The liability falls next upon his father and his brother, but, according to the commentary, upon his son first, if he have one. These seem to be the geilfine relations or nearest hearth. And after them it falls, according to the text, upon his ‘deirbhfine relations.’ And ‘if they have absconded so that they cannot be caught, his crime goes upon his chief.’ But before it goes upon the chief the iarfine and other fines come in, according to the commentary, and the chief is said to be that of the four fines.
The reason why the crime goes upon the deirbhfine division and the iarfine division here before it goes upon the chief is because it is one chief over them.… His chief—i.e. the chief of the four families (p. 243).
On the whole, therefore, according to whatever rules of kinship a fine may have been divided into the ‘four nearest fines or hearths,’ we can hardly be wrong in considering them not as four artificial groups including in all seventeen individuals, but as four family groups arranged in the order in which liability for a kinsman’s crime was to be shared.
The same groups both received and paid eric.
The full liability for the eric would then, as in the Cymric case, fall upon the four groups or hearths as a whole. But, again as in the Cymric case, the amount falling upon each of them was defined and divided among the individuals composing it. The same family division held good both as regards payment and receipt of eric.[67]
The general correspondence between the obligation to pay and the right to receive a share in fines is shown by another passage from the Senchus Mor:
The feini charge the liability of each kinsman [comfogius] upon the other in the same way as he obtained his eric fine and his inheritance.[68]
The penalties for any other crime than homicide fell in the first instance upon the criminal alone, and the person injured took the whole of the compensation for his injury.
But it was not so in the case of homicide. It was not a matter for the individual alone. Both in payment and receipt it was, as with the Cymry, a joint interest of the kindred.