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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
of Ireland, the provincial kings and Heremonian nobility
and gentry of Leinster, Connaught, Meath, Orgiall,
Tirowen, Tyrconnell, and Clan-na-boy, the three kings
of Dalriada, and all the kings of Scotland from Fergus
Mor, son of Earca, down to the Stuarts. The issue of
Ithe is not accounted among the Milesian Irish or Clanna-Mile
as being descended not from Milesius but from
his uncle Ithe, of whose posterity there were also some
monarchs of Ireland and many provincial
or half-
provincial kings of Munster. That country upon its
first division was allocated to the sons of Heber and to
Lughaidh, son of Ithe, whose posterity continued there
accordingly. 1
The points to be dwelt on are that the Munster Irish
are in the main the reputed descendants of Heber, as
distinguished from the reputed descendants of the other
two sons of Milesius, Ir and Heremon, in most of the
rest of Ireland, and that these Munster Irish had certain
characteristics that distinguished them. They were
among
the first to receive the Christian faith before St.
Patrick. Roman-British missionaries were among them,
it would appear, at the beginning of the third century. 2
1 The pedigrrees of the old Irish families that have been saved from the
wreck of ages are among the most curious and valuable historic records in
our possession. Their accuracy and genuineness have been fully demonstrated
as far as it has been possible to trace and test them, which appears to be
where they all converge round the fourth century beyond that is uncertainty.
There is no country in Europe, with the exception of Italy perhaps, that
has anything that in any way approaches them. There are families in Ireland
that can trace their pedigrees back to a point farther in history than the
whole English nation. Irish pedigrees are one of the indisputable evidences
of ancient Irish culture, for it is inconceivable that a family could cherish
and preserve its family records from generation to generation, as the Irish
families and clans are shown to have done, without a considerable degree
of social self-consciousness and mental cultivation. The accumulation of
those that have been preserved is extraordinary. The best handbook on the
subject is O'Harts' "Irish Pedigrees" (2 vols.); Douglas Hyde has an interesting
chapter on them in his "Literary History"; while Eoin MacNeill
illuminates their use as historic signposts in a series of articles in the
New Ireland Review (1904-5).
2 See Zimmer. Pelagius in Ireland (Berlin).
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