Brehon Law: A legal handbook

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THE BREHON LAWS

A LEGAL HANDBOOK
BY
LAURENCE GINNELL

MDCCCXCIV

WHEN it became known some time ago that I had undertaken to lecture on the Brehon Laws before the Irish Literary Society, London, one friend congratulated me on the fine subject I had taken in hand, and another on the same day asked me why in the world had I chosen such an uninteresting subject. To these two friends, and the classes they typify, I respectfully dedicate this little volume.

L. G.

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The Brehon Laws

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT LAW

AS in law and all other branches of learning some knowledge of one system is useful in the study of any other system, so also one cannot well appreciate the relative proportions and importance of what belongs to one nation without taking some account of the condition in the same respect at the same period of neighbouring nations with which a comparison may be instituted. For this reason I think our present subject should be introduced by a preliminary notice of the condition of law in early times in neighbouring nations with which we are liable to be compared. We can, however, scarcely do more than glance at one such nation; and remembering where we are, and the circumstances' of our country, the English nation seems the most appropriate for our purpose.

The first collection of Saxon laws into writing was made under Æthelbirht, king of Kent, after Saint Augustine had converted him to Christianity and baptised him. This occurred about the beginning of the seventh century, Saint Augustine having arrived in Kent in A.D. 597. Æthelbirht's was a collection of the most meagre scraps, such as only extreme poverty in this respect could make any people consider worth collecting or preserving. After that time collections of laws continued to be made occasionally in Kent and the various little kingdoms into which England was then divided; but none of them reached respectable dimensions until that of Alfred the Great, towards the end of the ninth century. Alfred is said to have been educated in Ireland. His is the earliest collection the English nation can show of any real value. Besides those given under Alfred's own name, it is probable that he may also be credited with the so-called Dooms of Ine.

It is believed that none of the originals of the early English laws, or works relating to law, were written in the language of the English people, that the originals in Saxon times were always in Latin, and those of Norman times in Latin or Norman-French, and that the copies of the Saxon Dooms now extant are transcripts from the translations made for vulgar use. The originals of Acts of Parliament continued to be written in Norman-French down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the records in legal proceedings down to the middle of the eighteenth century. The brand of native inferiority, first impressed upon the people, continued thus long impressed upon the laws the people were bound to obey. Even in this year of grace, 1894, the royal assent is given to Acts of Parliament in words which neither the Queen nor her subjects understand, and which never were used by any generation of Englishmen.

Bearing in mind these few facts regarding the early condition and historical development of English law, we come in a proper mood to consider the most archaic system of law and jurisprudence of Western Europe, of which many records now exist, namely, what are now generally known as the Brehon Laws. This is not their real name. Irish Laws, or Gaelic Laws, would be a better name for English speakers to use; but the thing meant has always been known to Gaelic speakers as Feineachus. A general term for all law, without special reference to that of Ireland, was Recht. But the law of the Gaels was Feineachus. It included Cain Law, being that which was enacted or solemnly sanctioned by national assemblies, was of universal obligation, and could be administered only by professional judges; and it also included Urradhus Law, which was law relating to local matters, modified by local assemblies and by local customs, and which might be administered by the Flaiths who were not professional lawyers

Inquirers into the native antiquities of Western Europe naturally turn to Caesar to learn what was the state of things he found existing in Gaul; and if that could be ascertained with certainty, we might reasonably assume that the state of things in Ireland at that and at a later period was not very different. But although it was very good of Caesar to write so much as he did, his mind was far too much occupied with Caesar to be troubled recording many facts relating to mere barbarous life, or with adequately checking those recorded. Caesar and other Roman writers give it to be understood that the Gauls on some occasions sacrificed human beings to their gods; and some modern writers calmly assume, as a matter beyond question, that the Gauls "sacrificed human beings in hecatombs," and that the Druids presided over these horrible butcheries. The innate absurdity of such assumptions might have prevented their expression were it not that the ghastly and sensational grows upon and takes possession of the mind that conceives it, until from excessive fulness the temptation to communicate it becomes irresistible. When communicated, it strikes the hearer or reader more forcibly and effectually than truth, modest and sober, can ever hope to do. Remembering what gross and scandalous falsehoods are sometimes deliberately told of our own contemporaries, even by people of respectable and sanctimonious exterior, I cannot admit that there is any truth in those stories of the Gauls and their Druids who are unable to return with their explanation. It is probable that either Caesar was misinformed or some ceremony, observed by the Gauls in putting criminals to death, was misinterpreted to him or by him. At all events, there is no reason at all to think that human sacrifice ever was practised in Ireland.

Owing to the isolated geographical position of Ireland, references to it by Roman and other ancient writers are comparatively few and of a vague and general character; but fortunately a very full study of Gaelic Ireland can be made from native sources without consulting other authorities except for corroboration. Many leading facts of Irish history have been quite satisfactorily ascertained to the extent of three hundred years before Caesar's time. It would, however, be difficult to lay down a connected and consequential narrative until about A.D. 250, in the reign of King Cormac. This was the time at which some of the laws we are about to consider were reduced to their present form, though they had existed in some other form long before. Those laws, as well as the laws comprised in the greater collection made two centuries later, had probably existed, as laws, a thousand years before Cormac's time. Almost all the Brehon Laws had actually reached their full proportions and maturity about the time that Alfred was reducing to order the scraps of elementary law he found existing amongst his people.

It is with the remains of the laws that then existed in Ireland—boulders from the dun—that we are mainly concerned. Needless to say, they were not written in a foreign tongue. No foreign mind conceived them. No foreign hand enforced them. They were made by those who, one would think, ought to make them: the Irish. They were made for the benefit of those for whose benefit they ought to have been made: the Irish. Hence they were good; if not perfect in the abstract, yet good in the sense that they were obeyed and regarded as priceless treasures, not submitted to as an irksome yoke. And the presence or absence of popular sympathy with law I take to be a true test of the quality of that law and the very touchstone of good government. Originating in the customs of early settlers in times beyond the reach of history, these laws grew in volume and in perfection down to the time mentioned; after which, though continually applied, though copied, re-copied, and commented upon, little of substantial value was added to them. They prevailed over the whole country until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, and they prevailed over the whole country except the Pale until the beginning of the seventeenth century. In such a great length of time they must have undergone more or less change; but the political condition of the country during all that time being wholly adverse to true development, the actual changes may be taken to have been the very least possible.

