Though a genuine Gaelic name, Healy is
very rarely found nowadays with its proper prefix O; there is no
entry in current directories under O'Healy, O'Hely or O'Haly, forms
which were quite usual up to the end of the seventeenth century.
Healy, however, is one of the commonest names in Ireland having
forty-seven place in the list of the hundred commonest surnames,
with a total number of persons so called of nearly thirteen
thousand. One set, in Irish O hElidhe, derived from eilidhe
(claimant), possessed a territory at the foot of the Curlew
Mountains on the western shore of Lough Arrow, I.e. the corner of
County Sligo lying between Counties Mayo and Roscommon.
The first of
the frequent references to the family by the Four Masters is to
Dermot O'Healy who died in 1309 - he is described as "a princely
farmer, the best of his time".
A greater number, however, belong to
the Munster sept. In Munster it is O hEalaigh - the, possibly from
the word ealadhach (ingenious). This name was formerly correctly
rendered as O'Healihy in English, and so it appears in the
seventeenth century records. e.g. those reciting the transfer of
their estates to the Earl of Clancarty after the Restoration.
Though
dispossessed, the O'Healihys remained on the lands and it was one of
those who, having become a Protestant, was created Earl of
Donoughmore. This title was taken from the place Donoghmore in the
barony of Muskerry, Co. Cork, which was the centre of the territory
possessed by the sept. the influential family of Hely d'Oissel of
Normandy, ranked among the nobility of France, is descended from
Peter O'Hely, a Jacobite exile.
Several places in Ireland perpetuate
the name Healy: Ballyhely in Co. Sligo was the seat of the O'Healys
of Lough Arrow, mentioned above. It is curious that four such place
names (three Ballyhealys and one Healysland) are to be found in
Wexford, a county not specially associated with the septs of
O'Healy, either traditionally or by reason of present population
distribution.
No less than five of the Donoughmore Helys (who
assumed the additional name of Hutchinson) were considered worthy of
a place in the Dictionary of National Biography, several of whom,
notably John Hely-Hutchinson (1724-1794), Provost of Trinity
College, were advocates of Catholic Emancipation.
Four other Healys
have a lasting place in Irish history; Patrick O'Healy, Franciscan,
last Bishop of Mayo before it was united to Tuam, who in 1579 was
tortured and martyred; John Healy (1841-1918), Archbishop of Tuam,
author of Insula Sanctorum, etc.; the famous humorist, Father Hames
Healy (1824-1894); and Timothy Healy (1855-1931), universally known
as Tim Healy, the irrepressible Irish Nationalist M.P., who finally
became a most successful first Governor-General of the Irish Free
State.
James Healy (1830-1900), has been described as the first
black American bishop. Actually he was only one quarter black, his
father, Michael Healy, being an Irish immigrant and his mother a
mulatto slave.
In the Tralee and Killarney areas of Co. Kerry. Healy
is usually a synonym of Kerrisk or Kerrish, in Irish Mac Fhiarais
I.e son of Ferris, the first to be so called being the son of one
Pierce O'Healy. Woulfe thinks the eponymous ancestor was Ferris
O'Helie. In Co.. Clare Mac Fhiarais is anglicized
Kierse.
