The court · Kelly’s account of the duty of hospitality, from the Heptads and Críth Gablach, law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries

The Guest Turned Away

A prosperous farmer shuts his door on a law-abiding traveller at nightfall. What is the traveller owed?

Basis. Rests on Kelly’s account of the law. A few of its lines were also read in MacNeill’s translation of 1923: Uraicecht Becc on the hospitaller, Críth Gablach on a king who is refused, and the heptad on kings. Open questions are set out below.

Topics: Honour.

The scene Our telling

Night was coming on, with rain in it, when Colmán turned off the road. He was a farmer on his way home from the fair, with some hours’ walk still to go, and his own people lived at the far end of the same kingdom. The house in front of him was a strong farmer’s: a good roof, smoke going up, and cattle in the yard.

Fáelán came to the door and looked him over. He had bread, milk and a fire, and room on the floor, and no wish to share them with a man he did not know. He said the house was full, which it was not, and shut the door.

Colmán spent the night under a hawthorn with his cloak over his head. In the morning he did not go home. He went to find a judge.

What would you decide?

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What does Fáelán owe Colmán for turning him away?

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

Nothing. A man may choose whom he lets into his own house.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. The law did not leave it to the householder. Kelly says that all householders owed some hospitality to any freeman, and that refusing food and shelter where they were due was an offence with a name of its own.

Colmán’s honour-price, in full, for the wrong of the refusal.

This matches the law as Kelly sets it out. Kelly says that every householder owed some hospitality to a freeman, and that refusing food and shelter where they were due was the offence of esáin, “driving away”. For that offence, his note says, the person turned away gets his honour-price in full. Colmán was a freeman of the kingdom, alone and no wrongdoer, and Fáelán was no small farmer, so none of the limits Kelly lists helps Fáelán. That is the rule as Kelly states it. No text we have read sets out a case like this one.

The worth of the supper and the night’s shelter he went without.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. The payment was not measured by the meal. Kelly names refusal of hospitality among the major offences for which a person’s honour-price is paid, and MacNeill’s translation of Críth Gablach has a king who is refused “entitled to more than (he loses by) the offence”.

Read the law, the commentary and the sources

The law

The law, as Kelly gives itKelly begins by noting how much is made of the duty to give hospitality, in the laws, in the wisdom-texts and in the sagas alike. It lay heaviest on the hospitaller, the briugu, whose duty is said to be limitless. All householders owed it too, he says, “to a lesser extent”, and owed it to any freeman.

NoteOf the hospitaller, Uraicecht Becc says, in MacNeill’s translation of 1923: “He refuses no company. He reckons against none howso often he may come.”

The law, as Kelly gives itTo refuse food and shelter where they were due was an offence. Kelly gives its name as esáin, literally “driving away”, and says it was also called etech, “refusal”. What was owed for it went by the rank of the person refused. His note gives the sum: the full honour-price of whoever was turned away.

NoteIn a later book Kelly puts it without the hedge. The householder was bound to give food and drink to anyone who called or was passing, and failing to do so was esáin and cost him the honour-price of the person he had offended.

The law, as Kelly gives itA house that turned everybody away lost its own protection. Heptad 10, as Kelly reports it, takes away the díre of such a house, that is, what would be paid if it were destroyed. A separate heptad, he notes, says the same of a dún, a fort. And Heptad 1, in his translation, counts “a church building from which every class of person is turned away” among those that can be wrecked with nothing to pay.

NoteHeptad 15 lists seven kinds of woman who are not entitled to honour-price. One, in Kelly’s translation, is the woman “who refuses hospitality to every law-abiding person”. Heptad 13 costs a king his honour-price if he refuses hospitality.

The law, as Kelly gives itThere were limits. A fer midboth, a youth living on his father’s land, had to give hospitality only to his lord. An ócaire, the small farmer, was free of the full duty, in Kelly’s translation of Críth Gablach, “on account of the smallness of his wealth”. Heptad 13, as Kelly reads it, binds a king to receive a freeman who keeps the law, though not the men who travel with him.

NoteMacNeill’s translation of 1923 reads some of these lines differently. Those that touch our case are among the open questions below.

The law, as Kelly gives itSometimes hospitality had to be refused. A criminal could not be fed or protected. And a person who indirectly caused another to refuse a guest had to pay the honour-price of the host he had shamed. Kelly’s example is food lent and not given back in time, so that the lender has nothing to set before his guests.

