] 92 Proceedings of the Royal Iiish Academy. 



biinging together the early sources of tliis history, and has gone far enough to 

 make the comfortable omniscience of earlier antiquaries impossible without as 

 yet replacing very much on a surer basis. It is very probable (as Professor 

 Mac Neill has noted, and as I long ventured to assert) that we have little 

 original matter relating to the history of Co. Clare earlier than the niuth 

 century. Oui- detailed knowledge possibly begins with the collections of the 

 poet, Flann mac Lonain, in the latter half of that period. 



I venture to suggest that when the Irish learned classes endeavoured to 

 recover what was left after the fearful ravages of the iSTorse and Danes, they 

 found probably lists of kings, fi-agmentary genealogies, and certain old accounts 

 of heroes of outstanding importance, wliich sagas (early forerunneis of the 

 " Wars of the Gaedhil " and the " Triumphs of the Torlough ") gave only 

 patches of light in the gloom of the earlier centuries. The tribal genealogists 

 endeavoured to connect the pedigrees of the chiefs with these, partly by 

 genuine descents, partly by, wrongly or rightly, embodying early lists, partly 

 it may be by unfounded guesswork.' Tribes, recognized as of equal standing 

 and rights, or conscious of ancestral ties, gave a fiuther clue, and their rulers 

 were traced to common ancestors. Therefore, while beUeving that some 

 fperhaps much) truth lies in what has come down to us, I do not commit 

 myself or my readei's to any belief in the full correctness of the alleged 

 pedigrees. 



It is clear that with the great collapse of the Eoman Empu'e and the west- 

 ward movements of its destroyers, there was a strong development of energy 

 and restlessness in Ireland in the fourth century. Claudian sang of " the Scot " 

 who made the sea foam " with hostile oars " in Iris raid ou Britain ;- and there 

 can be but little doubt that the nameless Irish invader was the terrible 

 Ardrigh Niall, " of the nine hostages," under whom St. Patrick was brought 

 a slave to Ireland. In north-west Connacht another great monarch, Fiachi'a,had 

 ai-isen.^ His mother, in endeavouring to secure the sovereignity for her sons, 

 poisoned her brother, Ciimthann, the High King, in 377, drinking of the 

 same cup to disarm his suspicion. She died ; he was carried towardsMunster, to 

 die on the hillside above Limerick; but her crime failed of its object.* 

 Crimthann had a foster-son, ConaU Eachluath, whose father, a Mimster kiug, 

 Lugaid Meann,^ had ravaged the present Co. Clare, and reduced the central 



1 Similar welding, by unproved assertion, of modem descents to the English visitation pedigrees 

 were commoQ in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 



^ Ode to Stilicho. 



^ O'Donovan has brought much material together in "The Tribes and Cu.'Jtonis of HyFiachrach." 

 Crimthann's race and " high kingship " is doubtful ; both rest on somewhat uncertain legends. 



* Book of Ballymote, translated by Mr. Standish Hayes 0' Grady in Silva Gadelica (vol. i, 

 p. 413, text) : vol. ii, p. 37S, also " Wars of the Gaedhil,"' p. 67. 



5 Mr. Knox suggests that Lugaid and ConuU may have been princes of non-Dalcossian tribes, 



