Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/272

 256 IRELAND for estimating the worth of anything ; for the Irish had no coined money, and carried on all commerce by barter. The unit of value was called a set (pi. stuti), which appears to mean literally a jewel or precious object of any kind. There were several kinds of seuti, differing somewhat in value. The king set was a full-grown cow after her third calf; the normal set was an average milch cow. Gold, silver, bronze, tin, clothes, and all other kinds of property were estimated in seuti, referred to the milch-cow as the standard. Three seuti, that is, three cows, were equal to a cumal, a word signifying a female slave, which reveals an important feature of Irish society to which we shall revert. Sheep formed an important element of wealth in some parts of the country, and goats were numerous. The old laws draw a distinction between the working horse and the riding horse; both kinds appear to have been numerous and of good breed. Bee-cultivation was carefully attended to, the honey being used both for a kind of confectionery and for making metheglin or mead. So important a place did bee-culture hold in the rural economy of the ancient Irish that the laws regarding bees still extant would rill a goodly volume. The ancient Irish were a pastoral people, and therefore had certain nomadic habits. When they had sown their corn, they drove their herds and flocks to the mountains, where such existed, and spent the summer there, returning in autumn to reap their corn and take up their residence in their sheltered winter residences. Where the tribe had land on the sea-coast they also appear to have migrated thither in summer. These habits explain the presence of diiine, cathraig, and other forts on mountains and headlands. The chase in the summer occupied the freemen, not only as a source of enjoyment, but also as a matter of necessity, for wolves were very numerous. For this purpose they bred dogs of great swiftness, strength, and sagacity, which seem to have been much admired by the Romans. 1 We have said that the residences within enclosing ramparts did not consist of one house with several apartments, but every room was a separate house. Thus, to take the residence of an aire, he had the living house, in which he slept as well as took his meals, the women s house, in which spinning and other domestic work was carried on, the kitchen, the barn, the calf-house, the pigsty, and the sheep-house. In the residence of chiefs and flatha a sun- chamber or grianan was also provided for the mistress of the house, which in the large duine appears to have bsen put on the rampart, so as to escape the shadow of the latter. The round houses were made by making two basket-like cylinders, one within the other, and separated by an annular space of about a foot, by inserting upright posts in the ground and interweaving hazel wattles between, the annular space being filled with clay. Upon this cylinder was placed a conical cap, thatched with reeds or straw. The kreel houses of many Highland gentlemen in the last century were made in this way, except that they were not round. The early Irish houses had no chimney ; the fire was made in the centre of the house, and the smoke made its exit through the door or through a hole in the roof, as in the corresponding Gaulish and German houses. The introduction of chimneys probably led to the change in the form of the houses from round to oblong. Near the fire, fixed in a kind of candlestick, was a candle of tallow or raw bees-wax, which gave a lurid smoky flame ; this marked a notable advance upon the use of a piece of bog-deal. Around the wall in the houses of the wealthy and higher classes were arranged the bedsteads, or rather compartments, with testers and fronts, which were sometimes of carved yew. The beds were made of skin stuffed with feathers. Wooden platters, drinking horns, and vessels of yew and bronze were displayed on dressers. Of pottery there was none. Lai ge chests and cupboards for holding clothes, meal, and other things were placed in convenient places. In the halls of the kings, of whom there were several grades, the position of each person s bed and seat, and the joint of meat which he was entitled to receive from the ranairc, or distributor, were regulated according to a rigid rule of precedence. The arms and horse trappings of the master of the house were also displayed on the walls ; and in the king s house each person who had a seat in it had his shield suspended over him. Every king had hostages for the fealty of his vassals, who sat unarmed in the hall, and those who had become forfeited by a breach of treaty or allegiance were placed along the wall in fetters. The position of a hostage in ancient times was at best unpleasant, but when those who gave him in hostageship broke their engagements his lot was truly a hard one ; he was fettered and his life was forfeited. There were places in the king s hall for the judge, the fili or poet, the harper, the various craftsmen, the juggler, and fool. The king had his bodyguard of four men always around him ; these were freed men whom the king had delivered from slavery inherited from birth, or to which they had been condemned for crime or debt, for an insolvent debtor became in Ireland, as in Koine and indeed in most ancient societies, the property of his creditor. In an age of perpetual warfare and violence, the gratitude of a slave was esteemed a greater safeguard 1 Symmachus, Ejmt., ii. 77. than even the ties of