Ossian! two thousand years of mist and change
Surround thy name—
Thy Fenian heroes now no longer range
The hills of fame.
The very name of Finn and Goll sound strange—
Yet thine the same,
By miscalled lake and desecrated grange,
Remains, and shall remain.
The Druid’s altar and the Druid’s creed
We scarce can trace;
There is not left one undisputed deed
Of all your race,
Save your majestic song, which hath their speed
And strength and grace,
In that sole song they live and love and bleed,
It bears them on through space.
—T. D. M‘Gee.
III.—The Brehons.
They formed the third of the learned and specially privileged Orders in ancient Erin. During the pre-Christian period the customary laws, by which the Celtic tribes were governed, were formulated in brief sententious rhymes. These rhythmical maxims of law were at first transmitted orally, but afterwards in writing from each generation of Poets to their successors. For up to the first century of the Christian era the Files or Poets had not only the custody of the laws, but also the exclusive right of expounding them to the people, and pronouncing judgments both civil and criminal. Even when the King himself undertook to adjudicate, the File was his official assessor, and the royal judge was guided by his advice in the administration of justice. The Poets were exceedingly jealous of this great privilege, and in order to exclude outsiders from any share in the administration of the law they preserved the archaic legal formula with the greatest secrecy and tenacity.
But as we have already seen, this jealous spirit over-reached itself, and in the reign of Conor Mac Nessa the men of Erin resolved to deprive the Poets of this exclusive privilege, and throw open the office of Brehon to all who duly qualified themselves by acquiring the learning necessary to enable them to discharge its duties.
It was after the office was thus thrown open to men of talent and industry that some of those ancient judges flourished in Erin, whose names and decisions are spoken of with the greatest reverence in the Senchus Mor. “It was,” we are there told, “Sen, son of Aighe, who passed the first judgment respecting Distress at a territorial meeting held by the three noble tribes who divided this island.” This points to legislation on the subject of Distress formulated at a tribe-assembly by a great jurist, and then solemnly ratified by popular consent. The gloss on this text adds that Sen was of the men of Connaught, and that the meeting was held at Uisnech in Westmeath. Another distinguished judge was Sencha, son of Ailell, on whose face three permanent blotches appeared whenever he pronounced a false judgment. Connla Cainbrethach (of the Fair Judgments) was the chief legal doctor of Connaught; he excelled the men of Erin in wisdom, for he was “filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost.”[22] He it was who said that it was God, and not the Druids, who made the heavens, and the earth, the sun and the moon and the sea. This seems to imply that Connla was wise and courageous enough to reject the philosophy, and probably also the worship of the Druids. The Light had already arisen in the east, and the first faint dawnings of Christianity were beginning to illumine the horizon of Erin. Morann, another great judge, who flourished during the first century of our era, wore a chain around his neck, and if ever he pronounced a false judgment the chain tightened around his neck; but it began to expand again, when he came to speak what was just and true. These and other great judges of the same period appear to be undoubted historical characters, whose wisdom and learning, hallowed by the reverence of ages, appeared to their successors to be in some way divinely inspired. They were, it is true, at the time without the light of Revelation to guide them, but as the gloss says, the grace of the Holy Ghost would not be wanting to help men, who were striving according to their conscience to be just and good.
Cormac Mac Art, of whose writings we shall presently speak, did much to encourage the systematic study of law amongst the Brehons. He appears to have been the first who reduced to writing the traditional legal maxims of the Brehon’s court, and thus may be regarded as the author of the earliest Code of Laws in pagan Ireland. This great work was afterwards purified and perfected in the time of St. Patrick, when the Senchus Mor, as it is now known, was first compiled.
These three Orders of Druids, Bards, and Brehons were, as we have seen, close corporations, invested with many privileges, and communicating a professional knowledge for the most part by oral instruction to their disciples. This course of instruction was very long and elaborate, sometimes extending to a period of twenty years. It included, as in more modern times, various steps or degrees of learning, the highest of which always was that of Ollamh or Doctor, whether in law, poetry, or divinity. The ordinary course was twelve years, and each year’s work seems to have been as carefully fixed as in a modern college or university. A great portion of the work, after the purely elementary studies, consisted in getting off by rote either the bardic tales, or legal maxims with their leading cases, or historical poems and genealogies. This included a very perfect knowledge of topography, chronology, and family history. Versification of a very artificial and complicated character was also a portion of the programme. Besides the students had undoubtedly, at least in pre-Christian times, some kind of ‘secret’ language known only to the initiated. It would seem as if each profession or school had its own peculiar Oghamic alphabet, the key of which was known only to themselves; but in this matter we have no certain knowledge, and are left almost entirely to pure conjecture. Hereafter we shall see that the legal relations between the professor and his pupils were definitely ascertained, and are laid down in that portion of the Brehon Code which deals with the Law of Social Connections.
IV.—The Ogham Alphabet.
We shall see presently, when treating of the literary history of Cormac Mac Art, that the use of letters, and most probably of Roman letters, was quite common in Erin before the coming of St. Patrick. Besides the Roman alphabet there was, however, an earlier and ruder alphabet, which seems to have been used in Erin even in the pre-historic times. This is called the Ogham alphabet which has had a very strange and curious history. It is a singular fact that all knowledge of the Ogham alphabet, as well as of the existence of any inscriptions written in its peculiar characters, had for a considerable period completely disappeared from the minds of Irish scholars. Yet the Ogham score was all the time contained in the Book of Ballymote,[23] and the key to its interpretation also. Inscribed stones too were thrown about unnoticed in various parts of the country down to the year 1820, when Mr. John Windele discovered the first inscription in the co. Cork.