(Here's a late post on the Senchus Mor. This one took a while because it covers the first volume of the most significant piece of Brehon legal text).
The first part of the Introduction of the Senchus Mor (different from the prologue) contains a religious and spiritual context, with many pages of plain theology and mythology, which is fairly odd for a legal text. It starts with the creation of the Earth and its geological and meteorological features, followed by its population by Adam and Eve, and claims about the Earth's astrological context. This part is an odd blend of potential old Druid beliefs washed over by Christian Canon. Christianisation often took this approach to slowly make Christianity more approachable and familiar to the people who were being Christianised, mixing Christian Canon with beliefs, mythology, and style of the native people.
This tells us a lot about what the Senchus Mor was aiming to be. It was not just a legal text pertaining to ruling civil legal disputes, it was also a piece of literature meant to teach Irish Gaels history (which we see more as mythology in retrospect) and philosophy. However, after the introduction, the tone and content changes quite a lot. There is slightly less blatant Christian Canon, and more references to purely Gaelic mythology. This shows the introduction, alongside the preface, were appendages to the text of the Senchus. However, the whole Senchus Mor is a collection of transcribed oral laws, legal precedents, and other written legal tracts, so the introduction and preface are not the only thing that stand out.
The text itself starts (on page 64 here) by introducing 'distress' via a long metaphor using parts of the story of the Cattle Raid of Cooley, a very famous myth. When mentioned in this text, distress means payment of some kind of property from a wrongdoer to a victim or someone associated with the victim as reparation for a wrongdoing.
The large typeface text is a more general text, while the small typeface text is elaboration on the larger text. This smaller text may have come from another actual written text, or it could have been written during the creation of the Senchus Mor. In the preface, it is claimed that the Senchus Mor is only a compilation of texts; however we determined in the previous post that it was most likely written up to several centuries after the creation of the Senchus Mor and was filled with inaccuracies. There is an even smaller typeface text that provides even more elaboration or correction to the small typeface text.
Nonetheless, the Cattle Raid story given in this section serves as a legal precedent. It goes through what crimes were committed and what punishments and corrective measures were enacted in response. It is impossible to know if this story actually occurred or not, but given the widespread nature of the Senchus Mor, and especially this story/myth even without the Senchus Mor, it was definitely used as a basis for many legal cases and had a profound impact on Ireland for several hundred years.
After the story of the Cattle Raid, the text gets into more concrete legal information. The story and reasoning behind the information is always given, hence why the vast majority of the Senchus Mor is precedent. The smaller and smallest text are always the most elaborate and concrete, restricting interpretation a little bit, which is very useful given that this is a widespread legal text with great authority.
As soon as it gets into this direct legal information, a lot is revealed about Irish society at that time. Page 85 mentions a "court" making decisions about punishment for crimes, "advocates" who "aid" the criminal during the legal process, an eyewitnessing - all of which is mentioned in the large text, which means hopefully most information is not anachronistic. It then goes through lists of "seds," which are punishments, which include imprisonment.
A lot is then revealed about classes and how they are each treated by the law. As seen in the post about marriage Law, women had fewer rights than men, especially if they were not teir husband's cetmuinter. We also saw that criminals and "outlaws" were treated differently, and the profession and amount of property one possessed had a lot to do with their status and thus treatment in the law. Here, all of this is similarly reflected. The text is always referring to the "Feini" in the context of the laws, which means free people (non-criminals or non-outlaws, non-slaves). What is extremely interesting is how those who cannot "bind" or "make" contracts, those "unqualified for the court" cannot "take distress" (p.85). It is unclear exactly what these terms mean, but this generally means that people with little legal education, and maybe even all illiterate people, cannot receive distress for crimes committed unto them. This shows a clear institutional oppression ingrained in society by legal classes ('judges' and kings).
What is also interesting is that the large text says 'kings' are on the same social status as "the orders of religion [and] learning," but that they can "decide against every class of persons." (p.79). This means that 'kings' had a lot of legal power over not only their subjects, but also any lower class than them, similar to many places in medieval Europe at the time and many years into the future. The term 'king' here probably doesn't only refer to High King, but also the other smaller 'kings' equivalent to Earls, Dukes, etc. This also means that 'kings' had somewhat equal power to the aristocracy (includes judges) and the clergy (Christian and potentially Druidic).
The following passage is also very revealing of how the law treated the layman:
"No labourer, no 'fuidhir,' no imbecile vagrant, no shepherd, no cowherd, no cart-boy is distrained in a decision about debts due of himself or others, or for the regulations of a territory, but his foot is fettered or a chain put about his neck, and during his impri- soiiment he is not entitled to any food except the ' bochtan,' or the ' urchaelan,' or the cake of the noble festival with its obsoniurn, until their chiefs compel them to do their duty."
This is interesting because it almost seems dismissive of lower classes. It seems as if if someone is of a lower class, they are not entitled to lighter punishments, and are instead placed in prison no matter the severity of the crime. This goes against what most people say about Brehon law, about it being light in centralised punishment and mostly void of imprisonment. This may passage may reflect a more modern introduction to the Law, after the influence of other European cultures had brought over these ideas.
What is interesting about this copy of the Senchus Mor is the somewhat invasive marginalia. The person writing it never reveals their identity, but from the notes it seems they are someone who knows a lot of Gaelic, as they are ceaselessly correcting the translation on every page. These corrections change the meaning of the text quite drastically, which is why reading Gaelic proficiently would really help. Sine I cannot find any other translations, these margin notes help remind me that information gathered from translations is always subject to error.
References
The text, Volume 1: Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, volume 1 from Archive.org. https://archive.org/details/ancientlaws01hancuoft/page/64/mode/2up?
[This is an incredible, professional blog also on blogger that is full of solid recent scholarship on the topic, mentioning countless other useful sources. If my blog continues for many more years, this is what I would want it to end up like. What I particularly like is the work he is doing to sort out history and fictional fabrications, giving the field more solid objective information for use in further interpretation. This person is also the author of a different blog I used in a previous post.] Tichelaar, Tyler R. (2014, May 9.). Vennicni, Feni and Donegal. Dark Age History blogspot. https://darkagehistory.blogspot.com/2014/05/vennicni-feni-and-donegal.html
What is the Legal Definition of Distress. https://www.upcounsel.com/legal-def-distress
Bind. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/bind
Distrain. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/distrained
Wikipedia:
'Fergus mac Roich'
'Ulster Cycle'
No comments:
Post a Comment