Máel Gualae
Irish king
Máel mac Donngaile (died 859), known as Máel Gualae, was a King of Munster from the Eóganacht Chaisil branch of the Eoganachta, the ruling dynasty of Munster. He was of the Clann Faílbe sept of this branch and a grandson of Tnúthgal mac Donngaile (died 820), whom some sources name as King of Munster and brother of Áilgenán mac Donngaile (died 853), also King of Munster. His branch of the ruling dynasty had their lands in the Cashel area of modern County Tipperary. He reigned from 856 to 859.
After the death of Áilgenán in 853 there was an interregnum until the succession of his brother Máel Gualae in 856. The Danes had arrived in Ireland in 849 and took control of Dublin in 851. The dispersed Norse went off to plunder different areas of Ireland and a rivalry began between these two Viking groups with Irish kings using this rivalry in their own conflicts. A number of men in Munster joined up with these Norse and were known as Gall Gaedil ("foreign Gaels"). Cerball mac Dúnlainge (died 888), King of Osraige aligned himself with the Danes versus the Norse to become the most powerful ruler in southern Ireland during this period.
During the interregnum, the High King of Ireland Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid (died 862) of Clann Cholmáin led an expedition into Munster in 854 as far as the borders of the Déisi in Tipperary County and took hostages from Munster.
“Máel Gualae” enters the record as irish king. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Máel, Gualae and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Máel Gualae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.