and an ardent lover of their profane literature. In the Ossianic tales are many evidences of this. The Colloquy of the Ancients again and again shows the old poets building upon Patrick's love of the national lore. This love, indeed, is so strong in him, that he fears it may be sinful-until he questions his guardian angel, and gets his approval for the delightful indulgence of harkening to Caoilte's fascinating stories of the Fenians. And he is so charmed with them that he orders them to be written down, so as to preserve them for the delight of future generations of the noble men of Eirinn. "Palm of eloquence on thee, my son," Patrick says to Caoilte, "and let every third word uttered by men of thine art seem melodious to every hearer, and let one of them possessed of the skill always be a king's bedfellow and the torch of every assembly." In recent times several ingenious people have demonstrated to their own complete satisfaction that Patrick was a Protestant, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Baptist-a Jew even-almost everything except what he was-and that he founded in Ireland an independent church which they call the Celtic Church. These absurd contentions are set at rest-if they needed setting at rest-by the Canon of St. Patrick, preserved in the old Book of Armaghwhich was finished by the scribe Firdoínnach in 807-a Canon which those very learned Protestant Irish scholars, Usher and Whitley Stokes, accept as proof of his Roman authority and affiliation.15 "Moreover, if any case should arise of extreme difficulty, and beyond the knowledge of all the judges of the nations of the Scots, it is to be duly referred to the chair of the Archbishop of the Gaedhil, that is to say, of Patrick, and the jurisdiction of this bishop (of Armagh). But if such a case as aforesaid, of a matter at issue, cannot be easily disposed of (by him), with his counsellors in that (investigation), we have decreed that it be sent to the apostolic seat, that is to say, to the chair of the Apostle Peter, having the authority of the city of Rome. "These are the persons who decreed concerning this matter, viz.: Auxilius, Patrick, Secundinus, and Benignus. But after the death of St. Patrick his disciples carefully wrote out his books." 15 Even if, by straining of the imagination, we should suppose this document to be forged by Firdomnach-without any conceivable reason for forging it thenit shows that, at the time Firdomnach wrote it, the See of Armagh, the centre of the church in Ireland, was subordinate to the Pontiff. Again within the Century after Patrick we find the great Columbanus, when submitting to Pope Gregory the question of his dispute with the Gaulish ecclesiastics, saying, "We Irish . . . are bound to the Chair of Peter." Healy, The Most Rev. Jno.: St. Patrick. Stokes, Whitley, D.C.L., LL.D.: The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick. Keating's History of Ireland. Bury, J. B., LL.D.: Tirechan's Memoir of St. Patrick; printed in Eng. Hist. Rev. for 1902. Todd, James Henthorn, D.D.: Memoir of St. Patrick. Jocelyn: Life of St. Patrick. O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. CHAPTER XX THE BREHON LAWS WE may here take a glimpse at those marvellous institutes, the old Irish laws which Patrick is credited with codifying-and the study of which, in these later days, throws a flood of light upon both the intellectual and the social condition of early Ireland. Marvellous they are-and have excited the wonder and admiration not of laymen only, but of eminent jurists deeply versed in law codes both ancient and modern. It has proved amazing to modern scholars in other countries to find such a great and such a just and beautiful judicial structure reared up, in dim centuries of antiquity, in one little island seated on the waters of a wide ocean, far off on the rim of the world. Of the great body of ancient Irish law literature still existing, five large volumes have been printed-the principal part of these being the Senchus Mor, supposed to be the fruits of Patrick's endeavour and their ordinances appropriately called after him Cáin Padraic, that is, the Statute Law of Patrick. When we reflect that these five volumes are but a portion of what came down to the twentieth century, and that what came to the twentieth century was necessarily but a small fraction of the ancient Irish Cana or ordinances, we get some impression of the vastness of the law literature of ancient Ireland. When it is stated that in the ancient glosses upon the Senchus Mor citations are made from no less than fourteen different books of civil law; and that Cormac in his later Glossary (about tenth century) quotes from five law books only one of which is among the fourteen of the Senchus glosses, that also will give the reader a little idea of the multitude of law books that there must have been prior to the tenth century in which the scholar Cormac wrote. And realising the vastness of the body of the old Irish laws, the reader will not wonder to learn these laws covered almost every relationship, and every fine shade of relationship, social, and moral, between man and man. The ancient Irish laws are now popularly termed, "The Brehon Laws"-from the Irish term Brehon which was applied to the official