Obviously the honour-price in both cases is that of the murderer, for a little further on is a statement that

But besides this honour-price of the criminal, as we have seen, other payments had apparently to be made to the relatives of the slain, for breach of their protection or for injury sustained, and these were measured by the honour-price of the recipients and not by that of the criminal.

It is not quite clearly stated that these payments were a part of the eric, but we may suppose that they were in a sense a buying off of the right of feud, and accepted in lieu of the right of joining in the avengement of the crime and in the feud, for which the eric was the composition.

A passage in the Book of Aicill (p. 107) incidentally seems to show that the son of a person slain could choose whether to claim honour-price on the scale of his own social rank, according to right of property, or of the status of his father or grandfather, or that of the chieftain under whose protection he lived.

The passage goes on to mention the case of his having made choice ‘to have honour-price in right of his relations or in right of his chief.’

In the Senchus Mor (i. p. 275), without direct mention of the case of homicide, is the following statement:—

On the whole it may be gathered from the Brehon tracts that, whilst the coirp-dire or body fine was a fixed amount, the eric or full payment was complex, involving, besides the coirp-dire, the honour-price of the slayer according to his rank, and also payments to the relations of the slain, regulated by their honour-price and rank, and nearness of relationship to the slain person, by way of reparation for the insult or injury involved, or for breach of their protection, &c.

In order to judge how much these payments of honour-price added to the eric, we must seek to learn something of the character of the various grades and ranks, and the amount of the honour-price of each.

III. THE GRADATIONS IN RANK UNDER THE BREHON LAWS.

The gradations in the honour-price, as stated in the ‘Crith Gabhlach,’ become very important from the light thrown by them upon the structure of tribal society in Ireland.

At the bottom of the list of these grades is mentioned the midboth man or ordinary freeman without land or cows (?). He is said to be entitled, as food allowance, to the humblest fare of ‘milk and stirabout’ and for himself alone (iv. 301).

His honour-price is only a dairt heifer or colpach heifer, and his honour-price (as that of other grades) is also the limit of the value of his oath or pledge. He is a man who has not yet attained to a household of his own. When he has done that he seems to rise to the next rank of an og-aire, i.e. a young aire.

Suddenly, we are told of the og-aire that he has seven cows and a bull, seven pigs, seven sheep, and a horse. He also has a cow land, i.e. land to graze seven cows, for which a cow is paid every year by him to his chief. He has an ox, and a fourth part of the needful for ploughing: i.e. presumably he joins with others in making up a plough team of four oxen. Surely these have been supplied to him by his chief, as in the case of the Cymric ‘da.’ His proportionate stock (turcreicc) is eight cows, which with his land he gets from a bo-aire, possessed of surplus cattle, and he pays to him a food-rent ‘bes tigi’ (like the Welsh gwestva) of a cow and a pig, &c. Should his stock increase he does not always become at once a bo-aire, ‘because four or five such may occupy the land of a bo-aire, and it would not be easy for each of them to be a bo-aire’ (iv. pp. 305-309).

So in the same way a bo-aire has land of twice seven cumhals, and he has half of a full ploughing apparatus, and his proportionate stock (from his chief) is twelve cows; and a colpach heifer is his food-rent; and his honour-price is five seds.

A bo-aire may have a full and complete plough team and twenty cows and other things, and he may even rise to the giving of proportionate stock to tenants of his own if his stock should have grown too much for his land. But he still may remain a bo-aire. He may, however, rise from a bo-aire into a flaith (or chief), when he has double as much as an ‘aire desa’ and has established himself with a green round his homestead, and so surrounded his house with a precinct in which he can give protection to cattle taken in distress, this being one of the important duties and functions of a chief (flaith) (iv. pp. 309-317).

It would seem that even when a man had risen to be the chief of his kindred (fine) he might still be simply a bo-aire, and not necessarily yet a flaith chief.

In another tract, among other disconnected items are the following:—

It would seem from these statements that to become a flaith from the rank of bo-aires something like an election was needful, and that wealth weighed most in the election. It shows, however, that it was election out of a class or family in which the flaithship descended from father to son, and that one of the qualifications was that a man’s father and grandfather before him must have been flaiths.

So too in the ‘Crith Gabhlach’ (iv. p. 321) the aire desa must be the son of an aire and the grandson of an aire. He has (probably a minimum of) ten tenants, five giallna and five saer, and gets a food-rent from each. But he himself takes proportionate stock from his chief, for which he pays food-rent in the same way.

The aire ard has twenty tenants, ten giallna and ten saer, and in his turn he takes proportionate stock from his chief (iv. p. 325).

