Although the ancient Irish monarchy was, except where forceful usurpation occasionally prevailed, elective, the candidate for the Tanistry, or heir-apparency, was required to be of the “blood royal.” Minors were seldom or never recognized as being eligible. At rare intervals one might win popular recognition by displaying a precocious wisdom, or prowess. The ablest and bravest male member of the reigning family was almost invariably chosen Ard-Righ, and the provincial and district rulers were chosen on the same principle. Meath was the High King’s own province, and the lesser monarchs swayed over Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, subsidiary to, yet in a measure independent of, the Ard-Righ, who held his court at Tara until A.D. 554, when St. Ruadan, because of sacrilege committed by the reigning monarch, Dermid, in dragging a prisoner from the saint’s own sanctuary and killing him, pronounced a malediction on the royal hill and palaces. Thenceforth Tara ceased to be the residence of the Ard-Righs of Ireland, and total ruin speedily fell upon it. All that now remains of its legendary splendor is comprised in the fast vanishing mounds on which once stood the palaces, assembly halls, and other public buildings of Ireland’s ancient monarchs. No man or woman of Irish race can gaze unmoved on the venerable eminence, rising proudly still above the rich plains of Meath, which has beheld so many fast succeeding vicissitudes of a nation’s rise, agony, and fall. “No more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone which breaks at night Its tale of ruin tells: Thus, Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks To show that still she lives.”