McGuire is the anglicised form of Mac Uidhir, "son of Odhar" — a personal name connected to the old word for dun-coloured or sallow. The Maguire family are first recorded as lords of Fermanagh in the thirteenth century, and for four centuries they governed the county's lake-threaded landscape from island strongholds on Lough Erne, a natural fortress that gave the dynasty a defensive advantage few Ulster families could match. Within the province the Maguires held a significant but subordinate place beside the dominant O'Neill lords of Tyrone, and they stood among Hugh O'Neill's most committed allies when he launched the Nine Years' War in 1593.
The last great Maguire lord, Cuchonnacht Mór Maguire, commanded Gaelic forces through that war and, after the defeat at Kinsale in 1601, sailed from Rathmullan in 1607 as part of the Flight of the Earls — the departure that ended the Gaelic order in Ulster. He died in exile in Genoa within the year. The Plantation of Ulster that followed confiscated the Maguire estates on the Erne, and the family that had ruled Fermanagh for four hundred years became tenants on their own former land; some continued the Wild Geese tradition of Irish service in the armies of France and Spain. The Great Famine later sent McGuire and Maguire families from Fermanagh to Britain, the United States, and Australia in large numbers, though the name remains one of the county's most characteristic to this day.
This collection brings that Fermanagh history into everyday pieces — crest blankets, flags, ornaments, drinkware, and apparel set against the Irish national tartan — for anyone tracing their family back to the Erne lakes. Read the fuller account in our history of the McGuire Irish surname.