The aire tuisi has twenty-seven tenants, fifteen giallna and twelve saer, and he takes himself proportionate stock from a king, ‘and he makes corus-arrangements in the raith right of his father and grandfather,’ whatever this may be (iv. 325).

Above him is the aire forgaill, with forty tenants; and at the head of the flaith or chieftain grade comes the Ri-tuaithe, who is the chief or King of a Tuath.

We need not attempt to discuss the details of this hierarchy of chieftains. It is enough that, throughout, the lower chieftain takes stock from and pays food-rents to the higher chieftain, or the Ri-tuaithe, as the case may be. So that the grades of tribal rank were connected by the link formed by the receipt of an allotment of stock from, and the payment of food-rent to, the next superior grade.

Concentrating attention now on the ‘fine’ or group dependent upon a single flaith or chief, we have seen that it consisted not only of his kindred, but also of other dependents.

We have seen that the chief had both giallna and saer tenants, and that he supplied these tenants with stock, and received food-rent and services in return.

In the second volume of the Senchus Mor[72] are two chapters on Saer-raith and Daer-raith. And the two kinds of tenancy are explained somewhat as follows.

In the saer-raith the stock is given without any pledge, and the return for it is one-third in value as food-rent every year, and the tenant has to perform what is translated as homage, and to do service on the dun-fort, at harvest time, and on military expeditions, but he does no manual labour. The saer tenant cannot separate from his own hereditary tribal chieftain, or refuse to take stock from him, and to that extent he seems to be adscriptus glebæ. But if he chooses to receive stock from another chief he can give it up when he likes, unless not having returned it for three lifetimes, he has let the chief get a permanent hold on him, but this must not be so as to rob his own tribe of their innate rights (p. 219). This freedom to take stock from other chieftains does not, therefore, seem to alter his position or that of his successor as permanent tenants of their own hereditary chieftain. And this applies both to his higher chieftain of kingly rank, and his own lesser chieftain of flaith rank.

On the other hand, whilst in the case of stock taken from another chieftain the contract can be ended on either side (except after three lives), the hereditary king or chieftain cannot, without good reason, withdraw the stock from the tenants.

The tightness of the tribal bond is shown still more clearly by the statement that the chieftain himself is not competent to forgive, so as to bind his successors, the food-rent due from the tenant.

So much we gather from the chapter on saer-rath. Now as to daer-rath (p. 223). No one was bound to take daer stock from any one, not even from his own chieftain or king. Taking daer stock was therefore a matter of contract, and a contract by a tribesman affected his fine or kindred.

The fine had a voice, presumably lest it should be found that cattle in their family herd, unknown to them, might belong to some outside chieftain. And further, if continued for three lives, the obligation might become permanent, as in the case of saer stock.

Besides these daer and saer tenants who had taken stock from their chieftain or king, and who seem to have been to a great extent adscripti glebæ, there is mention of fuidhir tenants. They seem to be strangers, admitted, like the Cymric alltuds, upon a chieftain’s land, and, like the Cymric alltuds, free to move away, until by residence for three generations they also have become recognised as freemen, and at the same time adscripti glebæ.

In the tract, ‘Divisions of the Tribe of a Territory,’[73] is the following mention of the fuidhir tenants, confirming what has been said above.

It occurs in the commentary:—

The fifth person would be the great-great-grandson of the original fuidhir. Further on (p. 287) is the following:—

The chief point of interest is that the men of the fourth generation of fuidhirs, according to the above-quoted passages, became daer-bothach persons—half free men—and the fifth generation sencleithe, so that the family, like the Cymric stranger, grew into freedom in four or five generations.

This gradual growth of fuidhirs into sencleithe tenants in five generations of occupation is illustrated by the retention of rights for a corresponding period. In the Book of Aicill (p. 157) is a statement that the land of an imbecile person (a fool’s land) is not lost to his descendants, though they be also imbeciles, ‘till five persons:’ that is, till the fifth generation.

The number of generations required does not, however, seem to have been absolutely uniform.

The following is from the ‘Crith Gabhlach’ (p. 321):—

In the Editor’s note (p. 350) to the sequel to the ‘Crith Gabhlach,’ there is a statement that the sencleithe tenant was a man who came from his natural chief to settle under another chief; and if he or his successors continued away during the time of three successive chiefs, with the knowledge of the former chief, and unclaimed by him or his successors, he or they then became ‘sencleithe,’ and could not go away of themselves nor be claimed by the other.[74]

These passages, taken together, seem to imply that after five, or sometimes three, generations of tenancy under the same chieftain or his successors, the fuidhir tenants became in some sense adscripti glebæ, like the Cymric alltuds, and at the same time formed a group of kindred very much like a Cymric gwely.

