'Laotain who is mentioned in the Annals of LochCe (CE 1216) is of the sept of the same name; he is described therein as a "paragon of piety and learning."
There are historical records in existence which speak of two of the surname Liddon (another cognate) in Castlebar, Co .Mayo, who forfeited their lands on account of their allegiance to James IIIrd.
The famed 19th centruy book illustrator, A.F. Lydon, is of this same sept.
Among the prominent contemporary Lydons are the family owning the Lydon House of H.J. Lydon & Company, the famed Galway City bakery and confectionery in Shop Street.
John Lydon, also known as "Johnny Rotten" of the seminal UK-based punk band "the Sex Pistols" and author of the forthcoming "Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" (Saint Martins Press) is also a kinsman.
THE CUSACK CONNECTION
My maternal grandmother's name ("Cusack") is as well of Norman French origin, coming from the Guienne province of France around the year CE 1211) in the wake of the Anglo-Norman invasion.
The Cusacks were rewarded for some service rendered their liege by a grant of lands in counties Kildare and Meath, from whence they fought their way to new possessions in Mayo, where the clan name was Gaellicized to "MacIosog." The sept sided with James II at the Battle of Boyne and subsequently many Cusacks sailed with other refugees to France, there to serve in the armies of the continent as the progenitors of the so-called "Wine Geese," (see below).
(Note: During the Jacobite contention for the British crown, many of the Lydon clan as well as the Cusacks immigrated to France to support the Stuart cause, becoming the Franco-Irish known humorously as the "Wine Geese" just as the "Wild Geese" were the Irish emigrating to less interesting places abroad. Many of those Lydons remaining in Ireland were dispossessed of their lands owing to their kinfolk's support of the Stuart claim to the throne.)
Amongst notable Cusack namebearers are the 19th-century's Margaret Cusack, the so-called "Mad Nun of Kildare," said to be a very high-minded and emancipated woman who dramatically embraced the religious life first as an Anglican, and then as a Roman Catholic, nun. She founded the sisters' community known as the Order of Saint Joseph of Peace, and was a tireless advocate of and worker for womens' equality and the rights of the marginalized, only to meet with the opposition of the Roman Catholic hierarchy (she ended her life as a Methodist). Click here to learn more of her wonderful story. (It is with her, my great-great-great aunt, most of all my ancestors, to whom I feel particularly close. The reason is my lifelong interest in the structure and function of belief systems and the role that they play in the quest for social justice; in other words, the social history of religion and the social psychology of religious belief. I have always felt that to understand a religion, one needs to live it; in the language of the academics to take an "emic" approach rather than an "etic" stand in connection with one's subject. And I consider myself to hold "dual citizenship" in a variety of faith traditions, including Islamic Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, Hinduism, the Sikh Khalsa, the Buddhisms of North and South Asia, the Wiccan-derived "Earth Religions," Anglican Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy.)
In 1884, the renouned GAA (the Gaelic Athletic Association) was founded by Michael Cusack.
And there is of course the actor Cyril Cusack and his daughter, both of stage and screen fame, and the american actor and playwright John Cusack. |
