Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/88

Rh p. 53). But the use of skins was, as Diodorus observes, the most usual custom (Ancient Laws, iv. 326; Cormac’s Glossary, p. 81).

The hospitality which would not inquire of a guest the cause of his visit until he had first been entertained with food and drink, is a characteristic touch of the Latin observer. In the story of the Táin Bó Fraich, or ‘Cattle-raid of Fraech,’ the hero arrives in a state with his train of attendants to the house of the King and Queen of Connaught, Ailill and Méve. For six days the entire company remain in the fort, while Fraech is amused with chess-playing and entertainment, before he is called into the ‘house of conversation,’ or council-chamber, and asked on what business he had come. Even then he begs for a longer respite before telling his errand (he was in fact come to try and win the hand of Méve’s daughter, and he wished first to get to know the girl), and again he is entertained for a week before they enter the special chamber set apart for formal audiences, and he has to confess his purpose. Even when Fraech declares that the dowry they demand is quite beyond his power to give, and they have fears that their guest will secretly run away with their daughter, they are embarrassed by the breach of hospitality that is involved in the necessity of following the youth, and preventing him from carrying out his purpose. The duties of hospitality, indeed, form a prominent part of the Gaelic code of honour, and it is characteristic that one of the chief names of renown in ancient Ireland was that of Guaire ‘the Hospitable,’ whose career was distinguished by lavish, but not always well-considered, hospitality.

Again, in the story of the Feast of Bricriu, when three heroes arrived at the king’s palace at Emania in Ulster, we read:—‘And they went till they arrived at Emain Macha at the end of the day, and there was none of the men of Ulster who would venture to ask news as to any of the three until the time came to eat and drink in the Mead Hall’ (Fled Bricrend, Irish Texts Society, pp. 81 n, 70).