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Updated: June 23, 2025
To act "according to the nature of mildness and the principles of equity," without regard to the foes or to the friends, and "to repair the wrong," are the highest duties of man; "evil is death, good is life," exclaims the poet legislator. "The World would be fool, if agreements made on lips were not honourable" the Brehon law says.
Eudoxus What is that which you call the Brehon Law? It is a word unto us altogether unknown. Irenæus It is a rule of right, unwritten, but delivered by tradition from one to another, in which oftentimes there appeareth great show of equity in determining the right between parties, but in many things repugning quite both to God's law and man's.
Criminal were distinguished from civil cases only by the moral element, the sufferer's right in all cases to choose a brehon, the loss of eineachlann, partial or whole according to the magnitude of the crime, the elements used in calculating the amount of fine, and the technical terms employed.
Some peculiarities of the Brehon law, relating to civil succession and sovereignty, such as the institution of Tanistry, and the system of stipends and tributes, have been already explained; parricide and murder were in latter ages punished with death; homicide and rape by eric or fine.
Instead of clinging to the language of Normandy or England, they began to cultivate the native speech of the country. Instead of despising Irish law, every nobleman was now anxious to have his Brehon, his Bard, and his Senachie. The children of the Barons were given to be fostered by Milesian mothers, and trained in the early exercises so minutely prescribed by Milesian education.
The invitations were issued, and the guests arranged according to a list prepared by 0'Carrol's chief brehon; and the second entertainment, which took place at Rathangan, was a supplemental one, to embrace such men of learning as had not been brought together at the former feast." Such was the true "revival of learning" in Ireland a return to her old traditional teaching.
The constitution given by this Prince to the whole country seems to have been a close copy of the Irish it embraced the laws of Tanistry and succession, and the whole Brehon code, as administered in the parent state. The line of Kenneth may be said to close with Donald Bane, brother of Malcolm III., who died in 1094, and not only his dynasty but his system ended with that century.
The English are in possession of a territory clearly enough defined, but they are ever on the alert to seize any opportunity of a real or pretended violation of it, in order to extend their limits and subjugate the whole island. Yet they are bound to allow the Brehon Irish to live in their midst, governed by their own customs and laws.
I remember Lord Coke, talking of the Brehon law in Ireland, says it is no law, but a lewd custom. A governor is to conform himself to the laws of his own country, to the stipulations of those that employ him, and not to the lewd customs of any other country: those customs are more honored in the breach than in the observance. If Mr.
They had been handed down by barbarous ancestors, the relics of Scandinavian cruelty for the most part, added to the Roman slave penalties, which were the remnants of pagan inhumanity. This answer would be insufficient when comparing the English with the Brehon law, but it does not hold good even with reference to other Continental nations.
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