In a message dated 6/19/2011 12:45:02 P.M. Central Daylight Time, jerrykelly@att.net writes: Batar trí prímcheinéla i nHére, .i. Féini 7 Ulaith 7 Gáilni .i. Laigin. (Byrne, p. 106) There were three primary kinship-groups in Ireland, i.e., the Féini, the Ulaidh, and the Gáilni, i.e., the Laighin. Most of the Milesian pseudo-history appears to have been developed from the 7th to 12th centuries (with some small refinements later on, like getting agreement on Fe/inius Farsaid's exact distance from Adam, as we saw in an earlier post). As you know, the passage above directly contradicts the Milesian story. So it looks like it recalls an older, more reliable, tradition. Jerry, that's the same conclusion I was thinking about myself. Under the Milesian scheme all of those should have been one kinship group (ie, Milesian). It's possible the Milesian ancestor, Fenius farsaid, was invented to explain the existing name Feini. I found a copy of the Senchus Mor in Google books. I didn't spend a lot of time with it but it did claim that the Brehon laws were first written down in the time of St. Patrick. That seems a little unlikely to me. Especially since there is a version of the Milesian legends in the text. But that might have been a later insertion. I also ran across references to the berla Feini, which the editors describe as the oldest known form of Irish in Ireland. So old and archaic translators in the 1800s were baffled by many of the terms. And then I also saw a few references to the Feini as the "free farmers" of Ireland. I wasn't sure what to make of that. The statement seemed to broaden the Feini population to include more than just the Dal Cuinn yet there are references to the Feini of Tara. There doesn't seem to be much discussion of Feini out there. I found little in Google Books. John