In proportion as they lost in utility owing to this cause, they now gain in value to us as archaic relics. And not to us alone, but to continental peoples; to some especially, because they claim a common origin with with us and have little or no native records reaching so far back as ours; to all, for their philological and general antiquarian interest, and because in these laws can be studied nearer to their source than anywhere else the ancient legal ideas of a Celtic people expanding free from external control. Other Celtic nations were subjected to Roman sway and modified by Roman influences, and now little can be ascertained regarding their pre-Roman state except through Roman sources.

The isolated position of our country, perhaps a disadvantage on the whole, had, at all events, the effect of leaving one nation truly Celtic, while its kindred on the Continent were being transmuted. The incursions of the Danes produced the first external effect on our laws; but only to the extent of stopping their growth and development and throwing what may be called the organs of development into disorder, from which, owing to historical causes, they never recovered. The Danes never obtained supreme control over Ireland, as they did over England and the North of Gaul, but they harassed and plundered the people, lowered the standard of religion, morality, and patriotism, and fatally smote the institutions of the country, so that from the first arrival of the Danes in A.D. 795 the nation and its laws ceased to progress.

The laws were petrified and fossilised, and remained at the expulsion of the Danes what they had been at their arrival. And they remain practically the same still; for to conquer the Danes at Clontarf, though hard the task, was easier than to restore efficiency and fresh growth to institutions once paralysed, or to revive national patriotism, the stagnation of which had become normal. Those institutions had not recovered their former vigour when the Anglo-Normans came, threw the country once more into turmoil, and kept it so. The Normans, like the Danes, had conquered England and established their own institutions there; but even they never conquered the whole of Ireland, and institutions of their introduction flourished only in the Pale, a small district whose extent varied with the fortunes of war, rarely exceeding four of the present Leinster counties. The Anglo-Norman settlers in other parts of Ireland conformed in the main to the Irish laws, with here and there some slight modifications which were strictly transgressions.

Successive English Governments sent over Deputies and Governors, nominally to rule Ireland, but really to rule the Pale, to create as much dissension as possible beyond that limit, and at any rate to maintain a foothold. A country so circumstanced, partially conquered, the mutilated prey for which two nations hungered and tore and thwarted each other, was one in which the rational development of law or of anything else was scarcely possible. And thus it comes to pass that the laws may be said to remain to-day substantially what they were before the arrival of the Danes more than a thousand years ago.

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CHAPTER II.

THE EXISTING REMAINS OF IRISH LAW

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

MOST of the literary remains of ancient Ireland that are really valuable and characteristically beautiful appear to belong to the same distant period; and therefore they are highly interesting philologically, quite apart from the intrinsic beauty of some, which is very great. Of all those remains, those dealing with law are, considered as literature, the least attractive. But their value to the earnest student of antiquity is inferior to none, but is perhaps superior to all the rest, owing to their rigorously authentic character. The charge of having been produced or tinged by imagination cannot be made against the laws, rules, and customs which actually controlled the daily lives, conduct, and destinies of our ancestors, and under which they laboured, fought, played, and prayed, as occasion demanded. These remains at least represent what were once the realities of life: and the knowledge and the study of them must, with absolute certainty, help so far as they go to dispel the mist of years. We are brought if possible still closer to the actuality of individual life by the suits and judgments which are scattered through these laws for the purpose of illustrating their principles and their application.

And while one reads, if perchance his taste should be of wider scope, he is enabled to gather incidentally much archaeological information not strictly legal, but of a kind difficult if at all possible to glean from other sources, all stamped here with the authenticity of the law, and not less valuable for being thus given without design. The fact is as expressive as it is painful that, beyond the limited operations of one or two stunted societies, almost the whole of our Gaelic records, laws, and literature remained in manuscript, and practically inaccessible until the middle of the nineteenth century, and that much of those materials remain so even now at the close of the century. Most of those manuscript books, and some of the longer tracts, the legal as well as the others, refer to and quote from other and older books, sometimes by name, sometimes by a description which had become recognised as a name, as the White Book of such a person, the Black Book of such a place, the Yellow Book or the Speckled Book of So-and-so; and sometimes the reference is general, as to other versions or other books. From these references it is evident that, although we still possess a great deal of written matter as compared with other countries, far more than we possess has been lost. This is not wonderful in the circumstances of Ireland, but it is none the less matter for regret.

Still, competent judges say that our extant manuscript materials are, both for antiquity and intrinsic worth, treasures such as no nation north of the Alps can boast of. Any one who suspects this for a Gaelic exaggeration had better visit the Royal Irish Academy and have his incredulity speedily and agreeably cured by the evidence of his own eyes. Whatever else may be said of those remote ancestors of ours, it must be admitted that they were singularly devoted to literature, and if the remains of their work have a high value and interest for strangers and Teutons, to us whose heritage they are, and whose privilege and pride it is to call Ireland our native land, they should be not alone valuable and interesting, but sacred. A people possessing such precious monuments and indifferent to them would certainly be unworthy of the race and country that produced them, and would merit the censure of civilised mankind. Do we value these treasures as we ought? Do we escape the censure or fall under it? Apparently we fall under it; and this while we possess the power, and at heart the desire, to escape it. In practice we neglect what in theory we venerate; and thus, as in other respects, we perpetuate against ourselves as a nation a wrong begun by others.

But this extraordinary condition of things has not come about spontaneously, as a reader of Mr. Standish O'Grady's Heroic Period might infer. Mr. O'Grady, in common with all who study the subject, laments the fact that Irishmen of the present day devote so little attention to the extraordinary wealth of historic treasures they possess. But the implied assertion is only half a truth, and the candour that prompts telling half a truth when bitter to Irishmen will justify telling the remaining half though it should be bitter to Englishmen; in addition to which we, as real inquirers, are entitled to the whole truth. Ours is the bitterness of loss, theirs the bitterness of guilt. If to be made wince be a wholesome discipline for us, it cannot be unwholesome for our neighbours. Our alleged indifference, then, so far as it exists, is neither native nor natural to us, but is a plant of English culture and a necessary result of the species of English rule that Ireland has experienced.

Both Danes and Normans, the former especially, destroyed our manuscripts in the course of warlike operations; but to modern Englishmen from Elizabeth's time downwards—Ireland's darkest age—to men who came not frankly to plunder as the Danes did, but to govern us and set us a bright example, some of them with Bibles in their hands and Scripture on their lips; to these men the distinction is due of having, in times of so-called peace and in cold blood, burned and destroyed our books, hanged or hunted their owners as vermin, made it criminal to teach or learn the language in which they were written, or indeed to teach or learn at all;—the alternative or rather twofold object of this enlightened statesmanship being to drive the Celts out of their native land or reduce them to savagery in it. Both policies have had a large measure of success; neither has completely succeeded. The Irishmen who, when their own fortunes and hopes, like those of their country, were utterly ruined, risked liberty and life itself during that perilous age for the preservation of those precious monuments of the past, must be not charged with indifference, but credited with devotedness almost equalling that of the original writers. As few ancient nations have been more fruitful in original literary effort, so few modern nations have shown more attachment to literary treasures than the Irish; and in no other case that I am aware of has that natural and creditable attachment been subjected to such a terrible strain.

