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Manaig of Ulaid are of the descent of Ailill mor, son [read grandson] of Brecan, that is, [descended from] Manach, son of Ailill mor, son of Fiacc, son of Brecan, son of Daire barrach, son of Cathair,' page 128. See further page 162 of the same manuscript where there is a pedigree of the Manaig and the Manaig Ulad. According to the genealogists these tribes, or branches of the same tribe, were thus of Leinster origin, and the one was seated in the present county Down, the other about Lough Erne. They were, therefore, fortuatha or stranger tribes in Ulster, and one of the branches is so described in O'Donovan's edition of the Book of Rights, page 172.

The Fir Manach of Lough Erne were reduced to vassalage, and their rulers, who belonged to the Airghialla race, took the name of the subject people in the course of time. Cairbre Daimairgit, who was King of Airghialla, died in 514 (Annals of Ulster) and had seven sons according to the Book of Ballymote, page 111. Two of these sons were Nadsluaig and Aed. Nadsluaig is described as ancestor of the men of Farney, in later ages the MacMahons and their kindred. Ed a quo Fir Manach, says the genealogist: 'The Fir Manach are descended from Aed.' This Aed was ancestor of O hEignigh and related families, and also, if the genealogies be reliable, of the Maguires, who did not rise to power till the end of the thirteenth century. So that the term Fir Manach, which was originally the designation of a stranger tribe in Ulster, ultimately was applied to their rulers who were of an altogether different origin. This is an interesting fact for which there are parallels in other parts of Ireland. The most ancient sept-name of the family of O hEignigh and their correlatives was Clann Lugháin, a branch of the Airghialla, and under this name we find in Rawlinson B. 502, page 146, and Zeitschrift für Celt. Phil. viii. page 324, a pedigree of Giolla Coluim O hEignigh, who died in 1048, King of Airghialla.

The fifth chapter of Mr. Trimble's book professes to be an account of the early Fermanagh chiefs. It is so erroneous and imperfect that no mere correction of it is possible; it were better ended than mended. I give, therefore, in the following pages a new account compiled from the Annals and from other sources mentioned in the sequel.

The earliest mention of Fir Manach in the Annals of Ulster occurs at the year 1009. Eigneach, Dubhdara, and Maelruanaidh, ancestors of the three families who gave rulers to Fir Manach during the eleventh and twelfth

centuries, themselves flourished in the second half of the tenth. From this period onwards there are numerous entries in the Annals bearing on the present enquiry :

Eigneach, King of Airghialla, died 962. This person was ancestor of O hEignigh. MacCarthy in the index to the Annals of Ulster anglicizes this name 'O'Heney,' but the obvious English equivalent is 'O'Heagny or 'Heagny.'

962.

Dubhdara, son of Eigneach, and ancestor of O Duibhdara, also died

The son of Eigneach (who was son of Dalach) died King of Airghialla in 998. This was possibly Maolruanaidh whose son lived in 1057. Cathal, son of Dubhdara, King of Fir Manach, died 1009.

Giollacoluim O hEignigh, lord of Airghialla, died 1048. This man's pedigree will be given below.

Niall O hEignigh, King of Fir Manach, died 1053.

Domhnall, son of Maolruanaidh, King of Fir Manach, lived 1057. Giollacriost O Duibhdara, King of Fir Manach, died 1076.

O hEignigh was slain in 1095.

Laighnen O Duibhdara, King of Fir Manach, died 1118.

O Maolruanaidh, King of Fir Manach, died 1126.

Giollacriost O hEignigh, King of Fir Manach, died 1127.

Faolan O Duibhdara, King of Fir Manach, died 1128.

Mac na hOidhche O Maolruanaidh, King of Fir Manach, died 1189. O hEignigh, lord of Airghialla, died 1199.

O hEignigh, lord of Fir Manach, lived 1200.

O hEignigh is mentioned for the last time in 1212.

The foregoing entries have been abstracted from the Annals of Ulster and from the Four Masters. The persons to whom they refer were obviously kinsmen. Dubhdara, as already stated, was son of Eigneach, and founder of the family of O Duibhdara, while Maolruanaidh, from whom O Maolruanaidh was named and descended, was a near relative, if not a son, of the same Eigneach. These families drop out of history in the early thirteenth century. At that period Fir Manach began to be dominated by the O'Donnells and other chiefs, and the kinsmen of the rulers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are no longer in evidence. A number of notices in the Annals dating from 1200 to 1300 might be cited here in proof of this, but as Father Dinneen has collected them in his Maguires of Fermanagh (pages 9, 10), the reader may be referred to that volume. Towards the close of the thirteenth century the great family of Maguidhir rises into prominence, and down to the seventeenth members of that family alone ruled the seven tuaths of Fir Manach. Their origin and succession will be dealt with in another paper.

[To be continued.]

