Phases of Irish History

by Eoin Mac Neill

X. MEDIEVAL IRISH INSTITUTIONS

The Book of Rights divides Ireland into a little more than a hundred petty states (owing to certain peculiarities of treatment, the number cannot be stated definitely.) These are arranged in seven groups, with an over-king at the head of each group. The principal matter of the book is to define certain relations between the over-king of each group and the petty kings under him. All this is told in verse. The plan of the book is to allot two poems to each of the over-kingdoms or groups of states. One of the two poems relates the tributes payable by the petty states to the over-king at the head of the group. The other poem relates the customary gifts given by the over-king to the petty kings. Great importance was attached to this giving and receiving of gifts, and the significance of the gifts is clearly expressed in their Irish name, tuarastal. The meaning of this word, which is still in familiar use, is wages. The gifts then were not favours. The acceptance of them was an act of homage. The king who accepted tuarastal from another king acknowledged himself to be that other king's man, to be, so to speak, in his pay—if only in a figurative or ceremonial sense.

Not all the petty states were subject to tribute. When the dynasty of a petty state was a branch of the over-king's dynasty, no tribute was due. In Munster, for example, there were various petty states whose rulers were of the Eoghanacht lineage. These paid no tribute to the king of Cashel, who was also of Eoghanacht lineage. The other states were tributary. This exemption from tribute and liability to tribute goes back to an ancient state of conquest, but of conquest during the Celtic period. The citizens of the tributary states were freemen, whereas the people of the older communities of pre-Celtic origin were, at least in theory, unfree. This does not mean that they were slaves. The status of the unfree communities, roundly speaking, was similar to that of the natives of British India at present; and the status of a tributary state would be comparable to that of a country possessing self-government but subject to what is called an imperial contribution. The non-tributary states might be compared to the existing autonomous dominions of the British Empire. There were distinct names for each class. Non-tributary states were called saor-thuatha, "free states"; tributary states were called fortuatha, which means "alien states"; unfree communities were called daor-thuatha, which we might translate "vassal-states"—and they were also called aithech-thuatha, "rent paying states." Each free or tributary state had a distinct territory, but the unfree communities were not bounded by the territorial bounds of the others. They might overlap the bounds of two or more States, and some of them were broken into separate groups distributed here and there over a very wide area.

The compilation of the Book of Rights is ascribed to two writers, Selbach and Oengus, acting under the authority of Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king of Munster. Cormac reigned from 901 to 908. As O'Donovan has shown, the Book received certain amplifications under a king of Munster who claimed to be, or aimed to make himself, king of Ireland; and O'Donovan properly argues that this king could only be Brian Bóramha. Moreover I think that there are fairly clear indications of the year 1000 or 1001 as the date of these amplifications.

The Book of Rights was edited by O'Donovan and published in 1847 by the Celtic Society. The Council and officers of this society, whose names follow the title page, form a list which shows a greater interest in Irish historical studies at that time than in our time among Irishmen of high standing in learning and politics. The names include those of Sir Aubrey de Vere, Sir Robert Kane, William Monsell, William Smith O'Brien, Daniel O'Connell, Dr. Renehan, president of Maynooth College, Thomas Hutton, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, Michael Joseph Barry, Dr. Crolly, Charles Gavan Duffy, Samuel Ferguson, Dr. Graves, James Hardiman, William Elliott Hudson, Dr. Matthew Kelly, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, William Torrens McCullagh, John Mitchel, Thomas O'Hagan, John Edward Pigot, Sir William Wilde, Dr. Madden, and Thomas Francis Meagher. The edition belongs to O'Donovan's early work. A new edition is very much to be desired, with a critical treatment of the text and more accurate notes, taking advantage of the great increase of philological, historical and topographical knowledge accumulated during the seventy years that have passed since this first and only edition was brought out.

I think it likely that only the section relating to Munster was drawn up in Cashel; that this section was circulated as a model; and that each of the other sections was drawn up on this model by writers on behalf of the other principal kings. For example, in the Connacht section, the tributes are said to be brought "hither," a fairly definite indication that the writer belonged to the personal surrounding of the king of Connacht.

The over-kings in the Book of Rights are the kings of (1) Cashel, (2) Cruachain, (3) Ailech, (4) Oriel, (5) Ulaidh, (6) Tara, (7) Leinster. In the section for Oriel, the statement of tributes is wanting. Its absence is probably not accidental. The kings of Ailech from the fifth century onward kept steadily extending their power eastward and southward, encroaching on the domain of the kings of Oriel. Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital, was in Oriel, and one can clearly trace throughout a long period of time a definite policy, on the part of the Ailech dynasty, of bringing and keeping Armagh within their sphere of influence. The natural resistance of the kings of Oriel appears to have been broken down by their defeat in 827, in the battle of Leth Camm, at the hands of Niall Caille, king of Ailech and afterwards king of Ireland. According to an old tract, from this time forward, the kings of Oriel became tributary to Ailech. This would explain the omission from the Book of Rights, drawn up about eighty years later, of a list of tributes payable to the over-kings of Oriel.

In the tenth century we find the kings of Ailech still inhabiting Ailech. In the eleventh century, the name of their domestic territory, Tír Eoghain, has been transferred from the district of Ailech to that which now bears the name, "Tyrone," which was formerly the central part of the kingdom of Oriel. I have not been able to determine how or at what time the old Tír Eoghain, now called Inis Eoghain, containing the fortress of Ailech, passed into the dominion of the kings of Tír Conaill. With regard to Oriel, there is one point to be carefully noted. In the early documents of the Anglo-Norman regime, we find the name Oriel used to comprise the present county of Louth, which is called the English Oriel, being occupied by feudal grantees. Only a very small fraction of the county belonged to the Irish kingdom of Oriel; but a few years before Strong-bow's invasion, Donnchadh O'Cearbhaill, king of Oriel, extended his dominion southward to the Boyne. It was he who, in exercise of this extended dominion, granted the lands of Mellifont to the Cistercians. This recent occupation caused the feudal newcomers to extend the name Oriel to the whole region between Oriel and the Boyne. This nomenclature may well hold good for documents of the feudal regime—but we find it used to import error and confusion into quite a different class of documents. For example, the editor of the Annals of Ulster, in his index, says that Oirghialla comprises the county of Louth, though the name is not used in that sense before the fifteenth century; and he omits to say that in the early annals Oriel comprises Tyrone and the larger part of County Derry.

This method of treatment is unfortunately typical of the manner in which the sources of Irish history have been presented in publication. It is not mere anachronism. The underlying principle is that what is true of one period is true of the whole range of time covered by Irish records. When we find sympathetic editors of these records obsessed by such a view, we are still more inclined, in the case of antipathetic writers, to content ourselves with the judgment recorded by Columbanus—to deem them worthy of indulgence rather than of ridicule.