The twofold division of the Scots, supposed to have taken place in the reign of Conn of the hundred battles, has also its parallelism in Scotland; and if Bede recognised the division of Ireland into the two provinces of the Northern and the Southern Scots, he equally viewed the territory occupied by the great Pictish nation as consisting of the two provinces of the Northern and the Southern Picts, who were separated from each other ‘by steep and rugged mountain chains, within which the latter had seats,’ a description which can only apply to the great chain of the Mounth, extending from the Eastern Sea to the Western Sea, and separating the counties of Aberdeen and Inverness from those of Kincardine, Forfar, and Perth; and to those minor chains proceeding from it on the south, which, as they terminate in the more level country, form the great barrier of the so-called Grampians. Towards the end of the great Pictish kingdom we find Scone appearing as the principal seat and central point of the monarchy, and Fordun gives as one tradition ‘that it had been anciently fixed as the principal seat of the kingdom by both the Pictish and Scottish kings;’ and as another ‘that the ancient kings, even from the time of Cruithne, the first king of the Picts, had made it the seat of the kingdom of Alban.’[152] Scone is situated on the left bank of the river Tay, and within the ancient district of Gouerin or Gowry, and the circumstances connected with this district, and with Scone as the ancient capital of Scotland, present features very analogous to those recorded in the legend by which the province of Meath was formed, and Teamhair or Tara constituted the chief seat of the monarchy. As Meath was situated where the four ancient provinces of Ulster, Connaught, Munster, and Leinster meet, so also Gowry is placed in a central position where the four ancient provinces of Alban—namely those of Stratherne and Menteath, of Atholl (to which it appears at one time to have been attached), of Angus and Mearns, and of Fife and Fothreve—touch each other. As the originally small district of Meath was enlarged into a province by adding four districts, each of which was taken from one of the other districts, so we find that there were four royal manors of Gowry, viz. those of Scone, Cubert, Forgrund, and Straderdel.[153] These too surround a small central district, and each lies contiguous to one of the four provinces. Scone, forming the western district of Gowry, is separated by the river Tay from the old province of Fortrenn; Cubert or Coupar-Angus, on the north-east, adjoins Angus or Forfarshire; Forgrund, now Longforgan, on the south-east, is separated by the Tay from a parish in Fife bearing the same name; and Stratherdel or Strathardle, on the north, lies within the barrier of the Grampians, and stretches along the eastern boundary of Atholl. As Meath was the old mensal land set apart for the support of the Crown, so we find Gowry too appears to have been a Crown demesne; and as Teamhair or Tara was not only the place where the Ardri or sovereign of Ireland was inaugurated, and the laws of the kingdom framed and published, but was so completely regarded as the central point of the monarchy that the kingdom was often termed the Kingdom of Tara, so we find the ancient kings of Alban inaugurated and the laws of the kingdom promulgated at Scone; and when Kenneth, the first of the Scottish line, overthrew the Pictish dynasty, he is said in the oldest chronicler who records the event to have acquired ‘the kingdom of Scone.’[154]
106. The account of these supposed colonies in all their subsequent elaboration will be found in the Annals of the Four Masters, and in Keating’s History of Ireland, which contains a very accurate representation of the Irish legends in regard to them.
107. These names have a meaning connected with land, and probably personify the different kinds of tenure by which the land was held. Er means noble; Orba, inheritance; Fearann, land in general; and Feargna, chieftainship.
108. The word meant is Lediaith. In Welsh, identity of language was implied by Cyfiaith, dialectic difference by Lediaith, and difference of language by Anghyviaith.
109. Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 47, 48.
110. In referring to the Cymric legends it is necessary to be careful as to the source from which they are derived. The literature of Wales has been unfortunately tainted to a large extent by spurious documents professing to be old, but in the main the creation of the eighteenth century, when a school of Welsh antiquaries existed, desirous of reproducing what they considered a sort of mystic Druidism supposed to have been handed down from pagan times by a successor of Baedi, and who were little scrupulous as to the means by which they promoted their object. Among the documents emerging from this school were the so-called Historical Triads, which the author rejects as spurious. A valuable and interesting work, the Mabinogion, by Lady Charlotte Guest, containing the ancient Welsh prose tales preserved in the Red Book of Hergest, unfortunately includes one of these spurious pieces, the Hanes Taliessin, among the genuine tales. The author announced in his Four Ancient Books of Wales that this tale, though included in those said to be taken from the Red Book of Hergest, is not to be found in that MS., and is certainly a manufacture of the last century; while more spurious poems, attributed to Taliessin but not to be found in the Book of Taliessin, have been introduced into it, though not forming a part of it. He regrets to see that this spurious document is still included in the new edition of the Mabinogion among the tales said to be taken from the Red Book of Hergest, as if the imposture had never been detected. It shows how difficult it is to purge the early historical literature of any country of such spurious matter when once it has been accepted as genuine.
111. Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. p. 276.
112. Gildas, Hist. c. 25.
113. Nennius, Hist. c. 42.
114. Nennius, c. 56.
115. This document is printed with a translation in the The Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. ii. p. 455.
116. See Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. c. x., Cumbria, or the Men of the North, for a fuller account of these traditionary origins.
117. The modern Welsh antiquaries in general regard the Picts as belonging to the Cymric race and speaking a Welsh dialect, but in this they run counter to their own early traditions, for both in their old poems and in prose documents there is a consensus as to their being a foreign race to the Cymry, and belonging to the people termed by them Gwyddyl.
In the poems they are usually termed Brithwyr and Peithwyr, but also Gwyddyl Ffichti; thus the early Pictish inhabitants of Bernicia are thus alluded to—
And in one poem the epithet of Anghyfiaeth, that is, speaking a language different from the Cymric, is clearly applied to them (ib. p. 433 and note). Thus in the Triads of Arthur, which are genuine, they are included in the three foreign races called ‘Three oppressions came into this island, and did not go out of it.’ The second is ‘the oppression of the Gwyddyl Ffichti, and they did not again go out of it.’ The third was the oppression of the Saxons (ib., vol. ii. p. 465). In order to avoid the force of this, the term Gwyddyl Ffichti is usually translated Irish Picts, and supposed to refer to those in Ireland only; but the epithet Gwyddyl was certainly used in the larger sense of the race wherever found, and it is clear from all the passages that the same people are referred to who are known as the Picts of Britain. If they had been termed Cymry Ffichti, would this school of Welsh antiquarians have tolerated an assertion that they were not of the Cymric race?
118.
119. Nemedius, inter posteros ejus McCailin Moir agus MacLeoid.—MS. 1467. See also Ulster Archæological Journal, vol. ix. p. 319.
120. They will be found in Lady Ferguson’s excellent little work, The Story of the Irish before the Conquest, and in Mr. Standish O’Grady’s interesting work just published, The History of Ireland, vol. i. Heroic Period. The interest of this latter work is, in the author’s opinion, greatly detracted from by his having unfortunately adopted a practice, which cannot be too strongly deprecated, of spelling Irish proper names phonetically. There is nothing gained by it, as the form of the name has quite as barbarous an appearance as when the proper orthography is retained, the identity of the persons meant is lost, it is misleading as there is no uniform pronunciation of these names by those who speak the vernacular Gaelic, and the travesty of the Irish names is equally offensive to good taste and to sound judgment. In other respects this little work has great merits.
121. Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, pp. 24, 45, 318, 322.
122. Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 49.
123. Genealach Corca Laidhe.—Miscellany of the Celtic Society, p. 10.
124. Ranta on Athcliath cochele ittir Cond. c. Cathach agus Mogh Nuadhad cui nomen erat Eogan.—Ad an. 165.
125. Bede, Ec. Hist., lib. iii. cap. iii.
126. Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 113.
127. Indarba Ullad a h-Erend a Manand la Cormac hui Cond. As de ba Cormac Ulfada dia ro cuir Ul. a fadh.—Ad an. 254.
128. Genealach Corca Laidhe.—Misc. Celtic Soc., pp. 4, 5.
129. Ib. p. 67.
130. Ibid. p. 5.
131. See Annals of the Four Masters, under dates, and Keating’s History of Ireland. Tighernac under 322, 326, 332.
132. Cormac’s Glossary, edited for the Irish Arch. Society by Mr. Whitley Stokes, p. 111.
133. Annals of the Four Masters.
134. Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachrach, p. 19.
135. From the Book of Leinster. The substance is given in O’Curry’s Lectures on the MS. Materials, p. 287.
136. Dean of Lismore’s Book, p. 157.
137. This poem is preserved in McFirbis’ Book of Genealogies, p. 410, where the prose tales will also be found. The original of the poem is printed in the Appendix No. VI.
