"The judgments and all the poetry of Erin, and every law which prevailed among the men of Erin through the law of nature and the law of the seers, and in the judgments of the island of Erin and in the poets.... 'The judgments of true nature,' it tells us, 'which the Holy Ghost had spoken through the mouths of the brehons and just poets of the men of Erin from the first occupation of this island down to the reception of the faith, were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not clash with the Word of God in the written law and in the New Testament and with the consensus of the believers, was confirmed in the laws of the brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and the chieftains of Erin; for the law of nature had been quite right, except the faith and its obligations, and the harmony of the church and the people—and this is the Seanchus Mór."
M. d'Arbois de Jubainville,[6] however, has shown that the Seanchus Mór is really made up of treatises belonging to different periods, of which that upon Immediate Seizure is the oldest. While some of the other treatises must be of much later date, this tract, he has proved, cannot in its present form be later than the close of the sixth century, because it contains no trace of the right of succession accorded to women by an Irish council of about the year 600, while at the same time it cannot be anterior to the introduction of Christianity, because it contains mention of altar furniture amongst things seizable, and contains two Latin words, altoir (altar) and cîs (cinsus = census).[7] This, however, does not wholly discredit the tradition that St. Patrick had a hand in the final redaction of at least a part of the Seanchus Mór, for altars were certainly known in Ireland before Patrick, and the insertion of the clause about altar furniture may even have been due to the apostle himself. How far certain parts of the law may have reached back into antiquity and become stereotyped by custom before they became stereotyped by writing there is no means of saying. But, as M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has pointed out, the Seanchus Mór is closely related to the Cycle of Conor and Cuchulain, as the various allusions to King Conor, and to his arch-brehon Sencha, and to Morann the Judge, and to Ailill, and to the custom of the Heroes' Bit, show, while the cycle of Finn and Ossian is passed over.
There are many allusions to the Seanchus Mór in Cormac's Glossary, always referring to the glossed text, which must have been in existence before the year 900.[8] Again the text of the Seanchus Mór relies upon judgments delivered by ancient brehons such as Sencha, in the time of King Conor mac Nessa, but there is no allusion in its text to books or treatises. The gloss, on the other hand, is full of such allusions, and it is evident that in early times the names of the Irish Law Books were legion. Fourteen different books of civil law are alluded to by name in the glosses on the Seanchus, and Cormac in his Glossary gives quotations from five such books. It is remarkable that only one of the five quoted by Cormac is among the fourteen mentioned in the glosses on the Seanchus Mór, and this alone goes to show the number of books upon law which were in use amongst the ancient Irish, most of which have long since perished.
[1] Published in 1865 and 1869.
[2] For him see above p. [412].
[3] This passage was already so old in the time of Cormac mac Cuilennáin or Culinan, who died in 907, that it required a gloss, for Cormac in his Glossary refers to the gloss on the passage.
[4] See p. [229] for a case of fasting on a person.
[5] Vol. i. p. 31.