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Re: What Shirley had to say about the origin of the Early name. What she has to say has a lot of similarities to what I have been told.
The spelling of the original "Clan" name that I have is differant. The spelling I had was: O'Maolmocirse'. The "history" I have is similar but more involved. As I recall it went something like this...
The Clan's warriors had been to the Pale with several other clans waring on the British. (As I recall they were identified as principals in the sacking of a major city with in the Pale.)
After a good season of war they returned to their own country. Only to find that a clan they were allied to ( the O'Donnells I believe) had declared war on the O'neils. They were very closely tied to this clan and honor bound to go to war with them, (even though this clan and the O'neils had declined to go against the British the past season.)
The result was that the O'maolmocirse' Country was undefended when the British came on a reprisal attack for the O'maolmocirse' prominent part in recent ravaging in the Pale. The Brits came with a Writ of Attainder on the whole of the O'maolmocirse' Clan.
The British killed all they found. It is not clear if any survived to tell the story of the massacre. (I believe it was one of the worst masacres of woman, children and old men by the British in Irish history.)
The warriors returned to find what had transpired. They then tried to erase any sign of the masacre, burying the bodies in secret graves and repairing damage. The idea was that if they minimized the effects of the masacre and no one knew of it; it would have less effect on the moral of the rest of Ireland. They did such a good job that word of the disappearance of the Clan from the face of the earth gave rise to the story that the Clan was taken underground to live with the little people as a reward for having served Ireland so well for so long. The wee folk just wouldn't allow them to see what was to come for Eire. (I don't know how much that part of our story is true.)
Well on with our "history". The survivors of the Clan met and decided to change their name to Early and to flee their Country until things had settled down. They translated their name as Shirley said, "People of the early rising". From that they settled on Early to retain the sense of the name. They then chose a spelling no one had seen before. (Earley was the name of a well known British family in England.) In this way they and their decendants would recognise each other wherever they roamed, and they would now have an anglicized (safe) name. (I believe the Early name and new spelling appeared on the continent out of nowhere about that time.)
....So there is the story I was told of why I was born a O'maolmocirse' but was surnamed "Early" and why there were so few Early's in the world after over 1400 years from the founding of this proud and ancient family ... the O'Maolmocirse'.
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