supplies. But in all matters of claim, either on their services or on their customary gifts, he was obliged to observe closely the limitations which immemorial custom had put to the privileges and rights connected with his office.5

As the feudal system, which acknowledged no common ownership of the freemen in the land, drove out the social system founded on kinship, the lord of the manor in England and the feudal substitutes for chiefs in the other parts of the Islands, when the English arms penetrated beyond the borders, assumed all the rights of the chief so carefully controlled, but regarded few of the obligations. So far as the rights are concerned, it is an easy transition from him to the feudal lord. But they forgot that no society can survive the existence of rights without corresponding obligations, and when the inevitable Nemesis comes upon them, they lay the blame for the failure on the social system which they have destroyed.

As and when the tribal society developed into the closer form of feudalism the lord of the manor assumed the position of tribal chieftain, except that he claimed no kinship with the people whose lives he controlled and had no sense of communal responsibility for them beyond the observance of such customary rules (and they were many) as remained unconsciously or from tradition to limit his political or judicial powers-no responsibility to anyone but to his lord to whom he owed rent or military service.

Succeeding to the office and duties of the tribal chief, the lord who held land from the king became a potent factor of society in every way; he was the king's officer to recruit and marshal the feudal military force or to collect the scutage ; he became the farmer of dues for the Crown, levied in the first instance on cultivation; he acted as the foreman of an unvarying system of farming carried on according to set rules which assumed the obligation of duties on the land for all when not fighting; he assessed and collected the fines for breaches of the rules of cultivation; and last, and by far the most important, he succeeded to the judicial powers of the tribal chieftain, and became an administrator of justice, both in his own person and as delegate to the king, collecting

and farming fines for offences, and dealing, at a time when all law was in a confused and transitional state, with a mass of feudal rules which had scarcely overlaid well-recognised immemorial local custom, and which conflicted with a rising tide of Roman and canon law. His position in this respect is of varied and far-reaching importance as of the essence of feudal life, and very interesting both in relation to tribal society and to modern development.

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The chieftain rank was graded according to wealth in moveables and cattle, and the privileges of each chief were according to his degree. According to his wealth and birth was the value of his oath, which was measured in cattle,-he swore up to a dairt" or up to a colpach" heifer of his power to contract, of his suretyship, of his honour price for compensation in case of damage to him or his family, the refection due to him on his rounds and his maintenance in sickness, the extent of his " peace," the protection he could afford to fugitives, the amount of stock given to him by a superior chief to whom he had commended himself, and the food rent due to him from his inferiors. (See Appendix B, The Ogaire Chief.)

All such rights and privileges were proportionate to the power of the chieftain to give live stock, generally cattle, on loan to the men of their tribe or sept or to strangers.

The Loan of Cattle.-The primary tie of the social system, in which stock-breeding and dairying was the pre-eminent though not the only industry, and in which the land used for pasturage was with exceptions used by all the community in common, was the lending of cattle by one man to another, the regulated distribution of the stock on the common range by the king to his subordinate chief, by the more wealthy to the less wealthy chief, by the chief of the sept to the freemen of the sept. The richer man, the chief who had plenty of cattle, loaned them to the poorer. Such a loan was an evidence of his wealth, and so of his power, and an evidence that the borrower was his inferior. That thou mayest know, says the Brehon," the right qualifications of a king who is wealthy and affluent, let him give much stock, i.e. let his stock to his ceilib (his followers) be great.

It was the chain which bound society together, the equivalent in communal society of the feudal ties of land tenure; it was a transaction which carried with it, in the first instance, the equivalent of commendation, the acknowledgment of the superiority of the lender-a transaction which was the core of a bundle of rights and obligations jealously guarded in the interests of the community on both sides.

