Burke descends from the Norman de Burgh family, who arrived in Ireland with the invasion of 1169 and, within a few generations, built one of the most powerful lordships in the country across Connacht. William de Burgh secured the family's first landholdings in the west, and his descendant Richard Mór de Burgh extended that power across a territory stretching from the Shannon to the Atlantic. By the fourteenth century the family had split into two enduring branches: the Clanricarde Burkes of County Galway, who kept closer ties to the English crown, and the Mac William Burkes of County Mayo, who became so thoroughly Gaelicised — adopting Irish law, language, and marriage alliances with families like the O'Connors and O'Flahertys — that they are still cited as the classic example of Norman settlers who became "more Irish than the Irish themselves."
The Burke motto, Ung Roy, Ung Foy, Ung Loy — "one king, one faith, one law" — speaks to the family's Norman origins even as its branches wove themselves into Gaelic Connacht life for centuries. Grace O'Malley, the pirate queen of Connacht, married into the Mayo Burkes, and her husband's castle at Rockfleet became her stronghold. Centuries later, Edmund Burke of Dublin shaped modern political philosophy, and Robert O'Hara Burke led the first expedition to cross Australia from south to north.
Burke and its variant Bourke remain among the most common surnames in Galway and Mayo today, carried across the world by Famine-era emigration to North America, Australia, and Britain. This collection honors that long Connacht story with everyday pieces — a woven throw, garden flags, mugs, ornaments, and apparel featuring the Burke name and crest. Read more in our history of the Burke surname.
