 | This article includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(March 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Máiné of Tethbae orMáiné mac Néill was a supposed son ofNiall Noigiallach. Writing of him in 1973, Irish historianFrancis John Byrne stated his belief that:
We may suspect then that eastern Uí Máiné was so successfully absorbed into the Uí Néill ambit that their kings, by a polite fiction, were accepted into the dominant dynasty circle ... The fact that the annalistic obit of Máiné mac Néill in 440 is so much earlier than that of any of his supposed brothers also suggests that he was adopted into the dynasty some time after the synthetic historians had agreed to push back the date of Niall's reign by a generation or more. [Byrne 1973:92–93]
It is actually far more likely thatMáine Mór was the ancestor of theUí Maine, whose kingdom once covered a region over the entire of what is nowCounty Galway north and east ofAthenry, all of southCounty Roscommon, and stretching over theRiver Shannon into the regions called Cenél Máiné, Cuircni, Calraige andDelbhna Bethra. Cenél Máiné lay in the south-west portion of the kingdom ofTethbae – on the east shore ofLough Ree – and when it was taken over by theUí Néill, its ruler's ancestor was given a pedigree making him a son of Niall.[citation needed]
Ui Máiné remained a powerful independent kingdom in its own right for several further centuries.