138. McFirbis, in his Genealogical MS., says—‘This account I found among the Books of Fardorough McFirbis, who was a sennachaidhe well acquainted in Alban and much frequented it.’ He lived about 1560.
139. Fergus filius Eric ipse fuit primus qui de semine Chonare suscepit regnum Alban.—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 130.
140. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 18.
141. Stat. Acc. (1791-99), vol. xiv. p. 602.
142. Cath a sreith in terra Circin inter Pictones invicem in quo cecidit Bruidhi mac Mailchon.—Tigh. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 76.
143. Chron. of the Picts and Scots, pp. 320 and 526.
144. O’Curry, MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, p. 319. The story of the children of Uisneach, from which the quotations are here made, will be found in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin.
145. The old Gaelic names of the leading physical features of the Highlands have been so perverted by the numerous guide-books to which the attraction of the country to tourists has given rise, that the older forms well known some thirty years ago are almost gone. The writers of these books seem to have invented an orthography of their own, which they suppose to represent Gaelic words, but are neither one thing nor another. One of their most successful inventions is that of the Cuchullin hills in Skye.
146. A translation from the oldest copy of it will be found in the introduction to the Dean of Lismore’s Book, p. lxxxvii.
147. Ib., p. lxxxviii. note.
148. Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 319.
149. Cormac’s Glossary, edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes, p. 72.
150. The form of this name as we find it in St. Berchan’s prophecy is identical with that of Erin or Ireland.—See Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 84, 88, and 98.
151. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 165.
152. Fordun’s Chronicle, ed. 1874, vol. i. pp. 227, 430.
153. There is a charter by Malcolm the Fourth to the canons of Scone, ‘in principale sede regni nostri fundata,’ in which he conveys to them the titles ‘de quatuor maneriis meis de Gouerin scilicet de Scon, et de Cubert et de Fergrund et de Stratherdel.’—Chr. of Scone, p. 6.
154. Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 9 and 21.
The population of Scotland in the reign of Alexander the Third was, as we have seen, of a very mixed character. The southern frontier of the kingdom had by this time been advanced to the Solway and the Cheviots, while the annexation of the Isles in his reign had extended its western boundary to its utmost limits. Over the whole of this extended territory the name of Scotland, originally limited to the country north of the Forth and Clyde, had now spread, and we find the area of this extended kingdom occupied by a population consisting of three different races. These were, in the mountainous region of the north and west, the Gael or Highlanders, the descendants of the Northern Picts of pure Gaelic race, and of the Gaelic Scots who had settled among them. The more fertile and level plains forming the eastern seaboard, extending from the Moray Firth to the Cheviots, had originally been possessed by the Southern Picts, a mixed race partly of Gael and partly of Britons, but the Angles of Northumberland had by degrees colonised the whole of it. On the west the Britons of Strathclyde had extended from the Clyde to the Solway, but had likewise given way to the Anglic colonisation; while Galloway west of the Nith was still occupied by a Gaelic people, who had encroached upon the British territory by occupying the district of Carrick in the south, the Northern Gael having likewise encroached on its northern frontier by spreading over the district of Lennox.
The actual population of Scotland had thus consisted of three races—the two Celtic peoples of the Gael and the Brython or Britons, and the Teutonic people of the Angles. To these races had been added by King David the First and his successors the Norman barons, who were overlords of a great part of the territory of the kingdom, while a Norwegian population may to some extent have still lingered in the Western Isles. In endeavouring to ascertain the early social organisation of these three races, besides the few hints which historical documents afford, we have the advantage of an ancient code of laws of each race. For the Angles we have the Anglo-Saxon laws, and for the Britons the early laws and institutions of Wales, both published by the Record Commission.[155] For the Gael we have the ancient laws of Ireland, commonly called the Brehon Laws, now in course of publication;[156] and besides these there has been preserved a small code in Scotland termed the Laws of the Picts and Scots, and some fragments of ancient law retained in the hands of the different kings of the race of David I.[157]
It is with the Celtic races alone that we have to do in this work, and principally with those of Gaelic race, who alone preserved a separate and independent existence in Scotland; and an examination of all those documents which tend to throw light upon the early social organisation of the Gaelic as well as of the Cymric race leads us to the conclusion that it was not territorial or purely patriarchal, but was based on the community or tribe. Among the people of Gaelic race the original social unit appears to have been the Tuath, a name originally applied to the tribe, but which came to signify also the territory occupied by the tribe community;[158] but when we endeavour to ascertain the original constitution of the Tuath or tribe of the Gaelic race, we are met by a difficulty analogous to that which we have to encounter in investigating the history of their language. ‘The formation of the mother tongue belongs to the prehistoric period, and it is a process which, carried on in the infancy and growth of the social state, is concealed from observation. When its possessors first emerge into view and take their place among the history of nations, counter-influences have already been at work, their language has already entered upon its downward course, and we can only watch it in its process of decomposition and alteration, and reach its primitive condition through the medium of its dialects.’[159] So it is with the tribe. We nowhere see it in its primitive form. When it first emerges in the historic period it has already entered upon a course of modification and change. Various influences have been at work, both internal, arising from the natural progress of society, and external, produced from the contact of foreign organisations, to alter existing forms and introduce new elements, and thus it undergoes a process of change which leads it further and further from its primitive constitution.
