The Purcells landed in England in 1066. 2 Generations later Strongbow invited Sir Hugh Purcell to join him fighting for the King of Leinster against the other kings of Ireland. Sir Hugh Purcell was the father of all the Purcells in Ireland.
He was buried in French Church, Waterford.
The Purcells shield crest was the 3 lions. Unfortunately for the Purcells nobody in Ireland knew what a lion looked like 800 years ago, so the engravings of their crest looked more like 3 pigs.
After Cromwells armies had killed most of them and the rest were proverty stricken, the Purcells were erased from nobility. A reverand even went so far as to write a book about how the Purcells got their name and crest, (that a man had to catch a pig in order to marry a rich mans daughter and so was named little pig afterwards) Unfortunately this misinformation stuck and even today if you look up the shield crest for Purcell, it is either 3 or 4 pigs or 3 or 4 pigs heads.