HOW KINGS, CHIEFS, AND PEOPLE WERE SUBJECT TO THE BREHON LAWS.

The ancient Irish had a system of laws which grew up gradually among them from time immemorial. And there were lawyers who made law the business of their lives, and lived by it. When a lawyer was very distinguished, and became noted for his knowledge, skill, and justice, he was recognised as competent to act as a Brehon or judge. A brehon was also a magistrate by virtue of his position. From this word ‘brehon,’ the old Irish law is now commonly called the ‘Brehon Law.’

We have seen that every king kept in his household distinguished men of all the learned professions, and paid them well. Among these the brehon always held a high place; so that a large number of brehons found employment in this way. But many were unattached, and lived by deciding cases brought before them; for which they held courts, and were paid fees by the litigants in each case. On these fees they lived, for they had no regular salaries. And there were practising lawyers also, not holding the position of brehon, who made a living by their profession, like lawyers of our day.

To become a lawyer a person had to go through a regular course of study and training. The subjects were laid down with great exactness from year to year of the course; and the time was much longer than that required by a young man now-a-days to become a barrister. Until the student had put in the full time, and mastered the whole course, he was not permitted to practise as a lawyer of any kind—pleader, law-agent, professor of law, law-adviser, or brehon.

Law was perhaps the most difficult of all the professions to study. For there were many strange terms hard to understand, all of which had to be learned, many puzzling forms to be gone through, many circumstances to be taken into account in all transactions where law was brought in, or where trials took place in a brehon’s court. And if there was the least flaw or omission, if the smallest error was committed, either by the client or by his lawyer, it was instantly pounced upon by the opposing pleader, and the case was likely enough to go against them.As soon as the Irish had learned the art of writing, they began to write down their laws in books. There is the best reason to believe that before the time of St. Patrick the pagan brehons had law-books. But they were full of paganism—pagan gods, pagan customs, and pagan expressions everywhere through them; and they would not answer for a Christian people. So about six years after St. Patrick’s arrival, when Christianity had been pretty widely spread through Ireland, he saw that it was necessary to have a new code, suitable for the new and pure faith; and he advised Laeghaire [Laery], the ard-ri, to take steps to have the laws revised and re-written. The king, seeing this could not be avoided, appointed nine learned and eminent persons—of whom he himself and St. Patrick were two—to carry out this important work. At the end of three years, these nine produced a new code, quite free from any taint of paganism: and this book got the name of Senchus MÓr [Shannahus More], meaning ‘Great old law-book.’

The very book left by St. Patrick and the others has been long lost. But successive copies were made from time to time, of which some are still preserved. We have also manuscript copies of several other old Irish law-books, most of which, as well as the Senchus MÓr, have been lately translated and printed. As the language of those old books is very obscure and difficult, it was a hard task to translate them; but this was successfully done by the two great Irish scholars, Dr. John O’Donovan and Professor Eugene O’Curry. These translations of the Senchus MÓr and the other old law-books, with the Irish texts, and with notes, explanations, and indexes, form six large printed volumes, which may now be seen in every important library.

The brehons held courts at regular intervals, where cases were tried. If a man was wronged by another, he summoned him to one of these courts, and there were lawyers to plead for both sides, and witnesses were examined, much in the same way as we see in our present law courts; and after the brehon had carefully listened to all, he gave his decision. This decision was given by the brehon alone: there were no juries such as we have now.

All parties, high and low, submitted to the Brehon Laws, and abided by the judge’s decisions; unless the party who lost the suit thought the decision wrong—which indeed happened but seldom—in which case, he appealed to the court of a higher brehon. Then, if it was found that the first had given an unjust decision, he had to return the fee and pay damages, besides more or less losing character, and lessening his chances of further employment. So the brehons had to be very careful in trying cases and giving their decisions.

The highest people in the land, even kings and queens, had to submit to the laws, exactly the same as common subjects; and if a king was wronged, he had to appeal to the law, like other people. A couple of hundred years ago, when the kings of France were, to all intents and purposes, despotic, and could act much as they pleased towards their subjects, a learned French writer on law, during a visit to England, happened to pass near the grounds of one of the palaces, where he observed a notice on the fence of a field belonging to the king:—“Trespassers will be prosecuted according to law.” Now this gave him great pleasure, as it showed how the king had to call in the aid of the law to redress a wrong, like any of his subjects; and it gave him occasion to contrast the condition of England with that of France, where the king or queen would have made short work of the trespasser, without any notice or law at all.But if the same Frenchman had been in Ireland 1,500 years ago, he might have witnessed what would give him still greater pleasure:—not a mere notice, but an actual case of trespass on a queen’s ground, tried in open court before his eyes. In those days there reigned at Tara a king named Mac Con, whose queen had a plot of land, not far from the palace, planted with glasheen, i.e., the woad-plant, for dyeing blue. In the neighbourhood there lived a female brewy, or keeper of a hostel for travellers, who had flocks and herds like all other brewys. One night a flock of sheep belonging to her broke into the queen’s grounds, and ate up or destroyed the whole crop of glasheen; whereupon the queen summoned her for damages.

In due course the case came before the king (for the queen would not appear before an ordinary brehon), and on hearing the evidence he decided that the sheep should be forfeit to the queen to pay for the crop. Now, although the glasheen was an expensive and valuable crop, the sheep were worth a great deal more; and the people were enraged at this unjust sentence; but they dared not speak out, for Mac Con was a usurper and a tyrant.

Among the people who dwelt in Tara at this time was a boy, a handsome, noble-looking young fellow, whom the people all knew by the name of Cormac. But no one in the least suspected that he was in reality a prince, the son of the last monarch, Art the Solitary, who had been slain in battle by the usurper, Mac Con. He was wise and silent, and carefully concealed from all who he was; for he well knew that if he was discovered the king would be sure to kill him.

While the trial was going on he stood behind the crowd listening quietly; and being by nature noble and just-minded, even from his youth up, he could not contain himself when he heard the king’s unfair and oppressive sentence; and he cried out amid the dead silence:—“That is an unjust judgment! Let the fleeces be given up for the glasheen—the sheep-crop for the land-crop—for both will grow again!”

The king was astonished and enraged, and became still more so when the people exclaimed with one voice:—“That is a true judgment, and he who has pronounced it is surely the son of a king!”

In this manner the people, to their great joy, discovered who Cormac was. How he managed to escape the vengeance of the king we are not told; but escape he did; and after a time the usurper was expelled from Tara, and Cormac was put in his place. To this day Cormac Mac Art is celebrated in Irish records as a skilful lawyer and writer on law, and as the wisest and most illustrious of all the ancient Irish kings.[1]