more than half the size of the modern province, such a tribute appears enormous. Ancient Leinster, or, to speak more correctly, the Leinster of the time of Tuathal, went no further north than a line running from Dublin to Athlone. The counties of Meath, Westmeath, Longford, and Louth belonged to the province of Meath that had been carved out of parts of the four old provinces by Tuathal himself. The Tribute was to be paid every year, but it was not, for, as the Leinstermen's own great Chronicle says, "It never was paid without a fight"; and sometimes when they succeeded, as they very often did, in licking the combined armies of all the other provinces, it used not to be paid for many years. It was, however, paid on and off for over five hundred years, and to forty over-kings. It was remitted in the seventh century; but many attempts were subsequently made to re-impose it on the unfortunate Leinstermen, who paid more dearly for the treacherous act of one of their kings than any other province or nation mentioned in history. One of their poets has said in a yet untranslated poem in the "Book of Leinster": "It is beyond the testimony of the Creator, It is beyond the word of supplicating Christ, All the kings of the Irish That make attacks on Leinstermen!"[4] It is not to be wondered at that the Leinster Tribute totally denationalised the province on which it was levied, and made its harried inhabitants side with the Danes and with the Anglo-Normans against their own countrymen. But what is most astonishing about the Tribute is its enormousness. That part of Leinster which was the ancient province could hardly pay such a tax to-day. This matter seems to show that ancient Ireland, in spite of a state of almost continual intestine warfare, was far richer and more populous than is generally supposed.