Beyond this it is not easy to realise the position of the sencleithe person. The text of the Brehon law tracts is often very obscure, and the commentary so imperfect that the suggestion again and again occurs to the student that the commentator may sometimes himself be groping in the dark. Moreover, all the Brehon tracts have not yet been published, so that we have as yet only part of the evidence before us. Still it seems to be safe to say that there are indications that, as in Wales, there were rungs in the social ladder by which the stranger or unfree tenant might, after a certain number of generations, climb into something like freedom and tribal rights at the cost of becoming at the same time attached to the land of the chieftain; and that to the freeman also the grades of social rank were in some measure dependent upon the social position of fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers as well as upon the acceptance of stock and the payment of food-rent and the performance of services to chieftains of higher rank.

Further, without pressing too far resemblances which are not complete between Irish and Cymric custom, it may at least be suggested that the Irish example of the acceptance of stock by the young og-aire from the chief of his family, or some higher chieftain whose man he was or became, may throw some light upon the Cymric provision of da or cattle to the young tribesman who became ‘man and kin’ to the chieftain who gave it for his maintenance. In the Irish instance, this bestowal and acceptance of stock was part of a system which ran through all ranks and grades. And it seems to have formed the natural link connecting one social rank with another, and securing some kind of solidarity in the whole kindred or tribe, in addition to the tie of blood relationship and sometimes as a substitute for it.

We are now in a position to consider the amount of the honour-price of the various grades in tribal society as exhibited in the Brehon tracts, and to judge how far it was an important addition to the coirp-dire, and whether it raised the Irish eric to an amount at all near to that of the galanas of the Cymric Codes.

In the ‘Crith Gabhlach’ the honour-price of each grade is given as below:—

The honour-price is given in the ‘Crith Gabhlach’ in seds. The number of cumhals or female slaves is taken from a list in the Book of Aicill (p. 475) and from a statement in the Senchus Mor (i. p. 76) in which the honour-price of the aire forgaill is stated to be 6 cumhals.

It seems, then, that the honour-price of the Ri-tuaith, the highest chieftain, was seven cumhals, whilst the honour-price of the bo-aire only amounted to one cumhal, that of the og-aire to only three two-year-old heifers, whilst that of the simple freeman without land or cattle was only one single heifer.

The whole eric fine for homicide, including the coirp-dire and additional payments of honour price, evidently fell very far short of that of the Cymric galanas. Even in the case of the Ri-tuaith or highest chieftain slain by one of his own rank, the eric can hardly have exceeded the galanas of the young unmarried Cymric tribesman—viz. of sixty cows.

The importance under Irish tribal custom of the honour-price of a tribesman, and its graduation in proportion to rank, position, and wealth in the tribe, is apparent quite apart from the question of homicide. It ruled the value of ‘his oath, of his guarantee, of his pledge, and of his evidence.’ These according to the ‘Crith Gabhlach’ (p. 307) were the four things in which he acted to the extent of his honour-price, and he was not competent to undertake liabilities beyond this limit. This becomes very important when we realise how large a place the system of compurgation, or the support of a kinsman by the oaths of his fellow-kinsmen, filled in tribal usage.

On the other hand, whilst the honour-price of a tribesman or chieftain was the limit up to which his power of giving protection to his fellow-tribesmen by oath or pledge or otherwise extended, it also was the measure of his own protection. He was entitled to his honour-price not only in case of homicide. If he was satirised or insulted, or if the protection he afforded to others was violated, or his house was burned, or any one stole from him, out of his house or in it, or forced his wife or his daughter, his honour-price was the measure of the amount of redress he could claim for the wrong. The analogy of this to the Cymric saraad is obvious, and something like it is found in most tribal systems.

Finally, imperfect and vague in some points as may be the result of the foregoing examination of the Irish evidence, we are now perhaps in a position to appreciate, for what it is worth, the curious case described in the Senchus Mor.[76] It may be taken so far as it goes as a precedent or indication of the way in which the intricate matters connected with the eric fine and honour-price were worked out in practice, though it is difficult to explain all the rulings of the Brehon experts.

The matter in dispute was between two of the three principal races of Erin—the Feini or ‘men of the North’ and the Ulaidh or ‘men of the South.’ Fergus was the son of the King of the Ulaidh. Owing to a quarrel amongst the Feini, Eochaidh Belbhuidhe, being expelled by Conn of the Hundred Battles, had fled from his own tribe and put himself under the protection of Fergus.

