Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/21

 significance attaching to it that it is not easy to explain in any critical use of the materials available. It was not for a century after Tuathal that the Connacian dynasty, in the person of Cormac, established itself at Tara and compelled the king&jof Leinster to make their headquarters elsewhere at Naas. Then the central authority took a fresh accession of strength, and a definite and distinctive polity began to emerge, with the looser system that till then had prevailed tightened up and made uniform in all its parts.

The hegemony, for instance, passed, and Cormac became Ard-Ri, or Monarch, bf Ireland. The new province of Meath was created for the maintenance of the new monarchy. The festivals at Tara became more splendid and authoritative, deriving as they now did from the administrative authority of the monarch. This was especially the case as Cormac shines out quite clearly as a man of considerable force of character and a statesman of a very high order. Under his supervision the laws were reduced to writing. They might previously have existed in writing, for there are indications to show that writing existed from a very early time in Ireland; but they were now gathered in a single authoritative book. The immediate result of this would be that a stricter uniformity in their administration was created. To ensure this, and to make more easy the general administration of the country, he regrouped the administrative units of the nation. Until then the nation had consisted of a number of separate stateships. Some were quite small, some were of considerable size. Some had been bound