66 Historic Ulster. 



tribes were reduced to a subordinate position. The Eremonians 

 inhabited the East and West centre of the land, the Irians of 

 the North their kingdom early called Ulla, and the fate of their 

 ruling tribe, the great Clan Rory supplies the most interesting 

 traditions furnished by the pre-Christian period. The name of 

 Ulla stood at first for a territory co-extensive with Ireland north 

 of the Boyne and Erne. Aedh Roe, the great ancestor of the 

 Clan Rory, was said to have been drowned in the fall of the 

 Erne at Ballyshannon. To his daughter Macha, at the year 

 400 B.C. was ascribed the building of a fort called Emania, the 

 capital of Ulla, the great Kingdom of the North, whose kings 

 of the Clan Rory line rivalled the kings of Tara for seven 

 hundred years. The fact deserves to be emphasised, that 

 though there may not be much truth in the early traditions of 

 Ulla, yet the existence of that great kingdom and its capital at 

 the beginning of the historic period is an undoubted fact, and 

 the existence of traditions, however unreliable, shows at least 

 that even at that time Ulla was considered ancient and re 

 nowned. Before the Saxons left their motherland to settle in 

 the island of Britain, hundreds of years before the English 

 nation or the English language existed, Emania was the seat, 

 and Ulla the kingdom, of a line of chiefs and heroes, whose 

 existence is undoubted, though their name and fame have no 

 other records than their unlettered monuments which tell too 

 little, and the bardic tales which tell too much, for the strict 

 purposes of historical investigation. 



Referring to the literary cycle of tales connected with the 

 kingdom of Ulla at the period of the reign of Connor MacNessa, 

 who is said to have been contemporary with the Christian era. 

 I recommend as a delightful guide to this period of Ullas' 

 greatest traditionary glory, the history by Standish O'Grady. 

 In this woik all the traditions are set in order and linked into 

 an entrancing tale, which on its narrative merits may compare 

 with that of " Pelops' line, or the tale of Troy divine." The 

 poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson will also be found invaluable 

 in studying the history of ancient Ulla, " Deirdic, the Naming 



