In the tract, ‘Divisions of the Tribe of a Territory,’[73] is the following mention of the fuidhir tenants, confirming what has been said above.
It occurs in the commentary:—
His fuidhir tenants, i.e. they become free during the time of three persons; the fourth man is called a daer-bothach person; the fifth is a sencleithe person.
The fifth person would be the great-great-grandson of the original fuidhir. Further on (p. 287) is the following:—
The families of the fuidhir tenants are subject to manifold divisions. The son is enriched in the same ratio as his father, and the father does not sell anything to the prejudice of his sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, or great-great-grandsons.
The fifth generation become ‘sencleithe.’
The chief point of interest is that the men of the fourth generation of fuidhirs, according to the above-quoted passages, became daer-bothach persons—half free men—and the fifth generation sencleithe, so that the family, like the Cymric stranger, grew into freedom in four or five generations.
This gradual growth of fuidhirs into sencleithe tenants in five generations of occupation is illustrated by the retention of rights for a corresponding period. In the Book of Aicill (p. 157) is a statement that the land of an imbecile person (a fool’s land) is not lost to his descendants, though they be also imbeciles, ‘till five persons:’ that is, till the fifth generation.
The number of generations required does not, however, seem to have been absolutely uniform.