On this very subject let me quote from Dr. Sullivan, the learned editor of O'Curry's Lectures on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. Dr. Sullivan says, "During the first part of the eighteenth century the possession of an Irish book made the owner a suspected person, and was often the cause of his ruin. In some parts of the country the tradition of the danger incurred by having Irish manuscripts lived down to within my own memory; and I have seen Irish manuscripts which had been buried until the writing had almost faded, and the margins rotted away, to avoid the danger their discovery would entail at the visit of the local yeomanry." Was not that a pretty state of things? What Dr. Sullivan saw was of course but a single isolated instance after the real danger had passed away; but from it we may judge how much was destroyed under Elizabeth, under Cromwell, under William the Third, and throughout the whole of that dark age; and the calculation is materially assisted by the lurid stories heard by some of us at our fathers' firesides.

It is morally certain that at the present moment some priceless Irish manuscripts are mouldering away in old walls, caves, graves, and other places under the earth. The causes of our apparent indifference to historical treasures are so obvious that they cannot possibly have escaped even the most casual and careless reader of our modern history; into the soul of every Irishman worthy of the name they must be indelibly burnt. Every one who cares at all about Ireland knows them, and knows that the real wonder is that we have any such treasures and that anybody cares for them. Mr. O'Grady has an intimate knowledge of all this. Yet he seizes an occasion to censure, neither Elizabeth nor Cromwell, neither the imported yeomanry who were planted on the fat lands of our people nor the governors who planted them there, but Irishmen. Here surely is perceptible the taint of that bitterly anti-Irish institution, Trinity College, Dublin. A man educated anywhere else in the world would, in the premises, place the blame on other shoulders, and if he blamed Irishmen at all in this connection it would be on very different grounds. It does not afford much matter for pride on that side or for shame on this that the Irish people could be, and were, by brute force, robbed of their learning for the purpose of civilising them. But brute force has not yet robbed them of their intelligence or of their love of learning. These, though in a measure rendered latent, still exist and will yet respond to more rational treatment.

The number of persons who can read the manuscripts has indeed been reduced; but the number who would risk much in their preservation is as large as ever; and certainly their veneration would not be less if the vellum were found to smell of turf-smoke contracted in the course of such a history. However this may be, and whatever may be thought of ourselves, we have at least this much matter for legitimate satisfaction that the existence of these manuscripts renders it impossible for any one with a decent regard for truth to charge our ancestors with ignorance. Commercially it were better for us if the order of merit were reversed; but however low we may have fallen we have not reached the depth at which the commercial view alone is adopted. Neither man nor nation lives by bread alone, and if we are satisfied that merit rests where it does, no one else has a right to complain.

In spite of the burning and burying and drowning of manuscripts, a vast number still exist in public libraries and in private collections, in Ireland, in England, and on the Continent. Some of those relating to law are separate works, while others are written on the same vellum or otherwise bound up together with histories, genealogies, poems, religious works, and the like. All have come down by successive transcription. Of the more important works there are duplicate copies, hardly any of them being quite complete, and most of them differing slightly in text owing to the causes which similarly affect all ancient manuscripts, as want of time or want of diligence on the part of transcribers. Most of the existing legal manuscripts are believed to have been written—that is, copied from older ones—between the beginning of the twelfth and the end of the fourteenth century. None of the originals, which were written in the fifth century, now exist; nor are the existing manuscripts thought to have been copied directly from those originals. They are considered to be copies of copies. Repeated transcripts had already been made with, on each occasion, some modernisation here and there of the antiquated phraseology, or with the introduction of a gloss or a commentary to render the matter intelligible.

The laws were originally written in the Bearla Feini, the Fenian dialect of Gaelic. As this language in course of time tended to become obsolete the laws tended to become unintelligible, and the tenacious adherence to old forms of expression common to all laws had to be severed or counteracted in some way. The transcribers did not act according to any uniform plan, nor did any transcriber continue throughout the work the mode of treatment with which he began, but each from time to time translated early into late Gaelic to the extent of some words that were in his time difficult, or left the original phrase standing, and supplied a gloss or a commentary. Each may be considered to have done the best that his circumstances permitted, for writing was not a thousand years ago the simple thing it now is. The great antiquity, both of the original text and of the commentaries, is shown in several ways. Quotations from both are found in works admittedly written not later than the tenth century. Some parts of these older commentaries, although written later than the text, are still very ancient, and besides they contain, as quotations or otherwise, some fragments of traditional law fully as archaic as any in the text. The language being of a highly technical, elliptical and abbreviated character too, and devoid of all proper definitions, is now scarcely intelligible to speakers of what is nominally the same language; and of the few who can read still fewer can confidently construe. Even some of the Gaelic transcribers of the Middle Ages may possibly have erred in its construction.

Imagine a work treated at one time in the manner described, and then, after another century or two had elapsed, treated again in a similarly irregular fashion by another transcriber—here a literal copy, there a translation, in another place a gloss or a commentary, to keep pace with the further changes in the spoken language, and you will have a fair idea of the present condition of the Brehon Laws. What are thus spoken of under the general name of commentaries contain much matter not suggested by that title. Many independent decisions and dicta, old and current, are inserted under particular texts with which some of them have little or no connection, but as the most suitable or most convenient place the writer could find for them. The most valuable of the commentaries were written before the existing manuscripts were transcribed, and they interpret not alone obscure passages in the text but the substantive law itself.

Later commentaries were written by various hands on the present manuscripts, and even these may not be all original. They were written between the original lines, on the margin, at the foot, wherever room was found. For the most part a text is given; but in some instances the whole of the original text does not now exist, only the opening words of passages being retained in the existing transcripts. These opening words, used as headings or catchwords, are quite meaningless in themselves as they now stand; but of course they were full of meaning for those whose business it was to know what followed. They are now followed by commentaries from which may be gathered the substance of the original, as a commentary on the Lord's Prayer might be headed with the words "Our Father." Comments upon law and glosses upon words are inserted without any apparent attempt to keep them separate, and with the latter are frequently given an assortment of etymological speculations in which the writers display some knowledge of what they call "the four principal languages of the world," Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Gaelic. Derivations of words, of rules, and of customs are suggested almost at random, and are no more reliable than similar attempts of ancient Roman writers; some of them being clearly fabulous and not seriously meant. When the commentary is mainly etymological and in the nature of a translation of the text, and both are translated into English side by side, the result in the English is an unpleasant tautological repetition of the same thing. Sometimes the commentators purport to explain the text, start with that apparent object but with a relative pronoun for which it is now difficult to find an antecedent, plunge in medias res, and end by leaving the whole matter quite as obscure as the text had left it.

