From these notices it is apparent that there underlies the formation of these groups the idea of five generations. These were expressed by the terms _Athair_, father, _Mac_, son, _Ua_, grandson, _Earmua_, great-grandson, _Innua_, great-great-grandson, and that each of the four groups was one generation less than the other, the _Geilfiné_, or white family, being the chiefs immediate family, including himself;[208] but it must not be supposed that these degrees of relationship implied descent from the same individual, otherwise it would require that the five generations were alive at the same time. The idea rather is that it required five generations from the founder of the _Finé_ to complete the group of seventeen persons. Thus his own immediate family, to the number of four, constituted his _Geilfiné_. Then as each new person was born into the _Geilfiné_, the older member passed into a new group termed _Deirbhfiné_, and this went on till the group extended to nine persons; then, as new members were born to these two, older members passed into another group called _Iarfiné_,; and so on, as new generations were added, till the group of _Indfiné_ was formed, and the whole number of seventeen was completed, the members of each being fathers and sons, and representing the fourth and fifth generations from the common ancestor; and as generations went on, the kin or kinsfolk of the chief passed through the alembic of these four groups and disappeared into the commonalty of the _Finé_, leaving always a residuum of seventeen persons behind them. These relationships, then, meant not descent from the same individual but from the founder of the _Finé_, and expressed the distance of each group from the stem-line of hereditary chiefs, and the degrees of relationship between them and the chief for the time being. This view of the degrees of relationship, as connected with the five generations, seems to be implied in one of the regulations regarding ‘_Saer_ stock tenure.’ We are there told that ‘if one chief has received stock from another, there shall be no returning of the _Saer_ stock without _Seds_, in that case until one heir transmits to another.’ ‘If it is from the chief next to him he has taken it, it is grandson upon grandson, or great-grandson upon great-grandson, or the son of a great-grandson upon the son of a great-grandson, and the number of degrees which are between the person who gave the stock and the person to whom it is given, is the number of relatives who shall claim the stock without _Seds_ of _Saer_ stock.’[209] The _Geilfiné_ were thus what was termed youngest cadets; and the _Indfiné_, the oldest cadets, recognised as forming part of the kin, and as longest separated from the chief, were the most powerful family next to his own. The following table, in which the succession to the _dibad_ land is included, will show this conception of the nature of these groups:—