The court · The law of killing, as Kelly and Charles-Edwards set out the law-texts, law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries
The scene Our telling
Fachtna was killed at the ford on a market morning, in a quarrel that began over nothing. His brother carried him home across his shoulders. By evening the news had gone up the valley, and his father’s cousins came, and then his mother’s people from the next glen, and they sat in a ring about the hearth.
No one spoke of payment that night. The killer’s kin had not sent word yet, and everyone in the ring knew who was close to Fachtna and who was only counted so. His mother sat with her hands in her lap. His brother kept looking at the door.
The law
From the lawFor the illegal killing of a freeman the killer owed a fixed body-fine, the éraic, of seven cumals, whatever the dead man’s rank. It went in full to the victim’s close paternal kin, the derbfine. If a lord or other powerful person had to enforce the payment, he could take a third of it.
GlossThe sum was the same for every freeman, so rank did not change it.
From the lawA second payment was based on honour-price and was shared among the victim’s paternal and maternal kin. Each kinsman received a share according to how close he was. A man had full payment for the killing of his father or mother, half for a paternal uncle or maternal aunt, a third for a first cousin, and a seventh for a foster-father or foster-brother.
GlossThe more distant the kinsman, the smaller his share.
From the lawThe killer’s own kin were expected to help pay. If a killer could not or would not pay, the victim’s kin could hold him until payment was made, put him to death or sell him into slavery. If he was at large, they were obliged to take vengeance on him in a blood-feud.
GlossA killing was not only a private wrong. The kin were bound to act or to pay.
Scholars sayCharles-Edwards says the payments marked two kinds of kin. The father’s lineage received the éraic. The mother’s lineage received a smaller payment of its own, the “cumal of affection”, a single cumal. The honour-price that each kinsman received depended on the rank of that living kinsman, whose honour had been injured, and not on the rank of the dead man.
GlossThe two payments answer two different questions: what the dead man’s lineage was owed, and what each mourner’s honour was worth.
Weigh it
Who receives the éraic of seven cumals?
The commentary
Scholars sayKelly says a killing of a person of high rank could be very expensive, since the honour-price payments are on top of the éraic, and that the killer’s kinsmen are expected to contribute.
Scholars sayKin-slaying, fingal, did not fit this system, in Kelly’s account. A killing was atoned for by payment to the victim’s kin, and kinsmen who killed the killer would themselves be guilty of fingal. The law-texts treat it with horror.
Where we are not sure
Scholars sayKelly notes that no law-text deals with killing in full, and that the sources cannot always be reconciled.
Scholars sayKelly and Charles-Edwards put the mother’s side’s share a little differently. Kelly describes honour-price shares for maternal kin, and Charles-Edwards names the cumal of affection as the maternal lineage’s payment. We give both and do not choose between them.
Where this comes from
- Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (1988), on illegal killing, the body-fine, shares of honour-price, blood-feud and kin-slaying.
- T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (1993), chapter 1, on the structure of Irish kinship and the payments that marked it.
- We have read Kelly and Charles-Edwards, not the Old Irish texts.
Last checked against these books: 2026-10-05. How we read our sources · Corrections