Knee, a less remote ancestor, of whom more later on. This was the great family of the Tyrone O'Neills. So solidly did the posterity of Niall establish itself, and upon so firm a basis was his power perpetuated, that almost all the following kings of Ireland were descended from him, besides multitudes of illustrious families, "nearly three hundred of his descendants, eminent for their learning and the sanctity of their lives," says O'Flaherty, "have been enrolled in the catalogue of the saints."[29] He it was who, while plundering in Britain or Armorica, led back amongst other captives the youth, then sixteen years old, who was destined, under the title of the Holy Patrick, to revolutionise Ireland. St. Patrick's own "Confession" and his Epistle to Coroticus have come down to us--the former preserved in the Book or Armagh, a manuscript copied by a scribe named Ferdomnach in 807 (or 812 according to a truer chronology), apparently from St. Patrick's own copy, for at the end of the Confession the scribe adds this note: "Thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand."[30] In this ancient manuscript (itself only a copy of older ones so damaged as to be almost illegible[31] to the scribe who copied them in 807, a little more than three hundred years after St. Patrick's death), we find nearly a dozen mentions of Niall of the Nine Hostages, of his son Laeghaire [Leary], and several more who lived before St. Patrick's arrival, and so find ourselves for the first time upon tolerably solid historical ground, which from this out never deserts us. St. Columcille, the evangeliser of the Picts and the founder of Iona, was the great-great-grandson of this Niall, and the great-grandson of Conall Gulban, so celebrated even to this day in Irish romance and history.[32] Ascertainable authenticated Irish history, then, begins with Niall and with Patrick, but in this chapter we have gone behind it to see what may be learned from native sources--rather traditional than historical--of Irish life and history, from the founding of Emania three hundred years before Christ down to the coming of St. Patrick. But for all the things which we have recounted we have no independent external testimony, nor have we now any manuscripts remaining of which we could say, "We have here documentary evidence fifteen or twenty centuries old attesting the truth of these things." No; we are entirely dependent for all that pre-Patrician history upon native evidence alone, and that evidence has come down to us chiefly but not entirely in manuscripts copied in the twelfth and in later centuries. [1] In Irish, Iugoine. [2] In Irish, Laoghaire. [3] In Irish, Labhraidh Loingseach. [4] Pronounced "Yo-hy Faylach." [5] Less than 100 years before, according to Keating. [6] In Irish, _Méadhbh_, pronounced Mève or Maev. In Connacht it is often strangely pronounced "Mow," rhyming with "cow." This name dropped out of use about 150 years ago, being Anglicised into Maud.