Accounts of the effects of particular judgments are also met with, some of them legendary, others of real value. According to one commentator, "Sencha MacColl Cluin was not wont to pass judgment until he had pondered upon it in his breast the night before." This probably refers to a judgment in a grave case involving human life. Judges of the Hebrew nation in early times were accustomed to fast the night and morning before passing a death sentence. The text of the old laws is fairly self-consistent throughout. The commentaries, as might be expected from the manner in which they were written by different hands at different times, are not always reconcilable, and there is a good deal of tiresome repetition in them. The translators have found them useful in many cases, misleading in some. They are interesting throughout.

The condition just described involves so many difficulties in dealing with these laws, that Gaelic scholars generally in the last century believed the translation of them to have become impossible, the key having been lost. If occasionally an educated Englishman of the present day finds the legal documents in which he is personally concerned hard to understand, though assisted by his knowledge of the actual facts to which they relate, his knowledge of the language and of contemporary life in all its phases, how much more difficult must it not be to draw legal writings of a distant past from their dust and cobwebs and the greater load of impedimenta just mentioned, to understand them fully and to render them correctly, when the system of life which those laws contemplated and provided for has vanished from the earth leaving no derivative institutions in existence?
In 1852 a Royal Commission was appointed to translate and publish the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, and thus bring them within the reach of English readers. The nature of the undertaking may be judged from the difficulties enumerated, and many others must have been encountered in the actual performance of the work. It is only just that we who can now read those laws at our ease should remember those difficulties and be grateful to the learned men who have surmounted them; and we cannot be surprised to find that, distinguished scholars though they were and are, they have actually failed to understand some passages which they have translated; and they repeatedly emphasise the fact that their translation is in certain parts conjectural only and must not be taken as final or satisfactory.

Many technical terms relating to status, ranks and degrees, as well as names of fines, diseases of horses, &c, are retained in the English untranslated; some because the translators were unable to satisfy themselves as to the true meaning; others because the words have no direct or adequate equivalents in English, and would demand a tedious circumlocution each time they had to be used; others because, although the translators understood them, and could find suitable equivalents in English, yet remembering that the ancient Irish manuscript materials have never in modern times been fully investigated, the translators have, with commendable modesty and patriotism, retained the original words, appending to them temporary explanations to serve until that better time comes for which, without being politicians, we are all permitted to hope, when those laws can be thoroughly analyzed and explained. This latter work is one of greater difficulty still, and should be undertaken only by men free from the preliminary work of translating, free from the necessity of making a living, and endowed with a keen and unconquerable genius for minute research. This was not the work undertaken by the Commissioners; it still awaits the enthusiast.

That these laws should be found difficult is not wonderful, seeing that the English are now unable to translate some technical terms in the Saxon laws so late as those of the reign of Cnut.

The Brehon Law Commissioners have already published, at different dates as the work proceeded, four volumes of the Ancient Laws of Ireland, and a fifth is now (1894) in the press. The ancient law book called the Senchus Mor, or rather all that remains of it, was the first selected for publication, as being one of the oldest and most important portions of the Brehon Laws which have escaped destruction. This ancient work occupies the whole of the first volume of the translations, the whole of the second volume, except an appendix of scraps, and a portion of the third volume.

The part of the Senchus Mor given in the first volume deals directly with the law of distress, that is the seizure by distraint of property for the satisfaction of debt, and only incidentally with other subjects. It will be seen in the chapter on distress why this branch of law required so much space and was given this extraordinary prominence. This first volume of the translations was published in 1865. The second volume, which was published in 1869, contains very interesting fac-similes of ancient writing, and more than four hundred pages of text of the Senchus Mor, consisting of the completion of the law of distress, the law of services of hostage sureties (from which I have not drawn for the present occasion), the law of fosterage, the law of tenure, and the law of social connections, all of which are of the highest interest. The text of this volume is preceded by a long dissertation, the object of which is to prove that Saint Patrick was a Briton. Interesting though this might be as a separate publication, dependent for its worth solely on its author's name, I cannot but think it out of place here where the question cannot be discussed on equal terms.

In the third volume of the translations, published in 1873, further specimens of ancient writing are given. The volume contains a long general preface, followed by a special introduction to the remaining portion of the Senchus Mor—the Corus Bescna—which itself occupies seventy-nine pages. This is the conclusion of the Senchus Mor so far as it is now known to exist.

The Corus Bescna, or customary law, is said to have been the fifth book of the original work, there being then more than five books. Possibly the remaining portions exist somewhere, but they have not been discovered. The Senchus Mor, as now given to us, is not clearly divided into books. Portions of the original work having been lost, we may be thankful to get the remainder kept together in any way. After the conclusion of the Senchus Mor in the third volume, we are given nearly one hundred pages of preface to the Book of Aicill, followed by the Book of Aicill itself, which, with an appendix, occupies over five hundred pages. The fourth volume opens with a long and elaborate introduction containing a discussion of the different subjects treated in the volume, but dealing especially with the Irish family and clan system. The text of this volume consists of a number of tracts selected as especially illustrating the land laws of the ancient Irish, the law of taking possession, and the laws affecting the constitution of clan and fine and the rights and obligations of members of those two organisations. I have no knowledge of the contents of the fifth volume now in type.

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CHAPTER III.

