Flaherty

The Flahertys, in Irish Ó Flaithbheartaigh, were a Gaelic clan of County Galway in Connacht, a branch of the Uí Briúin Seóla kindred. From the ninth century they ruled Maigh Seóla east of Lough Corrib, but in the 1050s the O'Connors, kings of Connacht, drove them across the lake into Iar Connacht, later known as Connemara, where they reigned as kings.

They governed the nascent town of Galway until the Norman de Burghs, the Clanricarde Burkes, seized it in 1232; its English settlers prayed for deliverance from the ferocious O'Flahertys. Through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the clan remained the dominant Gaelic power west of Lough Corrib, effectively independent of Dublin and the Burkes.

The clan's lordship was broken during the Tudor conquest of Connacht. Roderick O'Flaherty (1629-1718), historian and last recognised Lord of Iar Connacht, preserved its genealogies in his writings.