"In very ancient times some of the clan Coneely, one of the early septs of the county, were changed by 'art magick' into seals; since then no Coneely can kill a seal without afterwards having bad luck. Seals are called Coneelys, and on this account many of the name changed it to Connolly."[402] The same local tradition is mentioned by Hardiman in one of his notes to O'Flaherty's _Description of West or H-iar Connaught_,[403] but the note is equally significant of genuineness from the fact that the tradition is styled "a ridiculous story." It strengthens Mr. Kinahan's note in the following passage: "In some places the story has its believers, who would no more kill a seal, or eat of a slaughtered one, than they would of a human Coneely." The clan Coneely is mentioned both by Mr. Kinahan and by Mr. Hardiman as one of the oldest Irish septs; and that it is widely spread, and not congregated into one locality, is to be inferred from the description of the tradition as prevalent in Connaught, especially from Mr. Hardiman's words, describing that "in some places" the story has its believers now; and hence we may conclude that wherever the clan Coneely are situated there would exist this totem belief. The full significance of these facts may best be tested by reference to the conditions laid down by Dr. Robertson Smith for the discovery of the survivals of totemism among the Semitic races. These conditions are as follows:-- "'(1) The existence of stocks named after plants and animals'--such stocks, it is necessary to add, being scattered through many local tribes; (2) the prevalence of the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem; (3) the ascription to the totem of a sacred character which may result in its being regarded as the god of the stock, but at any rate makes it be regarded with veneration, so that, for example, a totem animal is not used as ordinary food. If we can find all these things together in the same tribe, the proof of totemism is complete; but even when this cannot be done, the proof may be morally complete if all the three marks of totemism are found well developed within the same race. In many cases, however, we can hardly expect to find all the marks of totemism in its primitive form; the totem, for example, may have become first an animal god, and then an anthropomorphic god, with animal attributes or associations merely."[404] Now in the Irish case all three of these conditions are found together in the same tribe, the clan Coneely, and it is impossible to overlook the importance of such a discovery. It proves from survivals in folklore that totemistic people once lived in ancient Ireland, just as the corresponding evidence proved that the ancient Semitic stock possessed the totemic organisation.