THE SENCHUS MOR

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

FROM the synopsis just given of the work already done by the Brehon Law Commission, it will be seen that the Senchus Mor, or Grand Old Law, occupies the first and largest part of it. That ancient work was designed to be a comprehensive and more or less codified embodiment of the laws which were of universal obligation over the whole country before the arrival of St. Patrick. Outside it such special rules as occasion demanded were made or sanctioned by local assemblies, but all were so framed as to harmonise with and be subject to the general law as set forth in the Senchus Mor. This is a great collection, not of statutes, proclamations, or commands of any sort, but of laws already known and observed from time immemorial; call them rules or customs if you will, but having the force of laws, authoritatively set forth in this work, partly by way of direct statements or propositions, partly by way of judicial decisions in actual cases. The work contains nothing of the harsh, peremptory, imperative style of early Roman law. The writers do not say, Go, do this, or Go, do that, or If a man does so and so, let him be hurled from the Tarpeian Rock. No; they do not enact anything. Pursuing the more gentle course of the later Roman lawyers, they state what the law is, support the statement with the decisions of the wisest Brehons, and then leave the law to prevail suo vigore. They explain that the men of Erinn having considered the matter in times past decided that it was best it should be so, and that nobles, chiefs and tribes have loyally observed these laws. Any alteration really desired could be effected, according to its scope, either in the local assembly or in the national assembly. Being Plebiscita in the very best sense, not emanating from the mouth of a tyrant but from the wisest heads of the nation, it followed as a natural consequence that these laws were obeyed and venerated as the spirit by which the nation ought to be ruled. There was therefore no occasion for the imperative, none for coercion. It was needless to force people to do that which they took pride in doing. Besides, the laws having been made by the nation itself were, of course, designed to promote and secure its wellbeing and happiness, and were therefore broadly just and generally found favourable to every good purpose.

One of the Gaelic commentators says of the contents of the Senchus Mor, "In the Senchus Mor were promulgated the four laws, namely—(1) the law of fosterage; (2) the law relating to free tenants and the law relating to base tenants; (3) the law of social relationship; (4) the binding of all by their verbal contracts; for the world would be in a state of confusion if verbal contracts were not binding." This is a very inadequate presentation of the contents of the work. The most important branch of law dealt with in the work is wholly omitted from this enumeration, and those mentioned are given neither in the order of their arrangement nor in that of their importance. But the commentary goes on: "The binding of all to their good and bad contracts prevents the lawlessness of the world. Except the five contracts which are dissolved by the Feini, even though they be perfected—(1) The contract of a labourer without his chief; (2) the contract of a monk without his abbot; (3) the contract of the son of a living father without the father; (4) the contract of a fool or mad woman; (5) the contract of a woman without her husband." "In it was established the dire-fine of each one according to his dignity; for the world was at an equality until the Senchus Mor was established." These few quotations give an idea of the nature of the commentaries and of the scope of the Senchus Mor proper.

The Senchus Mor was, according to the introduction to it, compiled at the suggestion and under the supervision of St. Patrick in the time of King Laeghaire (Leary), when Theodosius was Ard-Rig of the world. The same introduction places St. Patrick's arrival in the ninth year of the reign of Theodosius as Ard-Rig of the world, and in the fourth year of the reign of Laeghaire as Ard-Rig of Erinn. Theodosius the Second is the emperor meant. While a mere child he succeeded his father Arcadius as Emperor of the East in A.D. 407. On the death of his uncle Honorius in 423, he became Emperor of the West also, and thus Ard-Rig or monarch of the world. Nine years after this date was 432, which is also the date of the arrival of St. Patrick according to the Four Masters and other Irish authorities. Theodosius did not continue Emperor of the West during those nine years, but voluntarily resigned that position to Valentinian the Third and confined himself to the East again. However, as the East and West were long ruled as two parts of one empire rather than as two distinct empires, the same laws being promulgated simultaneously in both, the partial and friendly abdication of Theodosius may well have escaped the notice or comprehension of Irishmen in those times. In the commentary it is stated that at the end of nine years after the arrival of St. Patrick the Senchus Mor was completed. That would be A.D. 441. In the Annals of the Four Masters it is said, "The age of Christ 438. The tenth year of Laeghaire. The Senchus Mor and Feineachus of Ireland were purified and written." The work must have extended over several years, and those from 438 to 441 appear the most probable.

The laws, being wholly the production of pagans, needed some modification to reconcile them with the requirements of Christianity. St. Patrick having during seven or eight years of missionary work all over the country, as well as in the previous years of his bondage, learned in what respects the laws conflicted with his teaching and thwarted his efforts, desired, as well for the material welfare of the people as for the success of his mission, to have the laws amended. The most permanently and universally effective way in which this could be done was to have a simultaneous collection and revision of the laws decreed by a great assembly of the nation, and then to take care that the work should be actually performed by men imbued with the Christian spirit. Accordingly, "He requested the men of Erinn to come to one place to hold a conference with him. When they came to the conference the Gospel of Christ was preached to them all. . . . And when they saw Laeghaire and his druids overcome by the great science and miracles wrought in the presence of the men of Erinn, they bowed down in obedience to the will of God and Patrick, in the presence of every chief in Erinn. It was then that Dubhthach (pronounced Dhoovah) was ordered to exhibit the judgments and all the poetry (literature) of Erinn, and every law which prevailed amongst the men of Erinn, through the law of nature, and the law of seers, and in the judgments of the island of Erinn, and in the poets. Now the judgments of true nature which the Holy Spirit had spoken through the mouths of the brehons and just poets of the men of Erinn from the first occupation of the island down to the reception of the faith were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not clash with the Word of God in the written law and in the New Testament, and with the consciences of believers, was confirmed in the laws of the brehons by the ecclesiastics and the chief men of Erinn; for the law of nature was quite right, except the faith and its obligations, and the harmony of the Church and the people. And this is the Senchus Mor." Yes, such is the Senchus Mor, a name which it is said to have received not from the magnitude of the work but from the greatness of the number and nobility of the assembly by which it was sanctioned. This latter statement, however, is rendered doubtful by the existence of a Senchus Beg. (Mor - Great. Beg - Little. Senchus is pronounced nearly Shankus).

It will be observed that the account just quoted treats the laws in the plainest possible terms as preexisting, and neither as freshly enacted nor as imported. In another place the introduction is equally explicit on this point. Some of the commentaries written centuries later, when Christian zeal was greater than critical acumen or historical accuracy, attributed the origin of the laws to the influence of Cai, an imagined contemporary of Moses, who had learned the law of Moses before coming from the East. Of course this myth deserves no consideration. Cai is only another word for ollamh, or sage.

In other late commentaries, and also in other writings in which reference is made to the laws, so much importance is, by a pious exaggeration, attached to what Saint Patrick had done that the Senchus Mor itself is called the Cain Phadraig, or Patrick's law. The abandonment of paganism may have caused the discontinuance of some particular species of actions, and hence some omissions from the statement of the laws; the introduction and enthusiastic adoption of Christianity profoundly affected the moral and religious life of the people, producing eventually new causes and new law; some rules of Canon Law, or rather Church Law, introduced for ecclesiastical purposes, were quite novel and therefore striking, and the Christian spirit breathed through the whole law was important; but the actual changes were few, and substantially the laws remained the same as they had existed for centuries before.

