The court · Kelly’s account of fosterage, from Cáin Íarraith, Berrad Airechta and a heptad, law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries, with later commentary

The Foster-Son Fetched Home

A father takes his son home from fosterage before the time is up, though the boy has been well kept. Does he get any of the fee back?

Basis. Rests on Kelly’s account of the law, not on the Old Irish text itself. Open questions are set out below.

Topics: Kin, Children.

The scene Our telling

Bran was seven when his father Dúnlang, a small farmer, sent him to be fostered by Ailill, who farmed two valleys away. The fee was three séts, agreed before sureties and paid. Ailill kept his side of it. The boy was fed and clothed as a farmer’s son should be, and he learned to mind calves and lambs, to dry corn and to split firewood.

Bran was eleven when Dúnlang’s elder brother, a richer man with no sons of his own, offered to foster him for love and for no fee at all. Dúnlang thought about his three séts. Then he walked the two valleys and said that he had come to take the boy home.

Ailill said the fostering had years still to run. Bran stood between the two men with a lamb under his arm, taller than his father remembered and plainly well kept. Dúnlang took him all the same. A week later he sent to Ailill and asked for his fee.

What would you decide?

Answer first, then read the law. Your first answer is the one kept. It is stored only on this device.

Dúnlang has taken his son home early. What becomes of the fee?

Choose an answer and open it to see what the law says of it. Then read the law below.

Ailill gives back a share, for the years that were not served.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. Kelly mentions no sharing of the fee by the years served. When a father took his child back early without a legitimate reason, he lost the whole of it.

Ailill keeps all of it. It was the father who broke the bargain.

This matches the law as Kelly sets it out. Once fosterage was agreed, the child had to stay until the term was out. Kelly says that a father who took him back early “without a legitimate reason” made a legal error and lost the whole fee. He does not say what a legitimate reason was, and we have taken a better offer not to be one. Had Bran been badly kept, the fee would have gone back to his father.

Ailill gives it all back, because the fosterage was never finished.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. That was the rule when the fault lay on the foster-father’s side. If the child was badly kept, the fee had to be returned. If the foster-father sent him home early, the whole fee went back, unless the child had been guilty of serious misconduct. Here the boy was well kept, and it was the father who ended it.

Read the law, the commentary and the sources

The law

The law, as Kelly gives itSending a child out to be fostered was a contract in law. Both households were held to gain by it, and sureties could be named to bind it. From then on the child had to stay with the foster-parents until the full term was out.

NoteKelly says it is not clear when the term normally ended. From Críth Gablach it seems a boy could be done with fosterage by his fourteenth year. Old Irish glosses give fourteen for a girl and seventeen for a boy, and Bretha Crólige allows seventeen for both. He thinks practice probably varied.

The law, as Kelly gives itA father who fetched his child home before the term was out, “without a legitimate reason” as Kelly puts it, was held to have made a legal error, and he lost the whole fee.

NoteKelly gives the Irish for the legal error as báegul, and for the fee as íarrath. His reference is to Berrad Airechta, a text on suretyship. He does not say what a legitimate reason was.

The law, as Kelly gives itBad treatment was another matter. If the child was being improperly kept, the contract was undone and the fee had to go back to the father.

NoteHow a child had been kept could be judged, according to Berrad Airechta, from its looks, its weight and its clothes. Where a child was being badly kept, Kelly adds, its mother’s kin could step in as well as its parents.

The law, as Kelly gives itThe foster-father was held to the term as well. If he sent the child home before it was out, the legal error was his, and he had to hand the whole fee back. Kelly gives one exception: a child guilty of serious misconduct.

NoteWhile the child was with him, the foster-father also paid any fines the child ran up.

The law, as Kelly gives itA child could be fostered in two ways. One was out of affection, and nothing was paid. The other was paid for, and a law-text, Cáin Íarraith, dealt with it. The price went by rank: three séts to foster the son of an ócaire, a small farmer, and thirty for a king’s son. The foster-parents had to keep the child, and teach it, as its rank required.