Whilst under the protection of Fergus, Eochaidh was killed by Asal the son of Conn, and by four sons of Buidhe, and a grandson of Buidhe. The latter, being the son of Buidhe’s daughter Dorn by a stranger, was not acknowledged by her kindred (fine).

The eric fine for this outrage upon the protection of Fergus was thus arranged:—He was to have three times seven cumhals, i.e. seven cumhals in gold, seven in silver, and land of seven cumhals called Inbher-Ailbhine.

This was in satisfaction for the crime of the six murderers, viz. the son of Conn, and the four sons and the grandson of Buidhe. Five out of the six slayers apparently were able to pay their share. But not so the sixth, viz. the grandson of Buidhe, the illegitimate son of his daughter Dorn, who, being unrecognised by the kindred, apparently had no claim for help from them. Consequently Dorn, the mother of the illegitimate grandson, was handed over to Fergus as a bondwoman in pledge for her son’s share of the eric.

So matters stood for a time. But a new trouble arose, which seems to have upset the whole settlement and made it necessary to consider it over again, from the beginning.

It would seem that after all there was a question whether the land Inbher-Ailbhine was permanently handed over, or only for a time, and redeemable within the period of the lives of three chieftains, because there was a question whether such a period had expired or not. And again it was claimed that Dorn was only given in temporary bondage as a pledge for her illegitimate son’s share of the eric.

Besides these doubts, new circumstances had created a new position. Fergus was unfortunate enough to have suffered a blemish on his face. This, being a serious matter in a chieftain, was studiously kept from his knowledge. Dorn, acting as bondwoman, was one day, according to the story, preparing a bath for Fergus. Fergus complained that she was too slow about it and struck her with his horse-whip. She, being vexed, reproached him with his blemish, and for this insult Fergus slew her on the spot. Very shortly afterwards Fergus himself died.

This then was the new position, causing a new quarrel between the two tribes and involving the reopening of the old one. The interest lies in the way in which it was settled.

A balance was now struck between the crimes on each side, beginning with the slaying of Eochaidh while under the protection of Fergus, as follows:—

On the other side the Feini claimed as follows:—

This seems to have settled the matter between the two tribes; i.e., so to speak, the public matter between the Feini and Fergus’s people. But there were individual rights to be considered also. Besides these 23 cumhals due to his tribe,

Why the other brother had no claim for honour-price does not appear—perhaps the one brother was the representative of the brothers as a class. The total sum demanded on Dorn’s side was therefore 23 + 6 + 4 cumhals = 33 cumhals.

The commentary goes on to say:—

In this case the land which had been taken by Fergus as ‘seven cumhals of land’ was returned to pay for the balance due of six cumhals only.

It will be observed that whilst the father and brother of Dorn had their own honour-price allowed for her slaying, no coirp-dire was claimed for the life of Dorn herself. The reason is given as follows:—

IV. THE CURRENCY IN WHICH THE BREHON FINES WERE PAID.

Before leaving the Irish coirp-dire and honour-price, allusion must be made to the currency in which they were paid.

The most significant point was the payment in cumhals or female slaves. The cumhal was equated with three cows, but the payment was reckoned and stated in cumhals. The female slave was the prominent customary unit of payment, and doubtless a common object of commerce and trade.

The equation of the cumhal and the cow with silver was also remarkable. The cow was equated with the Roman ounce, and the cumhal with three ounces.

From a passage in the Senchus Mor (i. p. 247) and the Book of Aicill (pp. 371-377), the following table of values is evolved:—

These silver values as compared with those of the Cymric Codes seem at first sight to be singularly low. The Welsh cow, as we have seen, was valued in silver at three Saxon ounces, and the male and female slave each at a pound of twelve ounces. The Welsh value of the cow was roughly three times, and that of the slave three and one third times, the Irish silver value.

This Irish equation between cattle and silver must surely have been made at a time when silver was of quite exceptional value in Ireland. But there is some reason to believe that an earlier equation had been made with gold of a very different character.

Professor Ridgeway has called attention to an interesting story from the life of St. Finian in the Book of Lismore (fol. 24, b.c.), in which an ounce of gold was required for the liberation of a captive, and a ring of gold weighing an ounce was accordingly given.