NoteCáin Domnaig, the law of Sunday, treats feeding a person who works on a Sunday as no better than doing the work.

The commentary

Scholars sayWhy the honour-price, and not the price of a supper? Kelly names refusal of hospitality, with murder, satire, serious injury, theft and violation of a person’s protection, among the major offences for which a person’s honour-price has to be paid. Wrongs not held to involve honour, such as animal trespass, drew lesser fines. So the law treated a wrongful refusal as a wrong to a person’s honour.

Scholars sayCríth Gablach has a line on a king who is refused. In MacNeill’s translation it lists “three fastings which do not aggrieve (?) a king”, and the question mark is MacNeill’s. The third is when there has been “refusal (of hospitality)”, for then, it says, “he is entitled to his honourprice”. The words in round brackets are MacNeill’s additions.

Scholars sayA hospitaller’s standing rested on three things, in a triad from Bretha Nemed Toísech that Kelly quotes: a cauldron never allowed to run dry, a house beside a public road, and a welcome for whoever came. A proverbial phrase gives the other side of it: a man is a briugu until he refuses. A tale of the tenth century, Esnada Tige Buchet, “The Melodies of the House of Buchet”, shows the cost. Buchet, a hospitaller of Leinster, is brought close to ruin by the constant visits of the king’s thirty-two sons. Kelly calls its account of a hospitaller’s duties admittedly fictitious.

Where we are not sure

Scholars sayKelly says that all householders owed hospitality to any freeman, but only “to some extent”. He does not say how far an ordinary farmer’s duty went, or whether a night’s food and shelter for one traveller was always within it. Our farmer is a strong farmer, so the small farmer’s exemption does not arise. No text we have read sets out a case like ours. The answer we mark right is Kelly’s general rule applied to it, and he notes no dispute about that rule.

Scholars sayMacNeill’s older translation differs in two ways that touch this case. He took essáin, which he translates “expulsion”, to be “probably from a guesthouse or place of common resort”. On that view the offence might not reach a farmer’s own door. Kelly takes it as refusing food and shelter wherever they were due. And in MacNeill’s Heptad 13 the king who loses his honour-price is the one who refuses “not having his lawful (full) company of guests”, for “it is not refusal by anyone, if he have his lawful company”. On that reading a host who already had his lawful number of guests could turn others away, which is why Fáelán’s house is not full. Kelly reads the same words as binding a king to receive a law-abiding freeman but not the freeman’s retinue.

Scholars sayOur traveller is a freeman of the same kingdom, alone, and no wrongdoer. Kelly says the rights of an outsider from another kingdom were very restricted, and we have not tried to say what such a man was owed at a strange door.

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.
briugu: A hospitaller: a wealthy man who kept open house for every freeman and could turn no one away. Kelly sees the office as a way for a rich man who was not of noble birth to gain high rank. A chief hospitaller ranked with the lowest grade of king.
esáin (driving away): Refusing food and shelter where they were due. The person turned away was owed his honour-price. The offence was also called etech, “refusal”.
áer: Satire. The law counted a wide range of verbal attacks under it, from mocking a person’s looks or coining a nickname that sticks to composing a satire or repeating one. Unjustified satire normally had to be paid for with the victim’s honour-price. Justified satire was a lawful way of pressing a person of rank to obey the law.

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. 139 to 140 on hospitality and its limits, with note 109 on the full honour-price (citing CIH 1123.22 to 24), Heptads 1, 10, 13 and 15, Críth Gablach and Cáin Domnaig; pp. 36 to 37 on the hospitaller; p. 25 on Heptad 13; pp. 118 to 119 on borrowed food; p. 8 on the offences for which honour-price is paid; pp. 5 to 6 on outsiders; p. 10 on the small and the strong farmer; and pp. 348 to 349 for his translations of Heptads 1 and 15.
Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Farming (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997), p. 321, on the householder’s duty to a visitor or passer-by.
Eoin MacNeill, “Ancient Irish Law: the Law of Status or Franchise”, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 36 C (1923): p. 276 for Uraicecht Becc on the hospitaller, p. 284 for his note on essáin, p. 304 for Críth Gablach on a king who is refused, and p. 316 for Heptad 13.
We have read Kelly’s account and MacNeill’s translation, not the Old Irish text.

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