The number of the authors of the Senchus Mor is preserved in one of the alternative names given to it in the introduction and in some of the commentaries. In the introduction it is said, "Nofis therefore is the name of the book, that is the knowledge of nine persons." And again it says, "Nine persons were appointed to arrange this book, namely, Patrick and Benen and Cairnech, three bishops; Laeghaire and Corc and Daire, three kings; Rossa mac Trechim, a Doctor of Bearla Feini, Dubhthach, a Doctor of Bearla Feini and a Poet, and Fergus the Poet." Benen, Latinised Benignus, was Saint Patrick's favourite disciple, and afterwards became a bishop and a saint. He was a Munsterman by birth, but was residing at Duleek at the time of Saint Patrick's arrival. Cairnech, who is said to have been a native of Cornwall, was also a follower of Saint Patrick. He, too, became a bishop and a saint, and is honoured as such in both the Irish and the English calendars. Laeghaire, as already stated, was ard-rig at Tara, and was a son of Niall the Great, known also as Niall of the Nine Hostages, who in his time had overrun Britain and Gaul in much the same fashion as the Danes of a later period overran those countries. It is believed that Laeghaire did not become a Christian. If he remained an infidel he must have been a very tolerant one, for the principal officers of his court appear to have become Christian like the rest of the nation; he gave his sanction to the convening of the assembly which ordered the preparation of the Senchus Mor, every facility for carrying out the work, and in no way opposed the modifications suggested by Saint Patrick; nor does he appear to have raised any obstacle to the propagation of Christianity. He died at Tara, and was buried in one of the mounds there, standing and fully armed, facing the south. Corc was the King of Munster and resided at Cashel. He also is said to have remained a pagan. He died in battle. Daire was the sub-king of a portion of Ulster, and chiefly from the fact that he afterwards gave the site of Armagh to Saint Patrick to found his see, it is inferred that he must have become a Christian.

Of the nine nominal authors, the remaining three were the learned men who really did the work. They were men specially qualified from the legal and national point of view, all three being eminent in all the learning of the time; and specially qualified from Saint Patrick's particular point of view, all being converts to Christianity. For Saint Patrick's missionary method was first to make a bold attempt to convert the learned and powerful. Besides their personal qualifications, those three men being specially chosen on this solemn occasion for the performance of a task of the greatest national importance, they were assiduously provided with whatever manuscript or other material of the kind existed, and given every possible assistance in the performance of the undertaking. Dubhthach mac ua Lugair was at once the chief brehon and chief bard of the nation, a position to be reached only by means of the highest legal and literary attainments. He was a man celebrated for centuries after, on what grounds scholars still have some means of judging, for several fragments of his poetry are still extant, in the libraries of the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College, and in some libraries on the Continent. A later Gaelic commentator on the Senchus Mor says, "Dubhthach mac ua Lugair put a thread of poetry around it for Patrick."

It was usual to state in ancient Irish manuscript books the Name of the Author, the Time of writing, the Place of writing, and the Occasion, Cause, or Object of writing. It was in accordance with this custom that the introduction to the Senchus Mor gave the information just noticed; and it goes on to tell in the following words where the compilers sojourned at the different seasons of the year while the work proceeded:—"The place of the Senchus Mor was Temhair in the summer and in the autumn, on account of its cleanness and pleasantness during those seasons; and Rath-guthaird, where the stone of Saint Patrick is at this day in Glenn-na-Mbodhur, near Nith nemonnach, was the place during the winter and spring, on account of the nearness of its firewood and its water, and on account of its warmth in the time of winter's cold." Temhair, genitive Teamhrac, pronounced Tara, is now so called [Gaelic words are frequently adapted to English in the genitive, speakers of modern English being generally ignorant of true declension]. Glennavohur has been satisfactorily identified as a lovely sheltered glen near Nobber, in Meath. A small stream called the Nith flows through it, and in this stream still stands the stone called Saint Patrick's stone.

The manuscripts of the Senchus Mor now existing are four in number:—

1. A comparatively full copy among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin.
2. An extensive fragment in the British Museum.
3. A large fragment in Trinity College, Dublin.
4. Another large fragment in Trinity College, Dublin.

All these manuscripts were translated by Dr. O'Donovan, and afterwards collated in consultation with O'Curry and other Gaelic scholars, breaks and obscure passages in one being made up and illustrated respectively from the others, and everything done to render the translation as perfect as possible.

No credit whatsoever is due to Trinity College as an institution for the preservation of the legal or other ancient documents now stored there. When it was dangerous to preserve them, they were preserved by Irish peasants in spite of the danger, in spite of the system of government which created the danger and of which Trinity College was a part and an instrument; and it was only when Ireland's darkest age, which Trinity College had heralded, was coming to an end, that most of those ancient documents reached their present resting-place.

Some English critics have raised various objections against the possibility of the Senchus Mor having been compiled under the supervision of Saint Patrick, as, for instance, that he had enough to do besides, that he could not have been a member of the Irish national assembly, and so on. Personally, I do not think these shallow objections deserve any notice; but whoever cares to know how little of substance there is in them should read Dr. Hancock's comments thereon. He shows them to be evidence of either ignorance or want of due consideration. He might have added that they are, in some instances, evidence of the old English animus which would, if possible, deny the existence of the Senchus Mor itself, and in fact does so by representing that Ireland was wholly without law until English law was introduced. Many generations of English children have been deliberately taught this falsehood at school, and when they have grown up the fact that a thing is respectable and Irish is quite sufficient proof for them that it does not exist at all. It is the very existence of the Senchus Mor and of our beautiful illuminated manuscripts that confounds such people, and therefore irritates them. Knowing that themselves cannot err, they feel that the facts are perverse and have got wrong somehow. They would willingly lavish money digging for such things in the débris of Greece or in the sands of Egypt, but if told of its existence in Ireland they duly shrug their shoulders and proceed to doubt and criticise instead of taking the trouble to learn. A similar modification and codification of laws took place in Gaul about a quarter of a century earlier than in Ireland; and we have already observed that more than a century and a half later Saint Augustine had the scraps of Saxon laws that existed in Kent collected, arranged, and modified.

