The hints of totemism among the ancient Irish are interesting. One hero, Conaire, was the son of a bird, and before his birth his father (the bird) told the woman (his mother) that the child must never eat the flesh of fowls. 'Thy son shall be named Conaire, and that son shall not kill birds.'[225] The hero Cuchullain, being named after the dog, might not eat the flesh of the dog, and came by his ruin after transgressing this totemistic taboo. Races named after animals were common in ancient Ireland. The red-deer and the wolves were tribes dwelling near Ossory, and Professor Rhys, from the frequency of dog names, inclines to believe in a dog totem in Erin. According to the ancient Irish 'Wonders of Eri,' in the _Book of Glendaloch_, 'the descendants of the wolf are in Ossory,' and they could still transform themselves into wolves.[226] As to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, there is little evidence beyond the fact that the names (in many cases patronymics) of the early settlements of Billings, Arlings, and the rest, are undeniably derived from animals and plants. The manner in which those names are scattered locally is precisely like what results in America, Africa, and Australia from the totemistic organisation.[227] In Italy the ancient custom by which animals were the leaders of the _Ver sacrum_ or armed migration is well known. The Piceni had for their familiar animal or totem (if we may call it so) a woodpecker; the Hirpini were like the 'descendants of the wolf' in Ossory, and practised a wolf-dance in which they imitated the actions of the animal. Such is a summary of the evidence which hints that Aryans may once have been totemists, therefore savages, and therefore, again, had probably been in a stage when women were scarce and each woman had many husbands.