Two leading features of this process can, however, without difficulty be detected, and may be assumed as tolerably certain. These are, first, that private property in land did not exist at first, but emerged from a right of common property vested in the community. Personal property or individual property in moveables must at all times have existed, but real property or individual property in the soil is of much later origin, and is an excrescence upon the common use or property of the land occupied by the tribe, and is inconsistent with its original constitution. The second feature is, that the social unit was not the individual or the family but the community or tribe. The original bond of union between the members of the tribe was no doubt the belief in a common origin, a common descent from the eponymus, whether mythic or historic, from whom it took its name; but in the early period to which we must refer the pure primitive tribe, when the sanctions of marriage were unknown, and a loose relation between the sexes existed, which is faintly shadowed forth in a few scattered notices by the Roman authors of this relation among the Celtic inhabitants of Britain and Ireland, descent through the females rather than the males must have been viewed as the more certain link; and it is probable that here as elsewhere female succession preceded a representation through males, and that the sons belonged to the tribe of their mothers.[160]
The early state of the tribe, however, soon became modified not only by internal changes but also by external influences. Of these external influences not the least powerful, and probably the first in order, was the introduction of Christianity and the adaptation of the Christian Church to the tribal system. The tribe was thus brought into contact with a higher civilisation and a purer code of morals. The lax relations between the sexes, which still survived, must have been checked and controlled, the sanction of marriage enforced, by which the father is placed in his legitimate position as head of the family, and the rights of the children were clearly defined, and the older connection of the members of the tribe through females reduced in some cases to an occasional right of succession through the mother, while in others it entirely disappeared.
The oldest tenure by which land was held was that by the tribe in common. When the tribes passed from the hunting and nomad state to the pastoral, and became possessed of large herds of cattle, it was a natural consequence that each tribe should appropriate a special territory for their better management. The whole of the regulation of these ancient laws is evidently based upon the fact that cattle formed the principal property of the original tribes; and long after individual property in land had become an essential element in the constitution of the tribe, cattle still formed the standard of value by which everything was estimated. That a right of individual property in the cattle existed at a very early period seems very evident, but the land on which they were pastured was the common property of the tribe, and, after the cultivation of land began, the arable land was annually divided into lots, to one of which each member of the tribe had a right. The special district occupied by the tribe would thus consist of pasture land held by the tribe in common, on which each member had a right to pasture the cattle which belonged to him; arable land divided into lots which were annually or at certain periods assigned to him; and unoccupied and waste land remaining as the common property of the tribe.