lawgiver.' The Brehon was an important officer at all royal Courts, from the most remote times of which we have any shred of record, historical or even legendary. The precepts and maxims of famous law givers, men and women, of legendary days are quoted to us through famous successors who just came within the horizon of history. Even a famous woman law-giver of prehistoric times is thus commemorated in Briathra Brigid, or the judgments of a very ancient wise Brigid, cited by the earliest writers. One of the most famous of ancient historic personages celebrated as a law-giver, was, as mentioned heretofore Cormac MacArt, in the third century. Cormac's chief judge, too, Fithal the Wise, wrote his name on fame's honour-roll. But some centuries earlier, in the time of Christ, flourished Irish law-givers, who are still known to fame. Senchan, the son of Ailill was then chief judge of Ulster, at Conor MacNessa's court. The venerated 1 Instead of filling the position of judge (as usually supposed) the Brehon was rather a legal expert who devoted himself to arbitration-and sometimes to advising and was paid a fee from his client-a fee that in case of an award was about one-twelfth of the amount awarded. In studying for the profession the Brehon had not only to make himself master of the ancient legal records, and of the very complicated legal rules, the abstruse technical terms, and all the intricate forms in which the law was purposely entangled, but he must also be a genealogist and historian. Though the Brehon was but an arbitrator, so scholarly was he, so skilled in the laws and so wise and weighty in his solemn judgments, that, sitting at a Dal, where two witnesses were needed to prove a fact, his words were venerated and his awards sacredly respected-as though they were the awards of a judge consecrated to the judgment seat, and rare was it to find any person hardened enough to evade or reject them. But it should be recorded that there were lawyers, or law arguers-advocatesof a very much lower status, much less learned and much less honoured than the Brehon-men who were paid to argue cases before the Brehon. It is some of those lawyers-not unlike many of our own day-whom Cormac raps in the ancient "Instructions of a King" "O Cormac, grandson of Conn," said Carbery, "what is the worst pleading and arguing?" "Not hard to tell," said Cormac. "Contending against knowledge, A muttering speech, Uncertain proofs, Despising books, Turning against custom, Shifting one's pleading, Inciting the mob, Blowing one's own trumpet, Shouting at the top of one's voice." Morann the son of Maen (or of Cairbre), lived then. Athairne, the bitterest of ancient satirists, was also a lawyer at the court of King Conor. Ferceirtne, Conor's chief poet, was famed in law, likewise. But up to the era of Ferceirtne the poet-brotherhood held a monopoly of all legal knowledge. It has already been described how this monopoly was, by the indignant Conor, shattered-after he and his court had, non-understandingly, harkened to the famous dispute, Agallam na da Suach (the Contest of the two Sages), between Ferceirtne and Neide-some say between Aithairne and Neide-contending for the poet's tuigin. For in order to shut out the laity from the legal profession, and also for purpose of duly impressing the said laity with their dazzling erudition, the lawyers wrapped the law in a phraseology so obsolete that none but the initiated could understand the legal language. Conor, in his wrath, on this occasion, deprived the poet order of their exclusive right to legal knowledge and practice, and opened the field to everybody. Yet, notwithstanding this supposed great reform of Conor's at the beginning of the Christian Era, the lawyers of a couple of centuries later were again indulging their vanity and their exclusiveness, concealing their legal wisdom under obsolete verbiage. We find, for instance, that though the Senchus Mor was profusely glossed by law students some centuries later, and after some further centuries the gloss itself glossed to bring it within the range of legal understanding of that day, O'Curry, learned student though he was in ancient glosses, still had the most infinite difficulty in picking out the meaning of the greater part of the work, and had to be content with giving the probable meaning of many passages, and leaving in their primitive obscurity, some things that utterly baffled him.2 This Brehon law remained the law of three-quarters of Ireland for several centuries after the coming of the English-was in fact adopted by a large portion of the English settlers themselves, to the exclusion of the Anglo-Norman code-and it may be said not to have gone out of existence as living law till the sixteenth century. The advancement of civilisation in early Ireland was such that the legislative and the judicial functions were separated at a period before the dawn of history. While the Brehon administered the law, the king, the nobles, and the professors of the various branches of learning, were responsible for originating it. Even for the making of a local law called Nos Tuaighe-literally "the Nine knowledge of a territory," the aggregate wisdom of nine leading 2 Of course part of the difficulty-but not all-arose from progress of language. |