King who obtained possession of it had the other Kings of ancient Ireland for his vassals. And Cuchullain whose name evokes a whole cycle of myth and story had part of Meath for his patrimony. "Even the man who beat Napoleon was a Meath man," Lord Dunsany exclaimed. That is not true, however. Wellington, though he came of a Meath family, happened to be born in another Irish county.
Lord Dunsany's progenitors, the Norman-Irish or Norse-Irish Plunketts, were able to root themselves in this famous, not to say fabled, Irish territory. The first conquistidore founded two lordships—the lordship of Fingall and the lordship of Dunsany. The domains, the castles and the titles remain from the thirteenth century and form the oldest baronial possessions in the British Islands. Lord Dunsany then belongs to one of the half dozen families in the British peerage who are of actual Norman descent.
His father it is of interest to note was a considerable orator, and his uncle is the well-known Irish statesman, Sir Horace Plunkett. Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the present Lord Dunsany, went to an English public school and an English university; he became an officer in the Guards, and he had gone through the South African war before he began to write.
His work began like an ancient literature with mythology. He told us first about the gods of the lands where his kings, his priests and his shepherds were to abide. The gods were remote upon Pegana, but below them were the thousand Home Gods—Roon, the god of Going, whose temples stand beyond the farthest hills; Kilooloogung, the Lord of Arising Smoke; Jabim, who sits behind the house to lament the things that are broken and cast away; Triboogie, the Lord of Dusk, whose children are the shadows; Pitsu, who strokes the cat; Hobith, who calms the dog; Habinabah, who is Lord of Glowing Embers; old Gribaun, who sits in the heart of the fire and turns the wood to ash. "And when it is dark, all in the hour of Triboogie," says the Chapter in "The Gods
