The Gaelic State in the past & future — A Reader’s Guide

er glory and significance attaching to it that it is not easy to explain in any critical use of the materials available. It was not for a century after Tuathal that the Connacian dynasty, in the person of Cormac, established itself at Tara and compelled the kings of Leinster to make their headquarters elsewhere at Naas. Then the central authority took a fresh accession of strength, and a definite and distinctive polity began to emerge, with the looser system that till then had prevailed tightened up and made uniform in all its parts.

The hegemony, for instance, passed, and Cormac became Ard-Ri, or Monarch, of Ireland. The new province of Meath was created for the maintenance of the new monarchy. The festivals at Tara became more splendid and authoritative, deriving as they now did from the administrative authority of the monarch. This was especially the case as Cormac shines out quite clearly as a man of considerable force of character and a statesman of a very high order. Under his supervision the laws were reduced to writing. They might previously have existed in writing, for there are indications to show that writing existed from a very early time in Ireland; but they were now gathered in a single authoritative book. The immediate result of this would be that a stricter uniformity in their administration was created. To ensure this, and to make more easy the general administration of the country, he regrouped the administrative units of the nation. Until then the nation had consisted of a number of separate stateships. Some were quite small, some were of considerable size. Some had been bound under heavy service, some had been comparatively free of service, to their respective provincial kings. We do not often hear after this time of these different obligations of service, nor do we find these great differences of size; and it is significant that this disappearance should occur at a time when we are told that Cormac created a new order over Ireland. He made a number of new units, uniform in size, grouped in the provinces, and leading up in ranks of authority through the provincial kingships to the monarchy.

The old stateships were known as Tuatha; the new were called Triocha Ced. The title Triocha Ced does not survive, while the older title of Tuatha does. Therefore it seems likely that the new Triocha Ced became known by the older and more familiar title of Tuatha; and, where an old Tuath of considerable size had a number of Triocha Ced created within it, that the new units became known as Tuatha, while the older stateship maintained its authority over the new units and became known by a new title that now comes into use, that of Mor-Thuath. That is conjecture; but it is a conjecture that conforms to the facts as we know them in the subsequent development of the system.

Such is the polity as it left Cormac’s hands. He also established the Fianna Eireann as a standing militia in the provinces--except in Ulster, where the dynastic war had not ceased, and was not to cease till the burning of Emain Macha. The political system he created, with its central code of laws, was one that could continue itself without a central power; and it did so continue; for with his passing the central power weakened, falling into less able hands.

With the coming of Christianity two centuries later the system received a new strength and unity. Loeghaire, the Monarch at the time, was himself a man of considerable strength and ability, and Patrick was an administrator of power and insight. The fact that the laws were revised in the general assembly at Tara, in order to bring them into conformity with the teaching of Christianity, was in itself an impetus sufficient to brace the system anew; and a further strength was given when Patrick based his church system on the political system, making the units of one identical with the units of the other.