The extension of great families in this manner is the one fact that comes nearest to substantiating the illusion of a clan system. From the popular I pass on to the learned view. Ireland in the twelfth century, says Mr. Orpen, was still in the tribal state. This is written to justify the Norman invasion. The Normans were not in the tribal state. Mr. Orpen relies strongly on Giraldus as a witness in other matters. Giraldus omitted nothing that occurred to him to say that could justify the invasion, in which his friends and kinsfolk took a prominent part. From first to last it did not occur to Giraldus to say that the Irish were in a tribal state. He knew the facts. If there were outstanding clans in Ireland, _i.e._, noble kindreds, so were there among the invaders. Giraldus himself belonged to the same clan as Milo de Cogan, Gerald FitzGerald, Raymond le Gros, and others of those bold adventurers. He is not ashamed of it, and being half a Welshman, he is under no delusions about the social structure of the Irish nation. When we read on to learn what is Mr. Orpen's idea of an Irish tribe, we are gradually enlightened. We find that the tribe of king Diarmaid is the Ui Ceinnsealaigh. Here is the main authentic basis of the illusion. It is a peculiarity of Irish nomenclature that a territory is called by the name of its ruling family. Ui Ceinnsealaigh thus has two meanings. It means the descendants of Ceinnsealach and it also means the territory over which the chiefs of that lineage ruled as kings, namely the diocese of Ferns. But the Ui Ceinnsealaigh were never at any time more than a tiny fraction of the population of that territory. Énna Ceinnsealach, their ancestor, lived in the fifth century; and however well his posterity may have looked after themselves, they certainly did not displace from the region that got their name any large proportion of its inhabitants descended from other ancestors. The territory called Clann Aodha Buidhe covered a large part of the present counties of Down and Antrim. The tribe named Clann Aodha Buidhe were the descendants of Aodh Buidhe O'Neill, who died in the year 1280. They never at any time amounted to a territorial population. There were clans of Norman origin in Ireland, too, and territories named from them. There were the De Burghs of Clann Ricaird in Connacht, and their country named from them; the De Burghs of Clann William in Munster, and their country still so named; FitzGeralds of Clann Mhuiris in Munster and in Connacht, and the districts still keep their name; there are Power's country, and Roche's country, and Joyce's country, and Condon's, and Barrymore, and Clann Ghiobúin, the Fitzgibbons--family and country bearing the same name after the Irish manner. Every one of these great families was precisely as much and as little a tribe as any Irish tribe that Mr. Orpen has in contemplation; as much and as little a tribe as the Plantagenets or the Bourbons or the Hapsburgs or the Hohenzollerns.