[96] See Ireland and the Celtic Church, by Dr. G. T. Stokes; ed. 5, 1900, pp. 169-174.
[97] Op. cit., p. 229, and cp. pp. 215-16.
[98] Edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Mediæval and Modern Series, vol. i., part 3.
[99] G. T. Stokes, op. cit., pp. 228-9. For other points of resemblance and instance of communication between the Irish and the Eastern Churches, cited by the learned author, see pp. 105 n., 173-4, 186-7, 229, and Lecture x., passim.
[100] This classification, in theory at least, regulated the structure of society from top to bottom. There were four ranks of kings, from the Árd Rí, High King, or Emperor, of all Ireland, to the Rí Tuatha, King of a Tribal Territory. The territories themselves were divided according to a descending scale, analogous to the English division into county, hundred, tithing, etc. There were six grades of princes under the king, classified according to the extent of their lands. Society was divided into nobles, freemen, and serfs, and each of these classes was subdivided into a great number of minor grades. The family was traced to the seventeenth degree, and was grouped into six classes, whose rights and liabilities in matters of inheritance, in the receipt or payment of fines and damages, etc., are defined with the utmost minuteness. The land tenure, and the dues to be paid in respect of each kind; the circumstances of crimes and civil injuries, and the fines or damages to be paid for each; in short, all the details of public and private life, were elaborated with similar minuteness. For particulars, the reader may be referred to the ancient legal and customary treatises, and the respective commentaries thereon, printed in the Rolls Series, the Lebor na g-Cert, ed. O’Donovan, 1847, and O’Curry’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ed. W. K. Sullivan, 3 vols., 1873.
[101] The Filid must be distinguished from the Bárd, a name often applied to the poetic and literary class promiscuously, but really the title pertaining to a rank far below the Filid in dignity. See Dr. Douglas Hyde, The Literary History of Ireland, pp. 486, etc.
[102] It is not to be supposed that so elaborate a system ever existed, or could exist, in its entirety, or that the population of Ireland was ever sorted out into sets of social pigeon-holes with anything like the completeness represented by the chroniclers. The old Irish writers combined two characteristics, which may appear, at first glance, contradictory, though reflection may enable us to see how compatible they are on psychologic grounds, viz. a tendency to run riot in the exuberance of fancy, and an equally excessive love of system and minute detail. Nevertheless, writing as they did of the state of society in which they lived, and for readers who were acquainted with the facts which they described, they cannot be supposed to have invented their systems and classifications, but rather to have idealised and elaborated their picture of an existing state of things so as to make it accord with their conception of the true significance of the social scheme. Modern writers have often done much the same thing in a different way, in their treatment of the Feudal System, the Imperial Theory, the Renaissance, Reformation, and similar movements, etc.
[103] The Irish writers are further remarkable for not confining their tolerance to traditional practices and the like, but extending it even to the spiritual beings of the national faith. This point has been well put by Mr. Nutt, Voyage of Bran, ii. 205: ‘And whereas in every other European land the ministers of the new faith were as bitterly opposed to the fanciful as to the business aspect of the older creed, in Ireland it is the saint who protects the bard, the monk who transcribes the myth, whilst the bird-flock of Faery, alike with the children of Adam, yearn for and acclaim the advent of the Apostle.’ And even when it has seemed necessary to regard these beings as demons, several tales show priest or saint feeling for them the like regretful kindliness as Origen, Burns, and Uncle Toby expressed for the chief of the demons. A very striking instance of the eagerness shown by the Christian writers to put the best possible construction upon their pagan predecessors, occurs at the close of ‘The Irish Ordeals,’ etc., trans. by Mr. Whitley Stokes, Irische Texte, III. i. 221: ‘The wise declare that when any strange apparition was revealed of old to the royal lords … it was a divine ministration that used to come in that wise, and not a demoniacal ministration. Angels, moreover, would come and help them, for they followed Natural Truth, and they served the commandment of the Law.’
[104] Most of the principal Irish deities include among their functions that of ruler of the dead. One of the most pronounced examples of the Yama type is Tethra, who is described in the legends as Chief of the Fomorians, whereby his distinctly Chthonian character is asserted; and, after the defeat of his people at the battle of Mag Tured, as ruler of a land beyond the ocean, like Varuna, when overcome by Indra (and cp. Hesiod, Works and Days, 168-9, and Pindar, Olymp. ii.). Thence, from time to time, he would send beautiful maidens to summon to him the chiefs and heroes of Éire.
[105] The subject of the Otherworld in Irish literature has been treated very fully by Mr. Nutt in his Essay on the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld, and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth, appended to Professor Kuno Meyer’s Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, 2 vols., 1895-7.