NoteFor a girl the price was higher: four séts for an ócaire’s daughter. Kelly says the text gives no reason. The commentary suggests some: that a girl was harder to rear, or that her foster-parents could expect less from her once she was grown. By the glosses and commentary, a small farmer’s son was taught to mind young pigs, kids, calves and lambs, to chop firewood, comb wool and dry corn, and a king’s son board-games, riding, swimming and marksmanship.

The commentary

Scholars sayThe tie outlasted the contract. Kelly says the links between a foster-father and his foster-sons stayed strong. If a foster-son was killed, his foster-father was owed a third of the honour-price, and the claim did not end when the fostering did. According to Cáin Íarraith, the foster-father gave his foster-son a parting gift at the end, a sét gertha, which Kelly translates “a valuable of affection”.

Scholars sayThe language keeps a trace of this. In Old Irish the intimate words that a child in most languages uses for its parents belong to the foster-parents: muimme, which Kelly compares with English “mummy”, is the foster-mother, and aite is the foster-father. Kelly argues that the shift could not have happened unless fosterage was common. Charles-Edwards takes the same words as a sign of warmth between foster-parents and foster-children. He calls the tie between the two sets of parents “the most formal and legal in character”: it began with a contract, and what each side owed was fixed.

Scholars sayThe wisdom-texts doubted it all the same. One of the Triads names fosterage among the three dark, or uncertain, things of life, with leaving a thing in another person’s keeping and going surety. Kelly’s answer is that a custom so widespread must, on balance, have brought more gain than loss.

Where we are not sure

Scholars sayKelly does not say what counted as a legitimate reason for taking a child home. The one case he gives in which the fee goes back to a father is improper treatment. Our scene gives the father a reason of his own advantage, and we have taken a better offer not to be a legitimate one. Kelly notes no dispute about the rule itself.

Scholars sayNothing we have read gives a rule for dividing the fee by the years served. Kelly reports the entire fee forfeit when the father is at fault, the entire fee restored when the foster-father sends the child home, and the fee returned when the child is badly kept. He mentions no part payment. Nor does he say when the fee was handed over. His wording supposes that the foster-father already had it, and our scene follows that.

Scholars sayCáin Íarraith does not survive whole. Kelly counts only thirty short quotations of it, set among long passages of later commentary, and says that what we know of fosterage is less secure for that reason. The subjects a child was taught, the reasons for a girl’s higher price and the ages of fourteen and seventeen come from glosses or commentary. The rule this case turns on is from a different text, Berrad Airechta. The fee of three séts and the farm work in our scene are taken from these rules. The people are our own.

Words used here

lóg n-enech (price of the face): The sum a person was owed for a serious wrong or insult, fixed by rank. It measured legal standing as well as worth: a person could not make a contract, go surety or give evidence for more than it.
ócaire (young freeman): The “small farmer”, the lowest grade of adult freeman, with an honour-price of three séts.
sét (a treasure, a valuable): The unit in which most honour-prices and fines are counted. The later lawyers generally reckoned two séts to the milch cow, though the old texts vary.
íarrath: The fee paid to foster-parents for rearing a child. It ran from three séts for the son of a small farmer to thirty for the son of a king. A father who took his child home early without a legitimate reason lost the whole of it.
ráth, naidm, aitire: Someone who stood behind a bargain. The ráth was a paying surety, the naidm an enforcing surety who could distrain or seize the debtor, and the aitire a hostage-surety.

Honour-price, rank by rank · All the words

Where this comes from

Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), pp. 86 to 90 on fosterage. Kelly cites Cáin Íarraith with its glosses and commentary (CIH 1759.6 to 1770.14) for the fee, the keep, the teaching and the exception for a child who has misbehaved; Berrad Airechta §§11 and 12 (CIH 592.1 to 10) for the child taken back or sent home early and for judging how a child was kept; a heptad (CIH 25.13 to 15) for the sureties and the fee returned; the Díre-text (CIH 440.8 to 10 and 442.14 to 15) for the fines, the third of the honour-price and the mother’s kin; and Triad 249. Also p. 15 on the mother’s kin, and p. 230 and Appendix 1, no. 19, on what survives of Cáin Íarraith.
T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 78 to 81, on fosterage and the words for foster-parents.
We have read Kelly’s account, not the Old Irish text.

Last checked against these books: 2026-10-06. How we read our sources · Corrections