“A Strange Archaic Provision of Mercy”: The Procedural Rules for the Duellum under the Law of Clann Duib

Abstract

☼ Professor of Commercial Law, University of Aberdeen. Different aspects of this paper have been delivered at the REUNA conference in Bergen in May 2008, the Societas Celtilogica Nordica symposium in Gothenburg in June 2008, the Scottish Legal History Group annual conference in Edinburgh in October 2008, and at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bergen in May and October 2009. My thanks are due to Professors Sverre Bagge and Jorn Sunde, University of Bergen, and the scholars there present, for stimulating questions and helpful suggestions. Particular thanks are due to Professor Hector L MacQueen, University of Edinburgh, for reading and discussing with me a late draft of this paper and for persuading me to reconsider some of my thinking, and to Professor Cynthia Neville, Dalhousie University, Canada, for encouraging comments, constructive criticism, and for drawing to my attention further relevant literature. Taing mhor do Cholm O Baoill agus Maria(Pia)Coira, Roin na Ceiltis is na Gaidhlig, University of Aberdeen, tha mi fada nur comain, and Dr John Carey, University College Cork, for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Dr Michael Wasser, Dawson College, Montreal generously allowed me sight of his as yet unpublished work on the Law of Clan Macduff in the later Middle Ages.