Interpreting Early Irish Law: Status and Currency (Part 1)

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland, by Brian James Stone

The discovery in 1980 of a hoard of church plate in the ancient monastery of Derrynaflan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland (Ill. 1), at a stroke added significantly to the corpus of Insular metalwork, extended our knowledge of early-medieval European altar plate, and raised afresh important questions about patronage, craft organization, wealth, trade, and exchange. Issues of importance to the interpretation of the history of early-medieval Ireland brought into sharp focus included the relative significance of the Viking invasions as a disrupting influence on Irish society in the ninth century and the form and origins of the liturgy practiced in the early Irish church. Above all, the extension of the known variety of motifs and decorative techniques has greatly enriched the understanding of one of the great ecclesiastical arts of medieval Europe.' The circumstances of the finding of the hoard led to litigation lasting almost seven years, which eventually enabled the state to replace the law of treasure trove with new measures to protect archaeological finds in Ireland and to rescue substantial numbers of artifacts, many of them also adding significantly to the corpus of early Irish art.2

Gender & History the thought of the Anglo-Saxon monastic theorist Aldhelm (c.639-709), for example, religious men and women partook, in Emma Pettit's words, of a 'shared invisible spiritual identity heavily indebted to masculinity'. Monks and nuns alike were enjoined to contend 'manfully ' (viriliter) in the battle against vices. The visible dimensions of religious life, however, from dress to demeanour, retained clear gender distinctions, and for Aldhelm the transition to religious life entailed a more dramatic break for men than for women. Elsewhere, hagiographers drew on different models of sanctity in characterising the transition to female religious life, from the transcending of gender through virile asceticism to the transformation of gender through spiritualised motherhood. Often, as Simon Coates has shown in his study of the vitae of the sixth-century abbess Radegund of Poitiers, hagiographers blended elements from these models. cross the diversity of early medieval models of sanctity (and their modern interpretations), chastity was a crucial sign of religious distinction. But chastity was also fragile, an 'unstable condition and easily lost among the pitfalls of the world'. From early Christianity onwards, sexual lapses were rude reminders to individuals and communities of the gender roles which religious orientation sought to reconfigure. When, in the early third century, Tertullian critiqued an emergent custom in Carthage for virgins who had renounced marriage to stand unveiled in church, he noted acerbically that after uncovering their heads many ended up covering their bellies in shame or resorting to abortion to prevent public disclosure of sexual sin. 9 From punitive retribution to the remedy of penance, responses to such lapses endeavoured to recover the communal experience of chastity and to contain the turbulence of sexual sin in communities of the chaste.

abstract: This article concerns the fragmentarily attested early Irish legal text Fidbretha ‘Tree-Judgments’. Although this text is often mentioned by scholars of early Irish law as an important source of information about early Irish trees, no edition or translation of the text has been published thus far. Fidbretha is compared with other sources related to trees and forests and an edition and translation of the text appears in the Appendix.

Was femininity in early Irish society perceived as weak and sinful, innately inferior to masculinity? Was it seen as powerful and dangerous, a threat to the peace and tranquility of male society? Orwas there a more nuanced view, an understanding that femininity, or femininities, could be presented in a variety of ways according to the pragmatic concerns of the writer?<BR> This book examines the sources surviving from fifth- to ninth-century Ireland, aiming to offer a fresh view of authorial perceptions of the period. It seeks to highlight the complexities of those perceptions, the significance of authorial aims and purposes in the construction of femininity, and the potential disjunction between societal "reality" and the images presented to us in the sources. This careful analysis of a broad range of early Irish sources demonstrates how fluid constructions of gender could be, and presents a new interpretation of the position of femininity in the thought world of early Irish authors.<BR><BR> Helen Oxenham worked at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge as supervisor and researcher on the <I>Mapping Miracles</I> project. She now works for The EnglishHeritage Trust.

