It is difficult to know what exactly to make of this story of a plebeian revolution. In its actual terms, the story is full of improbabilities, and reads like a fairy tale for children. Another difficulty about it is that a similar story is told of Tuathal's grandfather. There is no inherent improbability in the main fact of the story, the occurrence of a plebeian revolution which for a time displaced the Gaelic ascendancy, and the occurrence of a subsequent complete reaction. Something like it happened in France little more than a century ago and in England under Oliver Cromwell. The occurrence of a revolution and the successful survival of the Connacht dynasty may help us to understand how the kings of Connacht were able afterwards to make such headway not only against their ancient rivals in Ulster but against their former allies in North Leinster; that is, if we understand that Connacht was less shaken and weakened by the revolution than the other provinces were. Again, in the Ulster stories, we hardly hear of the existence of the Picts in Ulster; they are completely dominated by the Ulaidh. But when Ireland emerges into the full light of written history, we find the Picts a very powerful people in east Ulster, Cuailnge itself, the home of the Brown Bull, and the neighbouring plain of Muirtheimhne, Cú Chulainn's patrimony, being now Pictish territory. This may well have been the consequence of some such revolution as the story indicates. The next stage is the occupation of Tara, the old capital of North Leinster, by Cormac, who is fourth in descent from Tuathal, and who should therefore have flourished in the period A.D. 275-300, a time corresponding closely enough with that to which the regnal lists assign him. The fact of the annexation of Tara and the surrounding region, the territory of Brega, is always glossed over by our old historians. This tacit treatment may perhaps be explained. In their histories generally, the monarchy goes back to the Gaelic invasion, and Tara is the seat of the monarchs in remote antiquity, as it actually was in the early Christian period. This location of the monarchy in Tara from time immemorial, like the assumed existence of such a monarchy, exemplifies a very common tendency, the tendency to project the known present into the unknown past.