One can illustrate the whole system best, I think, by quoting an extreme, possibly legendary, instance of this connection, one which illustrates vividly the tribal society of ancient times. The Senchus Mor 8 speaks of "the king of Erin without opposition, for which he received stock from the king of the Romans; or it was by the successor of Patrick (i.e. the abbot of Armagh) the stock is given to the king of Erin: i.e. when the seaports of Dublin and Waterford and Limerick (and the seaports) in general are subject to him: i.e. though he is supposed to give stock to the principal king, it is not to impose tenancy on him, but to show honour price." The meaning of this awkwardly expressed and enigmatical passage is that at some remote time an Irish Ardri was so completely master of the country and of the seas as to control the three principal ports which, from the opening of the ninth to the middle of the twelfth century, were always liable to be in the hands of the Scandinavians, as the Afghan sovereign would only be without opposition if he held Cabul, Candahar, and Herat. Under these conditions, the only conditions under which it would be worth while for the emperor or the pope to treat with him, he had concluded an agreement with one of them (the abbot of Armagh being treated as the pope's equivalent) on the terms of becoming his man," acknowledging his superiority.

The symbol of the agreement was the supposed formality of a loan of cattle from the emperor or pope to the Ardri, given, as the text says, not as the ordinary transaction of lender and borrower, but to show honour price : that is to say, as an acknowledgment of superiority by the admission of the superior value of the life of the lender in case of injury,

judged by the compensation which was due to each person according to his status, and which he might calculate either by birth or by wealth.

This passage is spoken of by some as being an imaginary instance. I see no reason to think so. In the confused warfare of tribes the party which could have even the theoretical backing of the Church or emperor would have immense advantage. And the pope or the emperor, in the course of their struggles for the increase of imperial dominion, might well be willing to use the authority of any overlord of the Islands who had sufficient control of his underlings to be of value either for political or military purposes. The acknowledgment by the Ardri of a distant lord, generally believed by the world to be supreme, would not hurt him in the least. It was an alliance with a superior who might assist but was not likely to injure. There is a certain analogy with the modern Irish leaning towards the Italian pope as against government from England.

The only objection which men who lived a hard and real life, when the kingship was a reality, when everyone worked, and the king hardest of all, would make to any symbolic action which put them in a position of inferiority was that it might injure their prestige in the eyes of their own people. The king would only consider whether the return to be made for his subjection was worth the injury to his position. If it were, he would not hesitate to subject himself to get something good in return. If the Irish Ardri made such an agreement with the emperor or the pope, he did so in the expectation of receiving military assistance, commercial privileges, religious advantages, or some other good thing on his part. It is not suggssted that the ignominious flogging of Henry II. at Canterbury, of Richard at Messina, or John's submission to Pandulf, was not a reality. They suffered it because they expected value for it.

This acknowledgment of superiority was sometimes very unwilling, as when Brian, on Malachi's submission to him in the eleventh century, gives him a number of horses, which Malachi declines to accept for himself but hands to his followers. He has not the power to resist Brian, but he

will not take part in any symbolic act which may be construed as admitting superior honour price.

In the first instance undoubtedly this giving of stock was the equitable distribution by the head of the group family to its members of the herds of the community for pasturage on the common range. As the boy arrives at the early age of manhood,9 the chief admits him to the tribe, taking fees for admission.10 As a token of such admission, and as acknowledgment that he was a member of the community and that he claimed the rights and accepted the obligations attached to the position, he received the cattle and became the chief's man; where the society had developed to the distribution of land to the individual, he was put in possession of his erws or acres, and received the animals with which to cultivate them. This taking of stock and the consequent acknowledgment of the authority of the chief, so far from operating as a lowering of the young tribesman's status, was his title of admission to the community, the evidence that he was of the pure blood of the family, and as such was entitled to share in its common advantages. Until this age came when the youth could be so admitted into the community, he was fostered by one of his kin.

But on thus entering the community the young tribesman shared also its liabilities. He took part with the others 11 in supplying the food for the chief, the needs of the old people of the tribe and of hospitality, and he was jointly responsible for the compensation which might be payable for the wrong acts of his kinsmen.

The services and payments made by him to the chief are practically identical with those noted by Tacitus and Cæsar as due from the peoples with whom they came in contact : military service (called feacht and sluaged in Scottish custom), of offence against pirates, robbers, and wolves, and defence, helping to build the chief's fortress, attending him to the general assembly, helping to avenge the family quarrel or to pay the compensation for injury for which the chief had made himself hostage surety for one of the tribe, taking part in giving entertainment to the chief and to his company when on his rounds 12 (called in Scottish conveth or in Irish