These rights belonged, however, to the proper members of the tribe only, who were as such on an equality with each other; but there soon came, from other external influences, to be a distinction between those dwelling within the bounds of the Tuath of Saor or free, and Daor or unfree. The freemen of the tribe were alone recognised as possessing rights derived from the original constitution of the tribe. The origin of the class of the unfree is thus stated in connection with the legendary history of Ireland:—‘The first race of them were the remnant of the Firbolg themselves, together with the remnant of the Tuath De Danaan,’ the legendary people who preceded the Milesian Scots. ‘The second race, the people who passed from their own countries, they being descended from Saor chlann (or free tribes), who went under Daor-chios (servile rent) to another tribe. The third people were the race of the Saor chlann, whose land was converted into Fearann-chlaidhimh (sword-land or conquered country) in their own territory, and who remained in it in bondage under the power of their enemies. The fourth race were people of Saor chlann who passed into bondage for their evil deeds, and who lost their blood and their land through their evil deeds, according to the law. The fifth people were those who came from stranger soldiers, i.e. from external mercenaries who left property in Erin. The sixth race were the people who were descended from the bondmen who came with the Milesians into Erin,’ that is, who and their forefathers had always been bondsmen.[161]
Besides this great distinction between the free and the unfree, the free members of the tribe contained within themselves one distinction which must have always existed among them, and the germs of others which became gradually more prominent as the operation of the causes which led to them more and more influenced the constitution of the tribe. That combination which produced the tribe must from the beginning have had leaders and other necessary office-bearers; some one among them must have had supreme authority as judge in time of peace, and the tribe must have had a competent leader in time of war. Such functionaries were necessary as bonds of union; without them the tribe could not have been kept together in anything like social union; and as the tie which bound the free members of the tribe together was the belief in a common origin—a common descent from a mythic eponymus from whom the tribe took its name—so the Ri or king, who was at the head of the tribe, held that position not merely by election but as the representative in the senior line of the common ancestor, and had a hereditary claim to their obedience. As the supreme authority and judge of the tribe he was the Ri or king. This was his primary function. Thus we are told that ‘it is lawful for a king to have a judge though he himself is a judge.’[162] As the leader in war he was the Toisech or Captain, and bore the one or the other title as either function became most prominent, while in some cases these functions might be separated and held by different functionaries. Although the Ri or king derived his authority from his claim to be the senior representative of the common ancestor, the office was still, from the necessity of being filled by a properly qualified person, to a certain extent elective. It was hereditary in a certain family, but elective among the members of that family; and an additional safeguard against the tribe being left without a proper head was provided by another member of the family being elected Tanaist or successor to the Ri or king in the event of his death. That the hereditary character of this office existed from primitive times is apparent from this, that a somewhat similar law of succession prevailed in the early Irish Church, the abbot or head of the monastery being chosen from a particular family; and while the influence of the Church may have confirmed, if it did not establish, a strict descent in the male line in the tribe,[163] a hereditary succession in the Church must have been derived from the close connection which had been formed between the Church and the tribe, and from the influence of the tribe upon the Church and not of the Church upon the tribe. While the whole of the land was still the common property of the tribe, the Ri or king had no separate possession of land, but in this respect was on an equality with the free members of the tribe, and entitled only to the same right of pasturage for his cattle on the pasture land and to the share of the arable land annually allotted to him; but in addition to this he was maintained in the dignity of his office at the expense of the tribe, and this right of maintenance, according as the tribe and its wealth increased, assumed various forms, one of which may have arisen from the influence of the Church, and given the first impulse to something like separate possession of land. When the Church was established in connection with a tribe, a grant of part of the tribe land and its separation from the rest became a necessity for the maintenance of the Church, and thus those Termon lands which form so marked a feature in the territorial position of the Irish Church, came into existence. Analogous to this, one form which this right of maintenance on the part of the Ri or king assumed was, that a portion of land was likewise separated from the common land of the tribe as mensal land for the support of the dignity of the Ri or king for the time being.
