T.M. Charles-Edwards
(Clarendon Press, £56.70)
This large authoritative study (600 pages) of early medieval kinship compares and contrasts the ancient legal texts of two related Celtic societies. Eighth-century Irish law and thirteenth century Welsh law are examined, not as legal history, but for their information about the people who created these laws and the common features of Celtic society which may have had their origins in the prehistoric Iron Age.
The main body of secular Irish law was compiled in the first third of the eighth century as a counterpart to canon law and was, in Charles-Edwards’ view, produced by legal professionals; the brehon or brithemain. Later ninth-century glosses of these laws indicate the direction in which law and society were evolving. Because it is later and more complete, Welsh law presents fewer purely linguistic difficulties in its interpretation. Latin versions of the Welsh legal texts exist to provide further assistance in interpreting difficult passages. This book deals with aspects of Irish society in the same manner as they are presented in the legal tracts. There are sections on kinship, the nature of land holding (especially land held commonly between kin), clientship, and the concept of neighbourhood. Each of the Irish sections is compared systematically to the Welsh legal practice.
The discussion of kinship focuses on the apparent shift from close kinship which extended to males to the level of second cousins (derbfhine), to a narrower kinship limited to first cousins (gelfhine). This change, which is disputed by other researchers, is attributed to population pressure on one hand and to downward social mobility caused by a static population on the other. There is ample evidence to support an upsurge in population in Ireland from the fourth century but it seems unlikely that a population estimated to be under 500,000 persons put too great a stress on available resources.
Kin-lands, lands held jointly by the derbfhine, and references to co-operative farming enterprises are also examined. But as these are legal texts and because co-operative land dealings are more litigious than independent farming enterprises, Early Irish law possibly over-emphasises the significance of the derbfhne and the extent and importance of land redistribution within the society at large. This adherence to a detailed analysis of the law tracts prevents the author from taking a wider view of contemporary society and at times results in the failure to develop fully the implications of his interpretations. In the section on laws relating to entry onto lands in pursuit of legal claims (tellach), claimants had first to enter land over the fert, translated elsewhere as boundary mound or more convincingly as boundary ditch by the distinguished Early Irish scholar D.A. Binchy, but by Charles-Edwards as grave mound. He believes that burials on boundaries were designed to defend inherited land from the claims of outsiders. If this interpretation is correct, one would expect to find widespread archaeological evidence for the use of Early Christian burial mounds, or burial mounds of any date, as boundary markers. There is no evidence to suggest that this was a widespread practice once burial in graveyards within ecclesiastical centres became the norm. This translation has additional implications to settlement historians because it suggests that one of the duties of base clientage was the building of a lord’s grave mound rather than the construction of field enclosures which would have been of much greater economic significance during this period of expanding agriculture. Charles-Edwards’ conclusions should have been compared against other types of settlement evidence.
He views the fundamental differences between these two Celtic societies in the following terms:
In Ireland lordship usually worked through cattle, in Wales through land… In Wales, kindreds continued to control the transmission of land…but there was no separate form of authority which controlled livestock. As a result, Welsh freemen lived under the authority of persons who wielded a more political, less economic, power than their Irish counterparts.
But if we accept Charles-Edwards view that the differences between laws of different dates reflect changes within the Irish legal system and society, and his warning against presenting an analysis without chronological depth (although he admits that ‘legal texts are far from ideal sources if one is concerned to attach dates to economic and social changes’), is it not possible that differences between Irish and Welsh law should also be attributed to social change, in this case the process of modernisation experienced within pre-Norman Celtic societies.
Differences between the two legal systems are highlighted throughout the book, but they come at the cost of failing to describe a holistic view of either Irish or Welsh society. It was clearly not the author’s intention to provide a popular introduction to Celtic society however much we could have profited from such a book by so distinguished a historian. This book is not, therefore, intended for the general reader as was Fergus Kelly’s Guide to Early Irish Law. It should also be noted that Nerys Pattersons’ award-winning Cattle-lords and clansmen a comprehensive and highly readable description of Early Irish society (reviewed in HI summer 1993) has been published in paperback in a significantly expanded and revised second edition (University of Nortre Dame Press, £19.50).
Early Christian Ireland was a historic period, but only just, and the correct use of available material, the most extensive and diverse vernacular literature in medieval Europe, is one of the most daunting tasks facing historians of this period. Archaeology and landscape studies reveal a great deal, but the use of contemporary and near contemporary sources is essential if we are to illuminate the history and society which shaped the material culture and geography of first millennium Ireland. By detailing the nature of early Irish kinship and lordship, the basis of that society, and the implications these relationships had for land holding, Charles-Edwards has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the past.
Matthew Stout