The course of instruction to be pursued by the foster-children was likewise regulated by the degree of the dignity of their parents. The sons of the "lower classes" were to be employed in "the herding of lambs, and calves, and kids, and pigs, and kiln-drying and combing, and wood-cutting," while the girls were expected to learn the use of the quern, or hand-mill for grinding grain, the useful household art of making bread, and winnowing corn, etc.; the young chieftains were to be taught horsemanship, shooting, swimming, and chess-playing, and their sisters, sewing, cutting-out, and embroidery. We have thus placed before us in all its simplicity, and upon the best authority, the modes of living prescribed for the youth of both sexes in Ireland at the time of its conversion to Christianity—a record valuable to the historian and the antiquarian, dissipating alike the poetic imaginings of too partial Celtic chroniclers and the voluntary misrepresentations of the Anglo-Norman writers. It may be objected that such limited views of education argued little for the civilization of the race who entertained them; but when we recall the condition of Western Europe at the time the Senchus was composed, we may well be surprised at the sound sense and practical wisdom so often found in its pages. Nor must it be supposed that the labors of the child ended with the performance of the tasks thus assigned him. There existed another and correlative species of tutelage called literary fosterage, which is thus defined in the "law of social connections":
"The social connection that is considered between the foster-pupil and the literary foster-father is, that the latter is to instruct him without reserve, and to prepare him for his degree, and to chastise him without severity, and to feed and clothe him while he is learning his profession, unless he obtains it from another person, and from the school of Fenius Forsaidh onward this custom prevails; and the foster-pupil is to assist his tutor in poverty and to assist him in his old age, and the honor price of the degree for which he prepares him and all the gains of his art while he is learning it, and the first earnings of his art after leaving the house of his tutor, are to be given to the tutor."
In addition to this excellent and equitable plan of intellectual culture, we also find in the law of tenures that the sons of tenants holding church lands were entitled to receive instruction from the holders of the benefices, which, we may presume, were not necessarily altogether of a spiritual nature. We thus find that fosterage constituted one of the most important elements of society, and, though much condemned by subsequent and partial writers, contained within itself most of the duties and responsibilities which we now divide among corporations and individuals under different names. The importance which ancient Irish lawgivers seemed to attach to this crude but not altogether unsuccessful attempt to define the relations of parent and child, employer and employed, master and scholar—questions still raised in this enlightened age—is shown in the number of the statutory enactments originally made, and the elaborate and critical glosses afterward appended to them, the whole not unworthy the notice of the modern legislator.
The land tenure has always been a subject of doubt and difficulty in Ireland, and the laws of the Senchus appear to us as little satisfactory and as hard to be understood as that recently passed in the British Parliament under the supervision of Mr. Gladstone. It seems to us, from the careful examination of the different statutes relating to it, that each chief held the whole of the land of his tribe in his own name, not, however, in his own right altogether, but partly as trustee of his tribe, and in this respect the Irish system differs materially from the feudal, which for centuries prevailed in all parts of Europe, except in the country of which we are writing. The tenants were divided into two classes, those who held by saerrath or daerrath, terms for which we can find no equivalents in the English language. The first class received from their chief, upon taking the land, and without security, sufficient cattle to stock the same, for which they were obliged to return an annual rental in kind, or, at the chief's option, its value in personal service and labor, such as working on his dun or rath, and following him in his wars. This species of tenure, except in the case of those who held immediately from the king, could at pleasure be turned into holding by daerrath, by which the tenant gave security for the stock received, and was exempt from personal and military service. The rents and their manner and time of payment varied according to circumstances, but always subject to the above restrictions, and were, of course, the exclusive property of the landlord or chief for the time being. The restrictions on the alienation of land, or rather of the good-will of it—for in fact the fee did not rest in the individual, but in the tribe as represented by its chief—were many and onerous, including forfeiture and other penalties, and were generally directed to the exclusion of members of neighboring or hostile tribes. The agrarian portion of the ancient code, in fact, while far superior in point of liberality to that of many of the then existing nations, resembled more the laws that govern our Indian reservations than those of any enlightened country of the present day. It was full of fatal and mischievous errors, and to its baleful operation have been ascribed many of the evils which centuries before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion afflicted Ireland. By jealously confining the occupancy of a certain district to one particular tribe or family, it engendered a feeling of faction, and what might be called parish patriotism, which unfortunately have outlived the cause that gave them birth, and, by persisting in considering the tribal land as indivisible, it destroyed that high sense of independence and spirit of enterprise which can only be felt and maintained by him who owns his own farm and calls no fellow-man master.
The laws relating to distress, or the form of collecting claims, such as debts, tributes, forfeitures, etc., are the least attractive and instructive portion of the work, and for dense obscurity and incomprehensibleness can only be compared to our own Code of procedure. We gather, however, from them that all civil claims and damages for injuries were collectable by a short process of the seizure of the goods and chattels of the defendant, and the retention of the same on the premises of the plaintiff, or, as in the case of cattle, in the public pound. After the expiration of a certain number of days, if the defendant did not replevin his property or disprove his opponent's claim, the goods became the absolute property of the creditor. With a humanity, however, which many suppose to be the growth of our century, the plaintiff should exhaust first the property upon the possession of which the subsistence of the defendant's family did not immediately depend, and even some articles of primary necessity were altogether exempt from seizure. Imprisonment for debt, however, partially existed, and, when the debtor had no goods and did not belong to the class of freemen, he was arrested and compelled to labor for the creditor until the demands of the latter were fully satisfied.
Such, in brief, is a résumé of the laws contained in the two volumes of the Senchus Mor already published, and which we hope soon to hear of occupying a position on the shelves of every library of reference in the country. Much yet remains of the ancient Code of St. Patrick[148] to be given to the world before the entire work is completed, and we are assured that this will be done at an early day, and in as scholarly a manner as the portion before us. We shall look eagerly for its appearance, not for its practical value as a legal study, but as a picture of a remote but interesting era and race, and as an additional evidence of how much the world owes to the Catholic Church even in the civil and political affairs of life. The science of true government has been a plant of slow but sure growth, and, while we enjoy so many of its fruits in our favored land, we must not forget that the seeds were planted with so much suffering and labor by the apostolic men who have gone to their rest centuries ago.
THE STORY OF AN ALGERINE LOCKET.
I.
In the sunshine of a May morning stood an old gray house, with a porch draped in woodbine and sweetbrier. A mass of wisteria climbed to the very chimneys, and on the lawn a bed of red and golden tulips swayed with the soft breeze. A wren was building in an acacia and singing, while a young girl watched his work and sang also, trying with her fresh soprano voice to catch his melody.