PAUL WALSH

'THE HOUND OF HEAVEN'

BY THOMAS P. WHELAN

THE keynote of Victorian poetry is one of doubt, and nowhere is that more audible than in the poems of him who is still acclaimed the master-singer of the Victorian Age. Tennyson is an Agnostic. Arnold despairs and lulls himself into a mournful fatalism. Considered apart from their fine poetical virtues, the lesser lights of that era flicker through the general darkness-so many dull torches in the recesses of a spacious cavern.

There are those who maintain that Francis Thompson is outside the Victorian Age. This is true, but in the same sense that Newman as a convert stands outside that age. Thompson sang of a creed outside of which the Victorians were, but whose beauties appealed to their questioning minds. Newman strove to lead others towards the radiant light of that creed. Thompson sang its doctrines of sorrow, renunciation and penance. He is truly a thorn-crowned laureate, the beautiful but stern realities of whose teachings were untouched by the Agnostic atmosphere of Victorian England.

Of Thompson's poems the most typical is The Hound of Heaven.' One would say that it is the counterpart of his own life; it is also, but in a different sense, the counterpart of the lives of certain Victorians who were intellectual Hedonists. The fundamental thought on which the structure of this beautiful poem is based is that of a soul flying from Divine Love and the heroic self-sacrifice which such love entails.

The soul trembles at the teachings of the gentle Saviour Who drained the chalice of suffering in the garden of sorrow, and Who demands all from those who would wish to have all; it seeks refuge in laughter and tears, in its own most secret thoughts and musings, but the love of the Creator still pursues, and vainly the fugitive rushes

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears.

Turning from itself it seeks in the human hearts around

that shelter and love it so ardently desires, but here also there is no repose, for the term of its hopes is not within the human heart. Its longings are other-world and infinite, and will never be fully realized in what is purely finite and material. Restless, with hopes unfulfilled and with efforts thwarted, the fugitive spirit now turns from the hearts of men and women to the little children, but again its desires are only partially realized; for, as the eyes of the little ones grow suddenly fair with dawning answers, their angels snatch them away. Having forsaken the human heart, and finding no solace in the lovely eyes of childhood, it diverts its attention to Nature. The term of its hopes, the full satisfaction of its desires, cannot be found in human hearts or human eyes; perhaps they may be found in the bosom of the great Mother herself. The troubled spirit will sport with Nature's children and share in their bliss. It will wanton with the lady-mother's vagrant tresses, and will banquet with her in her wind-walled palace; and so it was : I in their delicate fellowship was oneDrew the bolt of Nature's secrecies. I knew all the swift importings On the wilful face of skies.

I knew how the clouds arise
Spumed of the wild sea-snortings;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with-made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine-
With them joyed and was bereaven.

I was heavy with the even,

When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together.

In this passage the poet has soared to a high level, and his flight has been sustained. It is in this and similar passages that Thompson proves himself a poet second to none in those qualities which are ever characteristic of great lyrical poetry.

The questing soul has become one in the delicate fellowship of Nature's children. It has drawn the bolt of Nature's secrecies, and knows part of the inner life of that secret world so full of wonder and mystery, where all things are so linked to one another

That thou cans't not stir a flower,
Without troubling of a star.

Even here in this world of wonder the thirst of the soul is unslaken. No blissful waters of Nature can quench the burning thirst of the fugitive spirit. Its longings are infinite and transcendent. It seems to recognize that all its questings are vain, all its wanderings futile, and so it ceases its flight and breaks down in an agony of sheer despair.

We have reached the climax of the great lyric-one might say a miniature lyrical drama-and it very fittingly comes to us in one of the most sublime passages of modern poetry. Then the cry of the soul goes out in poignant grief. It looks despairingly on its follies and caprices. Its misspent years have vanished and gone like a mist. No longer are its dreams of any avail :

Yea faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist.

They are words of all too weak account to bear the heavy griefs which weigh upon the frail human soul-now that its errors are apparent. The clear light of Faith has not yet dawned upon it, for it is still in darkness, dazed by the smiting lightning, like another St. Paul. The gloom that surrounds it is, after all, only the

Shade of this hand outstretched caressingly.

This poem, whose opening stanzas are so tumultuous, ends in tenderness and pity. There is tenderness in the voice of the Creator as it explains the truths of love and selfsacrifice which have so staggered the fugitive spirit. Yet there are those to whom those truths come as some bright vision laden with light and love. There is pathos in the words of the soul. Its attitude is pitiable and pathetic. The voice of the Creator is no longer like that of a bursting sea, but pitying and caressingly tender :

Ah fondest, blindest, weakest.

I am He Whom thou seekest.

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.

In the events of daily life we often come into touch with tragedies-real human tragedies, but tragedies which are of the body rather than the soul. Seldom if ever do we come into touch with a real spiritual tragedy, i.e., with a tragedy which is purely of the spiritual order. We

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