When we read on to learn what is Mr. Orpen's idea of an Irish tribe, we are gradually enlightened. We find that the tribe of king Diarmaid is the Ui Ceinnsealaigh. Here is the main authentic basis of the illusion. It is a peculiarity of Irish nomenclature that a territory is called by the name of its ruling family. Ui Ceinnsealaigh thus has two meanings. It means the descendants of Ceinnsealach and it also means the territory over which the chiefs of that lineage ruled as kings, namely the diocese of Ferns. But the Ui Ceinnsealaigh were never at any time more than a tiny fraction of the population of that territory. Énna Ceinnsealach, their ancestor, lived in the fifth century; and however well his posterity may have looked after themselves, they certainly did not displace from the region that got their name any large proportion of its inhabitants descended from other ancestors. The territory called Clann Aodha Buidhe covered a large part of the present counties of Down and Antrim. The tribe named Clann Aodha Buidhe were the descendants of Aodh Buidhe O'Neill, who died in the year 1280. They never at any time amounted to a territorial population. There were clans of Norman origin in Ireland, too, and territories named from them. There were the De Burghs of Clann Ricaird in Connacht, and their country named from them; the De Burghs of Clann William in Munster, and their country still so named; FitzGeralds of Clann Mhuiris in Munster and in Connacht, and the districts still keep their name; there are Power's country, and Roche's country, and Joyce's country, and Condon's, and Barrymore, and Clann Ghiobúin, the Fitzgibbons—family and country bearing the same name after the Irish manner. Every one of these great families was precisely as much and as little a tribe as any Irish tribe that Mr. Orpen has in contemplation; as much and as little a tribe as the Plantagenets or the Bourbons or the Hapsburgs or the Hohenzollerns.
Undoubtedly in these great families there was a good deal of what we call clannishness—of devotion to their particular interest to the detriment of the public or the national interest. On the other hand, it is quite a mistake to suppose that the hostility of clan to clan, as is often said, was the principal element of harm to peace. The Irish chronicles show clearly that domestic wars arose far more frequently from disputes and rivalries between members of a ruling family. It was the same among the Welsh, and a recent Welsh historian has justly traced this evil to the law of succession which was similar in the two countries—the choice of successor to king or lord being open between a number of claimants. A doubtful succession was the fruitful source of disorder in other countries also. Readers of history will remember its effects in the Roman empire, the wars of the Scottish succession before Bannockburn, the Wars of the Roses in England, the war of the Spanish succession. The feudal law of primogeniture tended to minimise this danger.
Here we find another instance of the ignoring of time and change in books on Irish history. I think I am right in saying that most readers gather from these books the impression that the Irish institution of Tanistry dates from time immemorial. There is no mention of a tanist in the Annals until the thirteenth century, after feudal institutions had been established in many parts of Ireland; and we can trace the gradual spread of the custom in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seems right then to infer that those who lived under Irish law were impressed by the greater stability afforded by Feudal law in this matter of succession, perhaps also by the aggravation of their own plight owing to the opportunities that a disputed succession gave for the interference of the enemy in their midst; and that they sought to remove this evil and danger by determining the succession beforehand, choosing in the ruler's lifetime the man who was to succeed him, the tanist.
Another notion which has accompanied the modern illusion of the "clan system," is that of the communal holding of land by the tribe or clan. This view, like that of the "clan system," has had its enthusiastic eulogists and its self-complacent censors. On one side we are asked to admire our forefathers for anticipating Sir Horace Plunkett. On the other side we are told that progress and even temporary well-doing in agriculture were rendered impossible by a system under which all the land belonged to everybody at once and to nobody for long. Once more we are faced with that canon of Irish history, "Credo quia impossibile." We are seriously asked to believe that the lands of a tribe, meaning the population under a territorial chief or even under a king, was held in common by all; and more than that, was periodically thrown into hotch-potch, taken from everybody and redistributed among all. Now we can imagine what an event that would be, taking place all over a district as large as the diocese of Ferns; or even as large as the barony of Forth; what a feature it would have been in the simple life of a large countryside. Strange, is it not? that no account of any such resettlement of a district appears in any Irish writing, even in the form of an incidental allusion. The fact is that no such communal system existed on any scale approaching to the territorial. I have described the constitution of the deirbfine, the legal unit of succession. There were larger family groups, based on the kinship of five, six and seven generations. It was among such groups that property was held in common, when it was property of a kind that did not lend itself to subdivision in accurate proportions—just as succession to the kingship, being indivisible, was common to a family group until its determination became necessary. But as new generations came forward, existing family groups were of necessity dissolved and reconstituted. When this happened, a redistribution of the family property was necessitated. Moreover, there were certain kinds of land—mountain, bog, forest, and marsh, which were not divided by fences or mearings into individual or family holdings—and these were held in common both in ancient and in modern times. And that, I think, is the foundation of prevalent notions about communal land tenure in ancient Ireland.
Those who desire a studied account of ancient land tenures in Ireland—in preference to their own or other people's imaginings—should read the little book on Irish Land Tenures by Dr. Sigerson.
Connected again with the notion of communal ownership is the denial of proprietary rights of kings and lords. It must not be a question whether the altum dominium, the extreme form of proprietorship in land, was a good thing or a bad thing. We want to know the facts first, before we pass a valuation on them. Mr. Orpen is obsessed with the notion that the Irish order and the Feudal order were as the poles apart. Accordingly he says that the Irish political structure nowise depended on grants of land. I do not know and I do not inquire what may be the peculiar virtue of a polity depending upon grants of land; but I do know that the structure of Irish political society in the twelfth century was mainly based on that foundation. Documentary proofs, referring to various dates from the travels of St. Patrick down to the eve of the Norman invasion, show that every lord in his degree, from the local chief of a small territory up to the king of Ireland held and exercised the power of granting ownership in land over the heads of all occupiers. If the king of Tyrone was also king of Ireland his power of making grants was not confined to his domestic territory of Tyrone. So the Annals tell us that Muirchertach O'Lochlainn, king of Tyrone and monarch of Ireland, granted a town-land at Drogheda to the Cistercians of Mellifont, and a charter of the same king is extant granting lands at Newry to another religious house. Diarmait MacMurchadha was king of Leinster, his domestic realm, or as Mr. Orpen would say his tribal territory, being Ui Ceinnsealaigh. He was also recognised over-king of the Norse kingdom of Dublin, which included a stretch of country northward from Dublin and outside of the kingdom of Leinster. In virtue of this extended kingship, Diarmait granted lands at Baldoyle to a religious community, and the charter of his grant is still extant. In truth, the granting and regranting of lordship over lands is the keynote of the Irish dynastic polity from the fifth to the sixteenth century.
What then of the objections that were raised to the introduction of feudal law under Henry VIII. and afterwards? Was it not contended on the Irish side that the chief or king had no more than a life-tenure of the territory he ruled, and that in accepting feudal tenure he was disposing of what did not belong to him? That is so. In accepting feudal tenure, he disposed of the succession, which he had no legal power to determine: the determination of which, within limits fixed by law, belonged to his people. It was theirs, not by virtue of communal ownership of the land, but by virtue of the right of election to the principality. Of this right they were deprived by the introduction of feudal law. The law of tanistry was a reasonable provision which preserved the right of election and yet determined the succession in advance.