Joe Fitzgerald 

Excellent playing

Very good.

Great to see your comment Sheila. Melbourne 1980's, Phillis McGrath/Australian Irish Welfare Bureau, CCE Ceili at the Polish Club, Port Fairy & Koroit Folk Festivals, what a great time it was! Hup!

East Clare Abu!

Great stuff well done great style

Mainly (historically/traditionally) a Hiberno-Norman surname - Butlers of Tipperary and Fitzgeralds of Desmond are supposed to be descended from Norman adventurers who came over in the Norman Invasion of Strongbow I believe... but being common (I think?) surnames in those areas of SW Ireland... you would need a DNA test to really see if they are all family... or at least from the same paternal (father - son line). My Mom's father was an O'Dwyer and according to autosomal DNA results for me... I have Butlers and Fitzgeralds showing up in my cousin list match's ancestry - in particular the Butlers of Ormond (whom five O'Dwyer Chieftains married Butler women in the 1600s and 1700s... at least the documented marriages). That being said they fought just as hard for Ireland as the O'Dwyers, who according to tradition and the Irish Annals... had been in the area of Kilnamanagh and Tipperary since the 700 AD and were said to be descended from the Laigin of the East in Ireland. Bit on the O'Dwyers here: From the seventh century until the Cromwellian Conquest a thousand years later, the O'Dwyers were settled in the present Barony of Kilnamanagh, a territory of about 100 square miles lying in the centre of County Tipperary between Cashel and Emly in the South and Thurles and Killaloe in the North. The clan leaders occupied fortified castles in Dundrum, Killinure and Clonyhorpe. Beginning with the year 1100, for five generations the O'Dwyer Chiefs married daughters of O'Brien, Prince of Thomond (twice), O'Kennedy of Ormond (twice), O'Carroll of Ely (once). In about 1250 we find John O'Dwyer of Kilnamanagh marrying a daughter of de Burgo (Bourke), one of the early Norman conquerors. His son Anthony, in 1279, married Maria, daughter of Butler of the House of Ormond, the first of many alliances with the Ormond family. This probably led to the first Earl of Ormond, in the exercise of his Palatinate rights, creating William O'Dwyer, the son of Cornelius, Baron of Kilnamanagh, in 1329. This title, though not used in the State Papers, is attached by the Office of Arms to all subsequent Chiefs down to the seventeenth century. This William O'Dwyer married a daughter of Mac-William Burke of the House of Clanricarde. Dermot (Derby) O'Dwyer of Clonyhorpe, played a prominent part as Sheriff of Tipperary under the Earl of Ormond, in dealing with the final stages of the Desmond rebellion in his locality, and had a long struggle with the notorious Myler MacGrath, Anglican Archbishop of Cashel. He died in 1629 and was buried in Holy Cross cemetery in County Tipperary. After him the Chieftaincy passed to the family of his cousin from Dundrum.

by now... a VERY Irish name ;-).

Swahilian !!! 😀