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O’Reilly and Reilly gifts celebrate Ó Raghallaigh, the ruling name of East Breifne and County Cavan, on tartan woven blankets, mugs, a garden flag and ornament, plus Irish harp T-shirts and a wall pennant.
O’Reilly and Reilly are both English forms of Ó Raghallaigh, “descendant of Raghallach,” and Patrick Woulfe counts Riley among the same name’s variants. Families dropped or kept the O’ over the generations, so both spellings run through Cavan records side by side.
The O’Reillys ruled Breifne and then East Breifne, the kingdom that became County Cavan. Kin to the O’Rourkes of West Breifne, they pushed their rule across all of Cavan and into Meath and Westmeath in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, held their independence until the reign of James I, and gave five archbishops to Armagh. Among later bearers, the Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly escaped a Western Australian penal colony in 1869 and became a leading voice of Irish Boston. Sir Anthony “Tony” O’Reilly starred on the wing for Ireland and the British & Irish Lions before becoming chairman and chief executive of H.J. Heinz.
Choose O’Reilly or Reilly on woven blankets, accent mugs and Irish harp T-shirts, with an O’Reilly throw blanket, framed Christmas ornament and wall pennant and a Reilly garden flag. The blankets, mugs, flag and ornament feature the Irish National Tartan. Trace the Breifne story in our O’Reilly and Reilly surname history.
