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Outlines of the History of Ireland From the Earliest Times to 1905
Outlines of the History of Ireland From the Earliest Times to 1905 Author:P. W. Joyce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of the Scriptures. All these old books are preserved in Dublin. I have named only a few of the most important. There are great numbers in Dublin besides these... more »: and there are many also in the library of Oxford, and in the British Museum, London. Irish books are also found in the libraries of the Continent, written or brought from Ireland by Irish scholars and missionaries of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. CHAPTER II. THE BREHON LAW. 4. Its leading Feature.—The ancient law of Ireland is known as the 'Brehon Law'; and the judges who decided cases were called Brehons. These brehons wrote down their laws in books, many of which we still possess, and some have been published with translations. The Brehon law did not lay down capital punishment, even for murder; all offences were atoned for by a compensation payment given by the offender to the person or family injured. If the offender did not pay, his family had to pay. The fine for murder, or for any injury to the person, was called eric [errick]. The brehon fixed the amount of compensation in each case. 5. Grades and Groups of Society. — The people were formed into groups of various sizes. The Family consisted of the living parents and their descendants. The Clan or Sept was formed of several families ; the Tribe of several septs. Septs and tribes were governed by chiefs : the chief of a tribe had authority over the chiefs of the several clans or septs composing the tribe. If the territory occupied by a tribe was very large the chief was a Ri [ree] or king. These tribe-kings were subject to the kings of their several provinces—for each province had a king; and the provincial kings again were subject to the ard-ri or king of all Ireland, who lived at Tara, in Meath. 6. Provinces.—There were ancien...« less