I find it stated that after the laws had been collected and revised by the Committee of Nine, they did not ipso facto take effect in their altered state until sanctioned by the national assembly. No authority is given for this statement, nor have I met with any in the Senchus Mor itself. But since without a positive national ratification and acceptance, although the changes effected were not such as could be called revolutionary, they might be disputed in some quarter. As nothing of this sort appears to have occurred, and as the universal acceptance and stability of the alterations were essential to the success of Saint Patrick's work, there is little doubt that he took the obvious precaution of having the alterations sanctioned in the most formal and effectual manner then known, namely, by a great assembly. Whether the second assembly was a special one of an unusual character like the first, or the ordinary Feis of Tara, there is no record to show.

[Delbáeth]

CHAPTER IV.

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY

SOME historical writers go so far as to say that there was an entire absence of legislative power in ancient Ireland. This is quite too sweeping, and wholly inconsistent with the ascertained facts of the period in which we are mainly interested, the period, namely, of the compilation of the Brehon code. But, unfortunately, it is applicable to the nation, though not quite so to the clan, at a subsequent period when the national assembly had ceased to meet. Authors who appear to be better informed maintain that there were five different sorts of legislative assemblies in ancient Ireland, some of them being for national, some for provincial, and some for local or tribal purposes. No one has yet sufficiently investigated the subject to be able to set forth with precision what the constitutions, duties and powers of those assemblies were.

The idea of making laws does not appear to be natural to primitive man. This is proved by the early history of many nations gleaned with the greatest care; though a good deal that is theoretical might be advanced to the contrary. The prevailing sentiment of primitive races always has been, and still is, that laws handed down from remote antiquity should not be meddled with. The object of the long and apologetic preambles of old English Acts of Parliament was to soothe this sentiment and reconcile it to the changes about to be enacted. So long as such a sentiment prevails, and to its extent, there is a reluctance to tamper with laws. I cannot say how far this sentiment prevailed in Ireland, but it is certain to have existed to some extent; and what is given as a Gaelic proverb would go to support it—"The old rule transcends the new knowledge." But quite apart from this sentiment, the simple life of the people, the system of clan and fine, with its network of rights conferred and duties imposed, and the just character of the existing laws must have reduced to a minimum the necessity for direct law-making.

When nations which had not fallen under subjection to a despotism had arrived at the idea of making and altering their laws, they at first met in public assembly and did it by direct vote of the free and qualified citizens, those citizens being on such occasions, in some nations, armed and clashing their arms in token of final assent. Later on when some system of representation or delegation had been devised, the assemblies so formed were usually given power, not only to make and alter the laws, but to enforce them and also to apply them judicially, and to determine whether they had or had not been observed or violated. There being little direct making of new law, but chiefly a gradual adaptation and blending in the course of administration, there was no clearly marked distinction between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. All those functions were discharged, for instance, by the Saxon Witan; and it was from such a state of things, though in very different circumstances, that the English Star Chamber arose.

The judicial powers of the House of Lords and of the Privy Council of the present day come, through various winding ways, from the same source. These observations apply so generally to other nations that one would expect to find traces of a similar evolution in Ireland; yet those who have read Irish manuscripts most extensively assure us that, so far as they have been able to discover, the Irish always had courts of justice quite distinct from their legislative assemblies. Irish courts of justice appear to have attained a far more advanced stage of development than Irish legislative assemblies. The converse of this would be true of ancient Rome, for instance. But some of the Irish assemblies, perhaps all, were still much more than legislative; or rather the work of legislation does not appear to have been the sole, or even the principal, duty of any of them.

In pagan times, at all events, their primary and principal duties were of a semi-religious character, with legislative, executive, administrative, and social duties superadded as occasion arose. And possibly the introduction of Christianity effected no greater change in the assemblies than the elimination of the old religious observances. Some of the assemblies were constituted mainly of the Flaiths, or nobles, with a small number of other distinguished men, and in this respect may be said to have resembled the present House of Peers. A national assembly of this character met at Tara, and there was in each provincial kingdom an assembly constituted on the same exclusive model. Some of the assemblies, especially those that were local, were probably constituted of as many heads of families of the céile, or freehold class, as chose to attend them, the clan system conferring the qualification, and there being no other form of election.

The wilful disturbance of any lawfully constituted public assembly, national or local, was one of the few things for which a fine was not considered adequate punishment; the penalty was death.

[Delbáeth]

SECTION II.

THE FEIS OF TARA

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

THE most important of all the ancient assemblies was the Feis of Tara. It is said by some to have been founded, in the year of the world 3884, by King Ollamh Fodhla, whose name means Sage of Ireland, and whose reign was so propitious that "it was difficult for the stalk to bear its corn in his reign." Others say the Feis originated in funeral games. The truth probably is, that it originated in funeral games, and was turned to the other purposes by Ollamh Fodhla. At all events, a national assembly was held at Tara from a very early period down to A.D. 560, when the last was held there under King Dermot, son of Fergus.

The Feis of Tara was an assembly of the leading men of the whole island—kings, tanists, flaiths, warriors, brehons, chief poets, &c.—not a meeting of all classes of society. It was not ambulatory, like the English national assembly of later times, held now in one place, now in another, wherever the king happened to be; nor was it haphazard like that by which Magna Carta was adopted. Its constitution and its place of meeting were fixed, and its times of meeting fairly regular. It met at Tara every third year, three days before the 1st of November, and it continued in session three days after the 1st of November. Thus its ordinary session lasted for seven days. For some time before it ceased, however, it had been summoned less frequently.

There was an important pagan festival observed all over the country on the feast of Belltaine, which was the 1st of May; and at Tara it was the occasion of an assembly lasting for some days. But those assembled on this occasion seem to have been brought together mainly by religious and social motives and the attractions of the royal court.

Dr. Joyce is of opinion that some of the ancient Irish national assemblies did directly enact laws, but that the Feis of Tara was not one of these; and he doubts that the Feis was convened to enact laws, and says there is no ancient authority for holding that it was. Other authorities do not agree with Dr. Joyce in this latter view, and I find himself speaking in another place of the summoning of the Feis on "some urgent occasion." An assembly which was summoned on an urgent occasion, when there were serious matters to be considered and dealt with, was certainly summoned for some practical purpose, and must have been in some sense the Great Council of the Nation; and if it did not enact laws, it must have deliberated on national affairs with effect, which is a near approach to law-making.

