How the law worked

Scholars say

Much of the work of enforcing early Irish law fell to the parties themselves, their kin and their sureties. It held together because everyone knew what a person was worth, who stood behind them, and what a creditor could do about it.

Honour-price

Each free person had an lóg n-enech, an honour-price. Enech means “face”. A person’s rank fixed it, and it measured both their standing and what they were owed if they were wronged. A lord’s honour-price was higher than a farmer’s. A man’s wife, son or daughter was normally entitled to half of his, according to Críth Gablach. A person could lose theirs: the law-texts list, for example, a woman who steals, and a king or lord who tolerates a justified satire.

Fines, not gallows

Most wrongs were paid for. A killing carried a body-fine, the éraic, and the victim’s kin shared in what was paid. If the culprit could not pay, his kin were expected to take up a blood-feud against him or to pay. Injuries had their own scale, set by the part of the body and the rank of the victim.

Kin

A man’s liabilities were carried by four circles of kin: gelfine, derbfine, iarfine and indfine. The head of the kin, the cenn fine, was chosen for his wealth, rank and good sense. He spoke for the kin in court, gave pledges for them, and could be satirised if a kinsman let a pledge go forfeit. A man whom his kin had publicly cast out lost his legal standing, and no one could stand surety for him.

Sureties

A bargain was held by sureties. The ráth paid if the debtor did not. The naidm held no money at risk, but his honour depended on the deal being kept, and he had wide powers to enforce it: he could distrain the debtor’s goods or seize and imprison him. The aitire was a hostage-surety. When he died his duties did not pass to his kin, as a paying surety’s did.

Distraint

A creditor did not need a court to start. He gave notice, waited a few days, then drove off cattle to the value of the debt and held them in a pound, where they were forfeited a little more each day. Against a person of high rank he fasted instead.

Judges

The judge, the brithem, advised the king and decided cases, and the king confirmed his judgment. Kelly notes that the judge in Gúbretha Caratniad is doubtless legendary, but the text shows how the law imagined the relation between king and judge.

The books

The law-texts were written down in the 7th and 8th centuries from older oral teaching. The largest group is the Senchas Már. Others come from a different school of law about poets and “men of art”, among them Bretha Étgid, on accidents. The standard edition is D. A. Binchy’s Corpus Iuris Hibernici (1978). Medieval glosses and commentary were added to the old text, so a printed page often mixes several centuries.

Source: Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), chapters on kin, status, suretyship, distraint and the king and his judge. Where the books disagree with each other, Kelly says so, and so do we.