3 10 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



even though it were so, it would be no wonder; for, if a man will look at the 

 sons of Mil, and the great families that sprang from them in Ireland and in 

 Scotland, and how few of them exist at this day, he will not wonder that 

 people inferior to them, who had been a long time under them, should not 

 exist ; for it is the custom of the nobles, vshen their own children and families 

 multiply, to suppress, Night, and exterminate their farmers and followers. 

 Examine Ireland, and the whole world, and there is no end to the number of 

 examples of this Jdnd to be found ; so that it would be no wonder that the 

 number of genealogies which are in Ireland at this day were carried up to 

 MA." 1 



"We have no grounds for questioning this testimony, offered by an ardent 

 adherent of " the race of Mil," the dominant Gaelic people of ancient Ireland, 

 as to their custom of making room for their own kindred by squeezing out 

 the plebeian folk. The examples to which he appeals for corroboration are 

 sufficiently abundant. 



The contempt of the dominant Gaelic people for the older conquered folk 

 is frankly expressed in another passage, quoted by the same authority " from 

 an old book." 2 



" Everyone who is black -haired, who is a tattler, guileful, tale-telling, 

 noisy, contemptible ; every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and 

 inhospitable person; every slave, every mean thief, every churl, everyone 

 who loves not to listen to music and entertainment ; the disturbers of every 

 council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among people ; 

 these are the descendants of the Fir Bolg, of the Gailiiiin, of the Liogairne, 

 and of the Fir Domhnann, in Ireland. But, however, the descendants of the 

 Fir Bolg are the most numerous of all these." 



The customary "suppression" of plebeians to make room for the patrician 

 race must have been a gradual process, too petty to obtain notice in the 

 chronicles. There are, however, examples of suppression in a more con- 

 spicuous degree. The story of the descendants of 'Umor, 3 who were of the 

 Fir Bolg, tells that in the time of Cu Chulainn they were so oppressed with 

 burdens by Cairbre Nia Fear, king of Xorth Leinster, that they migrated in 

 a body across the Shannon and settled on the western seaboard. The great 

 conspiracy of the subject races throughout Ireland, a few generations later, 



1 O'Curry, " IIS. Materials of Irish History," p. 225. The Irish text, given in O'Curry's 

 Appendix, is from the introduction to the "Book of Genealogies," of which the original is now in 

 the possession of the Rt. Hon. 51. F. Cox, M.D., and O'Curry's transcript, the only one, is in the 

 Royal Irish Academy library. 



= lb., p. 224. 



' " Book of Ballymote," 30a 28. The story is told in prose, and also in a poem by Mac Liag, 

 who died in 1016. 



