It is certain that in the beginnings of Irish history we find the tradition of the tribal group, just as we find it in the history of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, and their offshoots the Anglo-Saxons. It is also certain that Ireland, not having been overrun and shaken up by any of the great migrations after the migration of the Celts, and not having been steam-rolled by the levelling weight of Roman imperialism, preserved a great deal of the old tradition. Our old books are full of it. My third lecture dealt very much with the evidences of ancient tribal communities which survived in some shape into historical time. It is, however, perfectly clear to any student of the materials that already in early Christian Ireland the old tribal distinctions are waning and disappearing under various influences. All Irish people, Ebudeans, Ivernians, Picts, Fir Bolg, Galians, are known to each other by the common name of Gaedhil, itself once the name of the dominant Celtic element; to others they are all known as Scotti. So complete is the fusion that, when by ancient custom this or that portion of the community remains liable to pay tributes or taxes in virtue of their being the successor of some old conquered tribe, our old historians or archivists are careful again and again to say that the people themselves are free and that these imposts are attached only to the lands on which they dwell. I think that the popular notion of a Gaelic clan is derived from Scottish writers like Thomas Campbell and Sir Walter Scott. "False wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan. Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one." Here we have the picture of the men of Lochiel's country, Camerons to a man, headed by their Cameron chief. I do not know how far such pen-pictures are true of Scotland and the time to which they relate. I do know that you will find nothing of the kind in historical Ireland. Ask for a similar instance of an Irish clan. I suppose the O'Neills of Tyrone will do. The O'Neills were never more than a small fraction of the people of Tyrone or of any part of Tyrone. Take the period preceding the confiscation of Tyrone. Shane O'Neill, in order to convince certain persons of the futility of trying to poison him, said that if the hundred best men of the name of O'Neill were cut off, there would still be O'Neills to succeed him. That seems to justify Mr. Bigger when he says that there are as many O'Neills in Tyrone to-day as there were then. The fullest lists of the followers of Irish chiefs are to be found in the Elizabethan fiants; and these documents effectually dispel the illusion of an O'Neill at the head of a thousand O'Neills or an O'Brien leading a host of O'Briens. It is quite true, as I have shown in a previous lecture, that by the process of creating mean lords and in other ways, the ruling families provided for their own kinsfolk at the expense of their other subjects, and thus acquired a disproportionate increase.