Norse Origins
The Cotters are noted as one of the very few Irish families of verifiable Norse descent to survive the Norman invasion of Ireland, although it is currently unknown if this is genetically paternal or only maternal. This question mattered considerably less to the Norse of the period than to the Gaelic Irish, whose entire rigid class structure was and remains based on agnatic descent.
A family manuscript of later date claims the Cotters are descendants of Óttar of Dublin (Son of Mac Ottir), who was King of Dublin from 1142 to 1148, through his son Thorfin and grandson Therulfe. This is not impossible, nor even improbable, but currently remains unverified, the greater part of the history of the Norse in Ireland, and especially those in Munster, being lost. The Gaelic Mac Coitir was originally Mac Oitir, meaning "Descendant of Óttar".
Read more about this topic: Cotter Family
Famous quotes containing the words norse and/or origins:
“Carlyle has not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)