Page:Ireland and England in the past and at present.djvu/32

 "Eudoxus: This is a most wicked law indeed . . . 7"

The same system was well known, however, not only among peoples of antiquity but among the Germanic tribes, and flourishing in England in the Anglo-Saxon period, it lingered on in some faint traces for a long while after.

The public life of the Gaelic people was carried on in assemblies large and small. There was the Fes or convention held from time to time at Tara, attended by the provincial kings and chieftains, the leading people of Erin; and there were the aenachs or fairs held in the districts every year or so, and attended by all classes there. At these fairs, which had their origin, probably, in the celebration of funeral games, and were often held at the ancient cemeteries, the Druids made their sacrifices, and in later times Christian rites were celebrated, meetings were held at which disputes were heard, laws were promulgated or publicly read again, and such simple matters of government and administration as then were carried on were transacted by the proper persons. Here also games were celebrated, parents met and arranged the marriages of their sons and daughters, which were here performed, and markets were held for the wares of the country. These fairs flourished in olden times, but some of them continued into the Middle Ages.

The religion of the Gaels before Christianity was 7 Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, etc. (1596), in A Collection of Tracts and Treatises. . . of Ireland (Dublin, 1890), i. 421.