O'CAHANE: A family of great antiquity, claiming descent" from the renowned Niall of the Nine Hostages, King of Ireland, who brought St. Patrick a captive from France to its shores. They constituted one of the most powerful families of ancient Dalaradia in Ulster, from whence passed out the emigrants who colonized Scotland, conquered the Piets, and established a kingdom there, which, in memory of their old home, was named Dalriada. From them descended the line of Scottish Kings, the Stuarts." D'Altou. Whatever credit may attach to claims of such very high antiquity, there is no doubt that the name and family existed in the X. century, when Eogan O'Cahan was an abbot in the county of Galway, A.D. 980. The family may have been king-descended and king-producing, but their claim to the progenitor-ship of the royal line of Stuart is unfounded, for the latter have been satisfactorily proved to be of mingled Welsh, Saxon, and Norman blood, and their Gaelic or Irish extraction is a pure figment. See article Stuart.