In a poem, written in the tenth century, the Feis is spoken of as having been convened "to preserve laws and rules." Edward O'Reilly, the Gaelic scholar, calls the Feis "a parliament." It may be that neither the Feis of Tara nor the other assemblies were convened for the express purpose of making new laws, or ever professed to make new laws, but only to promulgate, reaffirm, retrench, modify or otherwise affect laws long known but for some temporary or partial or local reason suspended, or to extend to the whole kingdom some advantageous local custom, or to correct or abrogate some vicious custom, or to enforce uniformity among the brehons in case of conflicting judicial interpretation, or to restrain on the ground of some local or temporary hardship the strict enforcement of a law otherwise just. There are countless things like these which a national assembly could do well, and in doing which it would be modifying the law; and although it never called itself a legislative assembly, and never claimed to make laws, we are still quite justified in calling its acts legislative. While many eminent authorities hold that the Feis of Tara did these things, Dr. Joyce's view cannot be accepted as final.

Among the other duties performed at the Feis was one of some importance even now, but of infinitely more then, because on it the title to rank, property, and privileges largely depended. This was the comparing and checking of the local pedigrees with each other, and with the Monarch's Book, or Register, kept at Tara. Analogous duties are now divided between the offices of the Herald and the Registrar-General.

King Dermot died in A.D. 563 (or 565), and after his death no Ard-Rig resided at Tara. No separate Ard-Rig was any more appointed with the kingdom of Meath for his mensal. One of the provincial kings usually assumed the office, or at least the title, retaining and residing in his own province. Tara was deserted, and no place for holding a national assembly was ever substituted. To the time from this date onward, the saying applies that there was no central legislative authority acting for the whole island. Once after the reign of Dermot a national assembly, or convention, was held at Tara, but although legislative it can hardly be called the Feis. It was held in the reign of the monarch Loingseach about A.D. 697; and at the instance of Saint Adamnan a law was adopted which, among other things, freed women from liability to military service, and prohibited their presence in battle.

After the abandonment of Tara as a royal residence, and the consequent discontinuance of a national assembly, it can hardly be said that one concrete state, broad and national in basis and concentrated in executive power, existed in Ireland. As though Tara had been the vivifying sun of true national life, a summons or word of command from any other source never could be and never was frankly recognised as the voice of the Ard-Rig, never could and never did inspire the old generous patriotism, but often inspired bitter jealousy of (as was deemed) a local usurper in the person of the nominal Ard-Rig, a desire to dispute his title if possible, and to set up a rival. Many holders of the office after Dermot's time are marked kings "with opposition"; and though this opposition was not successful, its existence had a disintegrating effect among the people, and in law actually reduced the king's status and rights in certain cases.

True national unity, and with it true national security, was at an end. The nation was divided into a large number of small isolated communities called Tuaths, the territorial extent of which is in many cases represented by the modern baronies. These communities had some of the characteristics of states, and fancied themselves such, but were in reality fragments of a nation falling asunder, and were doomed to become political ruins if not re-united. Small nationalities are dear to the Spirit of Freedom, but she loves not the aimless subdivision of a nation that is really one in race and interest. There always had been much independence of action in the several tuaths; and this was well so long as it originated in worthy aims, or in wholesome and honest rivalry, and could be subordinated at once to the interests of the tuath, and of the nation by the controlling and assimilating influence of a supreme central authority. But once that authority ceased to exist at Tara it de facto ceased to have any existence; the several tuaths pursued what they deemed their several interests, keen in the assertion of a puny autonomy but blind and indifferent to the common national interest; and the country sank into the condition of England under what is called the Heptarchy, when the petty Saxon kingdoms were so independent that they were almost constantly at war with each other.

It is thought that one of the events which had most influence in bringing about the consolidation of England was the reduction of the Church there to a single national Church by Theodore of Tarsus, when Archbishop of Canterbury, in the latter part of seventh century. Before his time, the territorial limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had varied and shifted with the varying fortunes of the little kingdoms. He fixed permanently the limits of spiritual jurisdiction, and subjected the Church throughout England to one central authority. Some such service would then have been a boon of inestimable value to Ireland, even if it had come from foreign lands; for while over-centralisation is undoubtedly a great evil, so much of it as is necessary to inspire a common patriotism and prevent the degradation of local rivalry to sordid jealousy is as undoubtedly a great good. It happened that the Church in Ireland exerted no such influence and afforded no such example, for it had from the beginning accommodated itself to the genius of the people to the extent of assuming somewhat of a clannish complexion without the national organism and outward visible bond with which we are now familiar. Each clan aimed at being self-provided, self-contained, and self-existing in every respect, spiritual and temporal. It built small churches, monasteries, and schools; endowed them with lands, stock, and all necessaries, in the same generous manner in which, in previous generations, it had provided for the Druids and other learned men; it dedicated, as a rule, every first-born son to the Church; and it retained to itself the right of succession to all posts, clerical and lay, so long as it possessed qualified persons. Indeed, the requirement of qualification can hardly have been always very rigorously insisted upon, inasmuch as positions of great importance were in many instances filled for successive generations by members of the same family, as though in a sense hereditary. This latter feature, however, was due to a certain general tendency, which we shall have a more suitable occasion to notice.

The clan had its bishop too, or an abbot having episcopal faculties; and so far as territorial jurisdiction was known at all his was coterminus with that of the clan. The bond between those pastors seems to have been of a very vague character, the chief connecting link apparently being the purely spiritual one of a common faith. The successor of Saint Patrick was always Primate, and always held in special reverence over the whole country. The occupant of that position could have done for Ireland what Theodore did for England; but being usually a man of Irish training, and seeing things as he had been accustomed to see them and with Irish eyes, the necessity for organising the Church on the modern principle does not appear to have occurred to him with sufficient force to call forth effective action in its attainment until a later time, just when the nation had become incapable of profiting by the example.

[Delbáeth]

SECTION III.

TAILLTENN AND UISNEACH

From The Brehon Laws by Laurence Ginnell, 1894

ANOTHER very celebrated national assembly was that held for many centuries at Tailltenn on the Blackwater in Meath. It was a general assembly of the people—that is to say, not restricted to men of rank and distinction like that at Tara. It was held annually about the beginning of August. It also originated in funeral games, or rites; but its subsequent purposes were even more manifold than those of the assembly at Tara, and they varied from time to time. They always included the social and political; and, as at all the great assemblies, the laws were always proclaimed anew—that is, read aloud in public that they might not be forgotten, and any changes in them carefully explained to those present. The last of the regular assemblies at Tailltenn was held under King Roderick O'Connor in A.D. 1168.

The Hill of Uisneach, in Westmeath, was, in pagan times, the site of a national assembly distinctly legislative in character. It was at one such assembly, held there about one hundred years before the birth of Christ, that a uniform law of distress for the whole country was adopted. Uisneach has been the site of many political conferences since then, but I have met with no account of an assembly there, purely legislative, since the nation became Christian.