265-70--though there does not seem to be any very good reason for it--the Dessi or Deisi were expelled from Meath and a part of them settled in the south-west of Wales, in the land then called Demetia.

This was a region which was both thinly inhabited and imperfectly Romanized.

In it fugitives from Ireland might easily find room.

The settlement may have been formed, as Professor Bury suggests, with the consent of the Imperial Government and under conditions of service.

But we are entirely ignorant whether these exiles from Ireland numbered tens or scores or hundreds, and this uncertainty renders speculation dangerous.