It may be said that no proof has been given that the Connacht Queen Medb or Meave was the prototype of the Mab of Shakespeare, Drayton, Spenser, and other English poets. True, no absolute proof has been given, and probably never will; but there is that which may be called negative proof, which in such a case is very strong. The negative proof, if it can be called such, that the Connacht queen was the prototype of the Queen Mab of English poets and English legend, is found in the complete silence of history and of tradition as to how else the legend of Queen Mab originated, for it must have originated somewhere and from some one. We are, then, and in a great measure by the total lack of any other way to account for the origin of the legend of Queen Mab being queen of the fairies, forced to come to the conclusion that the Connacht queen is the only person known to history who furnishes the prototype for her. But there is something more. It has been stated that the old Irish form of the name was _Medb_. It is well known to Celtic savants that what is now called "aspiration," or the change in sound, and sometimes the entire suppression of certain consonants in pronunciation, did not take place nearly so often in old Irish as in the modern language; so that the name _Medb_ would in ancient times be pronounced _Mab_, or something very like it. It is curious that in Drayton's poem, "The Nymphadia," Queen Mab, though a fairy, is remarkable for those things for which her Irish prototype was also remarkable--namely, her chariots, her amours, and her beauty. A very strong proof that Queen Meave was an historic personage and not a myth is to be found in the name of the island in Loch Ree where she was killed. It is usually pronounced and written Iniscloran; but Inis Clothran is how it ought to be spelled, and how it is invariably spelled in the "Annals of the Four Masters" where the name frequently occurs, the island having been the seat of more than one church in early Christian times, and therefore often mentioned in annals. Meave had a sister named Clothru who lived in Iniscloran, and who was Queen of Connacht before Meave. Here is a translation from the "Book of Leinster," page 124: "It was there that Clothru used to explain the laws of Connacht in Inis Clothran in Loch Ree." The island was evidently called after Clothru (Clothran in the genitive), sister to Meave. This preservation of a place name connected with the name of an historic personage for two thousand years is most remarkable, and shows that Irish history is more truthful than is generally supposed. It is thought that Meave had Clothru killed, in order that she herself might become Queen of Connacht.