The normal court of law in ancient Ireland was the king's court, as the normal court in a Gaulish republic was the court of the magistrates of the republic. The druids' tribunal in Gaul and the brehons', also originally the druids' tribunal, in Ireland, was a subsidiary institution. It did not carry with it the plenary powers of the regular tribunal, and therefore relied in part on the reverence of the people for justice—with regard to which we have the most remarkable testimony borne by Englishmen in Ireland at the time when Irish law was on the verge of total abolition. And one of these writers aptly says that nothing that the Irishman does, however praiseworthy, finds favour with a set of men who are his professional traducers.
The brehons were primarily jurists, and in their hands Irish law was elaborated and refined, its development in this respect being similar to the development of Roman law. They acted also as legal advisers to litigants, safeguarding the proper legal form of their proceedings. They acted also as assessors and advisers to the kings in court. When they sat as judges by themselves, their courts were at least theoretically tribunals of arbitration, but differed from the casual arbitrations of our time in having more of the character of institutions. It is probably true that after the Feudal invasion, and especially when Irish law was adopted by Feudal lords, the brehon's court tended to supersede the court of king or lord as the normal instrument of judicature.
The story of Cormac introduces us to a king's court held at the king's place of abode and in his house. A higher and more ceremonial court was held by the king in the periodical assembly. This court of assembly was called by the name airecht, oireacht; the word is used to translate the Latin curia. "Suit of court" was an Irish no less than a Feudal institution. The kings or lords subject to a presiding king were expected to attend his airecht; and from this it comes that these subject lords are collectively called the king's airecht, and by a further extension the name is given occasionally to their lands collectively. The whole of O'Catháin's territory is called Airecht Ui Chatháin, and the territory of O'Connor Kerry still bears the name of Oireacht Ui Chonchobhuir, the barony of Iraghticonnor in Kerry.
The assembly was the focus of the people's life. Kuno Meyer has published and translated into English an ancient tract called Tecosc Cormaic, "King Cormac's Instruction to his Son." Every student of early Irish institutions ought to read it. Many who read it will be surprised to find how modern was the mind of antiquity. One of the maxims which the king gives to his son is this: Vested interests are shameless. There is a truth in that for all peoples of all times, that has never elsewhere been so pithily expressed. The tract consists of a collection of maxims and counsels for a prince in his private and public conduct, and is cast in the form of a colloquy between the king and his son. Reading it, one comes to realise the importance held by the assembly and particularly the court of assembly, the airecht, in the minds of our ancestors. Those who wish to study the art of public speaking will find excellent canons of oratory and advocacy in Tecosc Cormaic; but they may be forewarned that the ancient standard has no mercy for rhetorical bombast, bounce, or any other device to obscure and mislead the exercise of right judgment by the audience.
The last effort of the people to maintain its assemblies can be seen in those "parles upon hills" which were so obnoxious to the Dublin government under Elizabeth. In place-names and other traditions we can still trace the old assembly places in most parts of the country. Not long ago, in the southern part of County Armagh, a man pointed out to me a smooth green rising ground, and said "The old people say there used to be a parliament there." The old people are not far wrong. In these assemblies, laws were enacted, modified or confirmed, taxes and tributes were regulated. The men of lore came there with their poems in praise of the living and their stories of the olden times and their genealogies. Musicians came, and clowns with their antics, and sleight-of-hand men. The men of military age came with their arms for weapon-show and then laid their arms aside till the assembly ended. Traders from distant countries came to sell and buy. Horse races and other games were held. The general public, at least in the larger assemblies, were ranged and classed in divisions, and wooden galleries were set up to seat them. Streets of booths were set up for sleeping and eating, giving the place of assembly the temporary aspect of a town, and such towns were, I think, the cities named and placed in Ptolemy's description of Ireland. The detailed account that is extant of the Leinster assembly at Carman, and the rare references in the annals to disturbance of assemblies show that order and peace were in general characteristic of these occasions.
XII. THE IRISH RALLY
The most casual reader of Irish history knows that within a few centuries of the Norman invasion, the authority of the kings of England had shrunk to within a day's easy ride of Dublin and the outskirts of a few other towns. Standish O'Grady has noted the constant alliance between town and crown in the Middle Ages. It was not peculiar to Ireland. The merchants and the sovereign had a common interest in resisting the encroachments of the great nobles. Even despotic kings, as a rule, governed better in the interest of the burgesses than any powerful oligarchy was likely to govern.
Why did the Norman conquest fail to be a conquest? Giraldus Cambrensis gave to his story the title Hibernia Expugnata—"Ireland fought to a finish." Four centuries later comes another historian, telling of another conquest, and he calls his story Hibernia Pacaia—"Ireland pacified." Why was the second conquest necessary?