Now, if the ounce of gold is put in the place of the cumhal or female slave, the gold values of the Brehon monetary reckonings would be:—

These gold values, if established, would take their place at once as following the gold system of Constantine, and probably might belong therefore to a period in which the Continental ratio of gold to silver would be 1:12, and the silver values fairly consistent with those of the Welsh and other tribes. The cumhal or female slave would then equal twelve ounces or one pound of silver as in Wales. This, however, must not be taken as proved. It is with the silver values of the Brehon Laws that we are here concerned. And we should be tempted to refer this silver value to the period of Charlemagne’s attempted introduction of the ratio of 1:4 were it not that, as we shall see, it seems to date back to a period some centuries earlier.

There is another point of interest in connection with the early Irish monetary reckoning.

We have seen that in the Brehon Laws the smallest silver unit was the screapall or scripulum. And it has already been mentioned that the scripulum was also known as the denarius Gallicus, of which 24 went to the Roman ounce of 576 wheat-grains, as in the Brehon Laws, and that a score of ounces made the mina Italica of twice 5760 wheat-grains. It is curious to find in a passage quoted by Petrie[77] from the Fodla Feibe in the Book of Ballymote,[78] a full and exact appreciation of the number of wheat-grains in the scripulum and the Roman ounce. The wheat-grains, according to this passage, are to be taken from wheat grown on typically rich soil which produces ‘the three roots,’ and 24 wheat-grains are the weight of the ‘screapall’ of silver, and 576 the weight of the ‘uinge’ or ounce. Further it is stated that the full weight which the Tinde or weighing bar is to weigh is—not a pound: there is no mention of the pound—but seven score ounces.[79] Now this reckoning, not in pounds, but in scores of ounces, has already been alluded to as, consciously or unconsciously, a reckoning in so many of the mina Italica. Petrie quotes a passage from the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’ in which this payment in scores is illustrated.[80]

Apart, however, from the monetary system of the Brehon Laws, the fact remains that the real currency of early Irish custom seems to have been in cumhals or female slaves. The coirp-dire and the honour-price of the Brehon tracts were reckoned in cumhals, and we shall find that there appears to be good evidence that both payment in female slaves and the equation of the female slave with three Roman ounces of silver go back to a very early period.

V. THE IRISH COIRP-DIRE AND HONOUR-PRICE TRACED FURTHER BACK THAN THE BREHON LAWS.

The evidence regarding the coirp-dire of the Brehon Laws and its payment in female slaves does not rest on those laws alone.

St. Patrick, in his ‘Confessions,’[81] treats the pretium hominis as a well-known unit of value. These are the words of St. Patrick:—

Further, in the ‘Tripartite Life’ St. Patrick is represented as putting the alternative between the death of a transgressor and the payment of seven cumhals (‘Aut reum morti aut VII. ancillas reddere debet’).[82] The evidence for this coirp dire and its payment in ancillæ seems to be thrown back by these passages to the fifth century.

Further, when we turn to the series of ‘Canones Hibernenses’ published in Wasserschleben’s work, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (p. 136), we find repeated evidence that the ‘pretium hominis,’ or ‘pretium sanguinis,’ of seven ancillæ, was a well-recognised unit of payment in ecclesiastical quarters more or less connected with the Irish and Breton Churches.

The first group of these Canons is headed ‘De disputatione Hybernensis Sinodi et Gregori Nasaseni sermo de innumerabilibus peccatis incipit.’

The first clause of this group imposes a penance for parricide of fourteen years in bread and water and satisfaction; or half this only if there was no intention.

The next clause imposes for ordinary homicide seven years’ penance in bread and water.

Clauses 8 and 10 fix the ‘prætium animæ’ of a pregnant woman (including woman and child) at twelve ancillæ.

Clause 9 fixes for us the silver value of the ancilla and seems to show that it was the same as the silver value of the cumhal in the Brehon Laws.

The clause is as follows:—

Ecclesiastical usage retained to some extent the use of Roman phraseology. The siclus or sicilicus, as we have already seen, was the didrachma of two Roman argentei or silver drachmæ. And as the drachma after Nero was one eighth of the Roman ounce, so the siclus was one quarter. The Altilia was the ‘fattened heifer’ possibly of Irish custom.[84] Twelve fattened heifers or sicli equalled therefore three Roman ounces—i.e. the exact silver value of the cumhal of the Brehon Laws. Here, therefore, in these so-called Irish Canons the ancilla seems to be reckoned at the Brehon silver value of the cumhal.

Having gained this point we proceed to examine the other clauses.

In title III., headed ‘Synodus Hibernensis decrevit,’ are the following:[85]—

Here, obviously, the VII. ancillæ are the price of the life of the criminal—the seven cumhals of the coirp-dire. The canon adds the following:—

These passages seem to have a curious correspondence with the following passage in the Brehon Laws (sequel to the ‘Crith Grabhlach,’ iv. p. 363):—