blood, a fact which suggests some curious reflexions concerning the origin of offices at the courts of kings. There were also numerous attendants about a king s house and a flaith s house ; these were a very miscellaneous body ; among them were many Saxon slaves and the descendants of former slaves, for after the cessation of the Irish incursions a regular slave trade grew up, which was only abolished by the action of the church not long before the Norman invasion. These attendants slept on the ground, in the kitchen, or in cabins outside the fort. It was only the higher classes who were provided with beds, and in early times not even these. In the Pfalz MS. of Chunrat s Song of Kaiser Karl there is a picture of the emperor sleeping on the floor, so that the habit of the whole family sleeping in the hall in which they ate and drank was rather the rule than the exception among all the northern nations. The living room or hall we nave been describing also served in part as a kitchen, for joints were roasted at the fire in winter, the soup boiler was suspended over it, the brewing vat was in it. The house we have called the kitchen was rather a room for grinding meal in hand-mills, a work done by females (who were slaves in the houses of flatha and kings), the making of bread, cheese, &c. The children of the upper classes in Ireland were not reared at home, but were sent to some one else to be fostered. The children of the greater kings were generally fostered by minor kings, and even by kings of their own rank. The ollam fili, or chief poet, ranked in some respects with a tribe king, sent his sons to be fostered by the king of his own territory. The fosterage might be done for friendship or for some special advantage, but it was generally a matter of profit, and there are numerous laws extant fixing the cost, and regulating the food and dress of the foster child according to his rank. It was customary to educate together a number of youths of very different ranks, and the laws laid down regulations for the clothing, food, and other expenses of each grade. In like manner a number of maidens were fostered together, those of inferior rank serving as companions for the daughter of a king. The cost of the fosterage of boys seems to have been borne by the mother s pro perty, that of the daughters by the father s. The ties created by fosterage were nearly as close and as binding on the children as those of blood. Fosterage was apparently the consequence of the marriage customs. It has been stated above that pagan marriage customs survived the introduction of Christianity. Of this there is ample evidence. As among all tribal communities, the wealth of the contracting parties constituted the primary element of a legitimate marriage. The bride and bridegroom should be provided with a joint fortune proportionate to their rank. When the bride and bridegroom were of equal rank, and the sept of each contributed an equal share to the marriage portion, the marriage was legal in the full sense, and the wife was a wife of equal rank. If the bride were noble and the bridegroom not, the former had to contribute one-third of the marriage portion to fulfil the condition of equality. If the bride groom was the son of a fluith, and the bride the daughter of a cow- aire, the former contributed one-third and the latter two-thirds. In this kind of marriage the husband and wife had equal rights over the joint property. The wife of equal rank was the chief wife in pagan times, and where the conditions were not fulfilled the woman occupied an inferior position, and might have another woman placed over her as principal wife. The church endeavoured to make the wife of a first marriage, that is, the wife according to canon law, the only true wife according to Iriuh law, but in this it is clear it did not at once succeed. The struggle between the marriage laws of the church and the ancient customs is curiously illustrated by the continuance of what according to canon and feudal law was concubinage, as a recognized condition of things according to Irish law. These marriages may be called contract marriages, and were of various kinds, depending mainly on questions of property, and were entered into with the cognizance of the man s chief wife and of his sept. When a woman had sons her position was greatly altered, and her position did not materially differ in some respects from that of a chief wife. As the tie of the sept was blood, all the acknowledged children of a man, whether legitimate or illegitimate according to canon and feudal law, belonged equally to his sept. Even adulterine bastardy was no bar to a man becoming chief or ri of his tuath, or tribe, as was shown in the case of Hugh O Neill, earl of Tyrone. As all the children of a chief of household, of what ever rank, had equal rights in the sept, notwithstanding the efforts of the church to restrict those rights to the children of marriages according to cinon law, it was necessary to commit their rearing and education to some one outside their own sept; hence the system of fosterage, which at one time prevailed in all Aryan communities, as did also no doubt the whole of the Irish marriage customs, which are a survival in a singularly complete and archaic form of customs which had died out elsewhere under the influence of Roman and canon law. The food of the ancient Irish was very simple, and their table service equally so. The former consisted mainly of cakes of oaten bread, cheese, curds, milk, butter, and the flesh of all the domestic