Customers at two Irish pubs have been taking DNA tests to see if they are related to an ancient Irish king.
The two pubs are McSorleys in New York and Sean’s Bar in Athlone, County Westmeath, one of the oldest pubs in Ireland. They offered the test – designed to find descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a fifth-century warlord – to customers on Father’s Day.
The drinkers could take the DNA test by providing a simple swab from the cheek and the samples have been sent to Oxford for analysis. The results will be available in July and if the customer is found to be a descendant, they can claim free beer and a meal at the pub.
Descendants of Niall
According to researchers at Trinity College Dublin, as many as one in 12 Irish men could be descended from Niall, who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland and forefather of the O’Neills.
Niall, who reportedly had 12 sons, was the great-great grandfather of St Columba and famously imprisoned St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Niall was the progenitor of the clan of Uí Néill, the source of the common Irish name O’Neill.
About three million men worldwide are believed to be direct descendants of Niall. “He’s a super-father, or a super-ancestor,” says Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford Ancestors, an ancestral DNA testing company affiliated with Oxford University and the company that is analysing the DNA samples to identify more of Niall’s extended family.
DNA testing
Studies of the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son, can be used to link descendants of the same man going back many centuries. It is estimated that two percent of Irish Americans are also descendents of Niall, which is why tests were also done in New York.
Genealogical DNA tests are usually taken with a painless cheek-scraping at home and mailing the sample to a genetic genealogy laboratory for testing. The most popular ancestry tests are Y chromosome (Y-DNA) testing and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing. Other tests attempt to determine a person’s comprehensive genetic history and/or ethnic origins.
A man’s paternal ancestry can be traced using the DNA on his Y chromosome (Y-DNA). Women who wish to determine their paternal ancestry can ask their father, brother, paternal uncle, paternal grandfather, or a cousin who shares the same paternal lineage to take a test for them.
Serious research
Although the science behind the search for Niall’s descendants is serious, the researchers decided to involve the two bars to make the project less “dusty and scientific”, according to Sykes.
He likened the search for Niall’s descendants to research showing that 13th-century Mongol emperor Genghis Khan has some 16 million descendants. Sykes’s best-selling book “The Seven Daughters Of Eve” showed most modern Europeans are descended from one of seven women.
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Find out more about the Uí Néill clan
