In my previous post, I introduce the Brehon texts and talk about their historical context. In this post, I will introduce the specific context of the Senchus Mor, describe what it covers, and analyze excerpts that can help determine its role in history and Law in general. I will also briefly talk about the important early scholars of this text, and what role it plays in Ireland nowadays.
Marx Engels says that "the Senchus Mor has until now been our main source of information about conditions in Ireland." It is indeed true that the Senchus Mor is one of the most influential and detailed document in the study of Brehon Law.
The text starts with its own introduction, talking about why it was written, who wrote it, and when it was written. It is clearly a postscribed addendum, potentially from someone who wished to alter the interpretation of the text. The first two pages provide a lot of information:
Evidently, the Senchus Mor was created by the order of King Laeghaire (Loegaire mac Neill, the High King from 428-458AD, supposedly converted to Christianity by Saint Patrick) that wanted to collect all "old laws." This means that he wanted to collect all oral laws and transcribe them to keep them from changing much, and allowing them to spread more easily across Ireland. The nine people mentioned are those who transcribed, compiled, and possibly modified, the laws that ended up in the Senchus Mor. The Patrick that is mentioned in the list is indeed Saint Patrick.
The text of the Senchus Mor was actually written in the 8th Century, long after the death of Saint Patrick and King Laeghaire. This means that some of the information given in this introduction is completely false and added to give the text more credibility and legitimacy, which is always helpful with legal texts. It is unknown exactly who wrote this introduction, which would be the best way to find out exactly why this made up information was added; however, it is reasonable to assume it is a Christian monk.
It is said that all laws that clashed with Christianity were modified or removed to suit Christian Canon. In the next post we will examine how far they went in modifying these laws by looking at the text itself for clues, such as laws that still clash with Christianity, or blatant signs of modification, such as insertions of prose in the middle of verse text.
The Senchus Mor is mostly in verse, apart from the aforementioned prose splicing, which seems odd for a legal text, since it is much harder to make verse as specific and concise as prose, as well as keep interpretation relatively simple and less variable. However, all of these laws were memorized in order to have been passed down orally, and verse is considerably easier to memorize than prose, especially for legalese text. Apart from spliced-in prose, there are a few sections that are in prose, mostly within Volume 1. There are supposedly 6 volumes of the Senchus Mor, 3 of which remain in entirety. The first volume covers the law of distress (Archive volume 1), the second covers the law of hostages (Marx Engels), the third covers customary law (Archive volume 3), the fourth covers the law of the family (Marx Engels). All manuscripts we have remaining have annotations, notes, and commentary/translation for some terms, most likely added by copyists.
Kevin Flanagan of Brehon Law Academy provides an interesting bibliophilical side-note - that the original Gaelic text is read starting in the middle of the paragraph, and then reading outwards, alternating lines above and below, which "gives the impression that the line or principle being discussed is literally being expanded upon." (Brehon Law Academy). However, considering that the original text is no longer available, this may have been the creation of a copyist many years later.
References:
Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, volume 1 through 6, except volume 2, from Archive.org. Volumes 1-3 cover the Senchus Mor. https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Ireland.+Commissioners+for+Publishing+the+Ancient+Laws+and+Institutes+of+Ireland%22
Flanagan, Kevin. (2014, June 5). Irish Manuscripts: The Senchus Mor. Brehon Law Academy. https://www.brehonlawacademy.ie/single-post/2014/06/05/Irish-Manuscripts-The-Senchus-M%C3%B3r
[This is a brief piece from Frederick Engels' work on a book he intended to publish, but never finished, known as "History of Ireland." Marxists.org gives the following description of it: History of Ireland is a fragment of a voluminous work Engels intended to write and on which he worked at the end of 1869 and during the first half of 1870. Engels studied a vast selection of literary and historical sources: the works of antique and medieval writers, annals, collections of ancient law codes, legislative acts and legal treatises, folklore, travellers’ notes, numerous works on archaeology, history, economics, geography, geology, etc. Engels’s bibliography, embracing over 150 titles, is selective and includes but a fraction of the sources he studied. It is from marxists.org because Karl Marx did indeed collaborate to some degree with Frederick Engels, as he was a scholar of Irish History, because early Irish society greatly intrigued him.] Frederick Engels. (1870). Marx Engels on Ireland. marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/senchus-mor.htm
Joyce, P. W..(1906). A Smaller Social History of Ireland. libraryireland.com. https://www.libraryireland.com/SocialHistoryAncientIreland/I-IV-2.php
Writers and editors of Stair na hEirann. (n.d.). Brehon Law: the Senchus Mor. stairnaheirann.net. https://stairnaheireann.net/2017/09/15/brehon-law-the-senchus-mor-2/
Wikipedia:
'Loegaire Mac Neill'
The verse format is interesting, and your explanation of it makes sense. The in-depth investigation to come should be fascinating; trying to untangle the composition history of books which exist in hand-copied editions is its own whole discipline. The bit about reading from the centre of the paragraph outward is intriguing – I don't think I've come across that before...
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, the marginalia on the pages you've provided is interesting in itself – apparently correcting the translation!