Another cause must also of necessity have produced distinction of position between the free members of the tribe. Such an equality as may be held to have existed originally among the members of the tribe can hardly have been preserved unless there was also an equality in their personal characteristics and their wealth in cattle. The natural operation of differences of character and wealth was to create distinctive classes among them. Those of superior abilities soon take the lead of others, and those whose prudence and sagacity enabled them to increase their possession of cattle must soon have occupied a more important position in the tribe, as their share of the annual allotment of land was regulated by the size of their herd. Thus there came to be recognised in the tribe a gradation of ranks founded upon the possession of personal wealth and importance. The lowest grade in the tribe was the Fer Midba or inferior man, of whom there were two classes. As soon as a member of the tribe reached the age of fourteen he was emancipated from the control of his parents and acquired certain rights, but was not vested with his full privileges till the encircling of the beard, that is, till he became twenty years old, when he was entitled to a separate residence (Sain trebhta) and a share of the tribe land (Sealbh). Above the Fer Midba was the Boaire or Cowlord, whose superior wealth in cattle, with the exclusive possession of a homestead, gave him a kind of nobility over the tribe’s man. Of the Boaire class there were six grades. The lowest rank, to which the title of Aire was given, was the Ogaire or young lord who had ‘newly taken householdship upon him.’ His property was reckoned by the number seven. He had seven cows with their bull, seven pigs with a boar, seven sheep, and a horse for work and riding. He possessed a house but no land in property. The land required for the support of seven cows was termed a Cow-land, and he left one cow at the end of the year in payment for it. He had the fourth part of a plough, and therefore his possession with the arable land attached to it formed probably the fourth part of a ploughgate, or thirty acres, equivalent to the husbandland in Scotland. The next higher grade was the tenant resident (Aithech ar athreba). He represented a small community of four or five, occupying jointly as much land and possessing in common as much stock as would entitle a single person to be a Boaire. He had ten cows, ten pigs, ten sheep, but, like the Ogaire, the fourth part of ploughing apparatus, which is here defined to be an ox or ploughshare, a goad, and a bridle. He was so named as occupying a part only of as much land as would entitle him to be called a Boaire along with others, the joint possession being sufficient for the purpose. Above him was the Boaire febhsa, so called ‘because it is from cows his rank as an Aire and his honor price are derived.’ He had land of the value of twice seven Cumhals, or forty-two cows. He had a house with a back house or kitchen, a share in a mill, a kiln, a barn, a sheephouse, a calf-house, and a pigstye. These are the seven houses from which each Boaire was rated, and formed the complete Rath or homestead. It was surrounded by a precinct or Maigne, which was a space as far as the Boaire could cast a spear with an iron head, or hammer, sitting at the door of his house, and was inviolable. The whole was usually enclosed by a ditch and earthen rampart. And he possessed twelve cows and half a plough. Land of the value of three times seven Cumhals or sixty-three cows, and the possession of twenty cows, two bulls, six bullocks, twenty hogs, twenty sheep, four house-fed hogs, two sows, and a riding-horse, made him a Bruighfer, and entailed upon him the burden of ‘receiving the king, bishop, poet, or judge from off the road,’ as well as all travellers. And here too the court of judgment was held for the tribe and the assembly of the tribe’s men. When the Boaire possessed so large an amount of stock as to be obliged to give off some to others he becomes a Ferfothla, and ‘the excess of his cattle which his own land cannot sustain, which he cannot sell for land, and which he does not himself require, he gives as the proportionate stock of tenants’ (Ceile). The highest grade of the Boaire was the Aire-coisring, who represented the people before the king and the synod.
The superior position in which the Boaire was placed towards the other members of the tribe, his more extensive stock, and the exclusive possession of his homestead, must have naturally led to a desire to retain the same land in his family, instead of being subjected to annual change; and the larger his possession the more easily he would obtain this, which was an inevitable step to the introduction of rights of private property in the land of the tribe. When the same family had retained possession of land for three generations it came at length to constitute a right of property, and thus a class of territorial lords was created whose position as Aires was based upon property in land. This right of property and all the privileges connected with it was termed Deis, and they formed a superior class of territorial magnates, who were termed Flaith or chieftains, and constituted an order termed the Grad Flaith, in contradistinction to the Grad Feine or inferior order.
In the division of these respective orders, if not in the actual introduction of an individual right of property in land, we can again trace the influence of the Christian Church. In one of the tracts forming the collection of laws termed the Brehon, but not one of the most ancient, the following account of these divisions is given:—‘How many divisions are there of these?—Seven. What is the division of the grades of a Tuath derived from?—From the similitude of ecclesiastical orders, for it is proper that for every order which is in the Church there should be a corresponding one in the Tuath.’ But this number of seven is purely arbitrary, for we are told that the grades of the Tuath consist of the ‘Fer Midba, the Boaire, the Aire desa, the Aire ard, the Aire tuise, the Aire forgaill, and the Ri or king. If it be according to the right of the Feinechus law, it is in such manner these seven grades are divided.’ But then follows—‘What is the division if it be not the Boaire with his eight divisions?’ that is, if the ‘Grad Feine,’ or inferior order consisting of eight divisions, is excluded; and the answer is—‘The Aire desa, the Aire echta, the Aire ard, the Aire tuise, the Aire forgaill, the Tanaist of the Ri or king, and the Ri or king.’ Here the number of seven is made up by adding to the Grad Flaith an Aire echta and the Tanaist.[164]