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LALLY, O'Mulally
The name Lally is a contraction of O'Mullally, which was formerly the normal form in English of the Gaelic O
Maolalaidh. This sept, a branch of the Ui Maine of the same stock as the O'Naghtens, was of some importance in Connacht, where, after the coming of the Anglo-Normans, they were at constant feud with the de Burgos or
Burkes. Through this, and other causes, they were obliged to move northwards, but only a short distance, as they remained in the area subsequently formed into the county of Galway, settling in the neighbourhood of
Tuam. Two O'Mullallys became Archbishops of Tuam, and two other bishops of the adjacent dioceses of Clonfert and Elphin between 1211 and 1611. Those who did not go abroad have remained there or thereabouts ever
since: of the thirty-four births recorded for Lally in one year, thirty were in Connacht. After the Siege of Limerick, however, it is among the Wild Geese and other exiles that we must look for Lallys of note. The
most famous of these was Thomas Arthur O'Mullally (1702-1766), better known as Count Lally de Tolendal, who, after a most distinguished and romantic career in the French army, was executed through the machinations
of his enemies. His trial has since been officially declared a travesty of justice and the decree finding him guilty solemnly reversed. Tolendal was the French equivalent of Tullaghnadaly, which the historian of the
family, Denis Patrick O'Mullally, on the authority of William Hawkins, Ulster King of Arms, asserts should be Tullagh O'Mullally - an assertion clearly disproved by John O'Donovan in his edition of The Tribes and
Customs of Hy Many. It was in English written Tullindaly in
1689, for James O'Mullally, ancestor of Count Lally and member of the James II Parliament of that date, is recorded as of Tullindaly. The book referred to - History of the O'Mullally and
Lally Clann (Chicago 1941) - though an uncritical and amateurish work marred by the inclusion of much high-falutin padding, is, nevertheless, a mine of information on the activities of the sept and its members.
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