74 



practised at Carnfree, with which Spencer's account exactly coincides. 

 " They use to place him that shall be their captaine upon a stone 

 always reserved for that purpose, and placed commonly upon a hill ; 

 in some of which I have seen formed and engraven a foot, which they 

 say was the measure of their first captaine's foot, whereon he standing 

 receives an oath to preserve all the auncient former customs of the 

 country inviolable, and to deliver up the succession peaceably to his 

 tanist, and then had a wand delivered to him by some, whose proper 

 office that is, after which, descending from the stone, he turneth him-r 

 self round, thrice forward and thrice backward."* 



The expenses of the government seem to have been supplied from 

 the royal lands surrounding Tara, now comprised in the County Meath, 

 and also by a subinfeudation (if the word may be applied to Ireland) 

 of taxes or tributes, the applotment of which was facilitated by the 

 countiy having been, long before the birth of Christ, subdivided into 

 petty provinces. The Annals of Tigernach mention, at the year 26 

 A. C. a portioning of Ireland into five parts, and that historian em- 

 phatically records the first levying of a tax from the Leinster people, 

 in the nature of a tribute of oxen, about A. D. 130, which he after- 

 wards mentions King Cormac as enforcing in the third century, and 

 to the remitting of which King Leogaire is recorded to have sworn in 

 A. D. 428.-f It is, however, stated to have been exacted in A. D, 721 . 

 Early in the fifth century, these provinces were thus subdivided : Ulster 

 into Ulster properly so called, Northern Hy Nial, and Orgiel ; Con- 

 naught into Hy Bruin+ Asi, Hy Bruin Breifni, and Hy-Fiacria ; Mun- 

 ster into Desmond and Thomond ; and Leinster into Leinster proper, 



* Spencer's View, Christie's edition, p. 11. 

 t O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script, v. 2. p. 90. 



1 As Hy Nial was the territory of the O'Neills, so Hy Bruin was that of the O'Briens, the 

 second greatest family in Ireland, and equally identified with the general history of the country. 



