Jean, Ray, That "Only a fraction of the ancient Irish laws ("Brehon Laws") written down circa A.D. 700 survives today..." i thought I'd send this on to family members who might one day be interested in the fading hx of their Irish folks. Thanx, God Bless All, Walt McElligott <wmcauth07@juno.com> Beecher, Eastern Will County, IL USA, 60401, POB 452, Editor of Chicago Writers Association (http://chicagowrites.org) CLARION Newsletter (quarterly) July 1, 2007 Message: 1 Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 07:00:40 -0500 From: "Ray Marshall" <raymarsh@mninter.net> Subject: [IRL-KERRY] Ancient Brehon Literature/Laws -- A.D. 700 / Inventory Property of Higher Grade of Freeman To: "Kerry List" <IRL-Kerry@rootsweb.com> Message-ID: <JDEMLDCBLONGAEDEIEFOKEONDHAA.raymarsh@mninter.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 13:19:01 -0700 From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> Subject: [IRELAND] Ancient Brehon Literature/Laws -- A.D. 700/Inventory Property of Higher Grade of Freeman To: <IRELAND-L@rootsweb.com> SNIPPET: Only a fraction of the ancient Irish laws ("Brehon Laws") written down circa A.D. 700 survives today, although what remains of this law literature occupies five large volumes. Crith Gablach, one volume, defines the rights and privileges of the various ranks of society. All freemen were landowners. The brehon (Irish term for official lawgiver) catalogued elaborate subdivisions of each class according to property qualifications. Below is a detailed inventory of the contents of a home of a "boaire" or higher grade of freeman. The furnishings in the home of an artistocrat would be similar although more luxurious: All the furniture of his house is in its proper place -- a cauldron with its spit and handles, a vat in which a measure of ale may be brewed, a cauldron for everyday use, small vessels: iron pots and kneading trough and wooden mugs, so that he has no need to borrow them; a washing trough and a bath, tubs, candlesticks, knives for cutting rushes; rope, an adze, an auger, a pair of wooden shears, an axe; the work-tools for every season -- every one unborrowed; a whetstone, a bill-hook, a hatchet, spears for slaughtering livestock; a fire always alive, a candle on the candlestick without fail; a full ploughing outfit with all its equipment... There are two vessels in his house always: a vessel of milk and a vessel of ale. He is a man of three snouts: the snout of a rooting boar that cleaves dishonour in every season, the snout of a flitch of bacon on the hook, the snout of a plough under the ground; so that he is capable of receiving a king or a bishop or a scholar or a brehon from the road, prepared for the arrival of any guest-company. He owns seven houses: a kiln, a barn, a mill (a share in it so that it grinds for him), a house of twenty-seven feet, an outhouse of seventeen feet, a pig-stye, a pen for calves, a sheep-pen. He has twenty cows, two bulls, six oxen, twenty pigs, twenty sheep, four domestic boars, two sows, a saddle-horse, an enamelled bridle, sixteen bushels of seed in the ground. He has a bronze cauldron in which there is room for a boar. He possesses a green in which there are always sheep without having to change pasture. He and his wife have four suits of clothes. -- "The Irish, A Treasury of Art and Literature," ed. Leslie Conron Carola (1993) ISBN 0-8863-966-1.