The Early Middle Irish Adam and Eve story in the tenth- or eleventh-century biblical poem Saltair na Rann includes an exchange between the devil and the snake in paradise. The devil seeks to persuade the snake to corporeal cohabitation in order to further his desire to bring about the fall of Eve and Adam. Lucifer's argument to the snake stresses the snake's hierarchical superiority to Adam, an idea that, as Brian Murdoch points out in his commentary on the poem, 'is a simple reprise of Lucifer's' earlier argument against subservience to God.1 But Lucifer's encouragement of the snake is capped by the singular plea, 'denamm cotach is carddess' ('let us make a bargain and treaty') (lines 1150).2 To this, the pragmatic serpent responds, 'Cia luag nom tha, fiad each thur / ... ar failti duit im churp chain, / cen nach locht dom chomaittreib?' ('What reward have I, before every host ... for welcoming you into my fair body, to live together with me without any fault?') (lines 1165-8). The reply: fame. The devil cunningly promises that his union with the snake will 'be continuously mentioned' in ages to come ('bid do gres ar n-anmnigud', line 1176).3 The devil offers an assurance partly based on form. The language he uses, in referring to making a treaty or a proper arrangement, or an alliance - however one translates 'cotach' - elevates the discussion to a formal level, as he offers the snake a verbal contract: if you will do this for me, I will assure you of this result, or, you give me that, and I will give you this.4 The legalistic language of the encounter marks a convention in perception of the Fall, one visible in another early medieval Insular poem on the Fall, the perhaps tenth-century Old English Genesis B, and in legal texts themselves.5The Fall has a long history of reference in law, the Irish aspects of which Damian Bracken explores in his study of 'The Fall and the law in early Ireland'. Bracken demonstrates that 'clerics with an interest in the explanations of the opening of Genesis were involved in writing the laws of early Ireland' and that lawyers subsequently maintained a 'very practical use of the theology of the Fall', using it as a prime example:The Fall and its consequences are the basis for discussion of matters like free will and perhaps that most Christian of ideals - the attempt to go beyond law and its technicalities to a psychological consideration of motive and intent. The early lawyers use the theology of the Fall in just this context: whether the accused was incited to commit the crime, whether he committed the crime with malice aforethought, whether he was fully aware of all circumstances before entering into an agreement.6Texts concerning the rules of contracts demonstrate especially well this practical applicability in a central area of the law. Fergus Kelly in his study of early Irish law asserts that 'The commonest legal act in early Irish society was no doubt the verbal contract or cor bel (lit. putting of lips) often referred to simply as cor. This term covers all commercial undertakings, as well as agreements to marry, to foster, to engage in co-operative farming, to enter clientship,' and so on.7 One collection of early Irish texts on contracts, what Neil McLeod identifies as 'perhaps the central text on the subject', is Di Astud Chor, On the securing of Contracts', which McLeod dates to the eighth century, at least in the compilation as it now exists.8 Perhaps the best known and the largest of surviving Old Irish legal texts is, however, the Senchas Mar, or 'Great Tradition', which has a substantial introduction that has also been dated to 'probably' the eighth century, though at least part of it pre-dates Di Astud Chor? Both Di Astud Chor and the introduction to the Senchas Mar utilize references to Lucifer's and to Adam and Eve's fall to confirm a legal point, while both poetic treatments of the Fall, the Early Middle Irish Saltair na Rann and the Old English Genesis B, employ contractual language similar to that in the law texts. …

Early Christian Ireland was a highly inegalitarian society. Indeed, the original Introduction to the Senchas Mar expressed horror at the very notion of social equality. Yet, although status was all-important, the early Irish laws explicitly recognised that there were several ways to achieve high rank. This acknowledgement that there were different sources of high status made it much easier to give a high social value to verbal and artistic skills and to learning; for that reason, the approach to status was a principal foundation-stone of early Irish culture. As we shall see, the treatment of the subject in the laws suggests that men whose own claim to high rank was through their learning used that very same learning to impose a comprehensive view of social status. In any inegalitarian society there is a need to have a comprehensive hierarchy of status, namely a system by which one person's status can be related to anyone else's. If rank is a essential part of any person's social identity, no one can be left outside the system. When someone was injured or killed, compensation was due, and the value of the compensation, including the conditions in which an injured person was treated, depended on the status of the victim and the rank of his kinsmen and lord. But if there is division of labour and therefore diversity of social function, the different functions performed by people are likely to be incommensurable.

Thurneysen, Rudolf (1857–1940)

In contrast to modern Western society's treatment of plants as non-sentient beings to be used or killed at will for our own benefit, the complex legal system used in Ireland from prehistory up until the 17th century delineated penalties for mistreating trees that were not dissimilar to the penalties for mistreating other humans. The early Irish relationship with trees as described in Brehon Law and extant lore was not only utilitarian but also deeply spiritual and tied to the peoples' identity. Brehon Law provides an example from European history that illustrates traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and animistic relationships with the more-than-human world of nature. This paper explores some ecopsychological and environmental benefits of applying its principles today.

Sacred Sisters: Gender, Sanctity and Power in Medieval Ireland

This chapter traces the linguistic situation in Ireland from the earliest attested stages of language use, Early Irish, through the arrival of Latin as a language of learning and Old Norse, which was brought by Viking settlers in the closing centuries of the first millennium bce, until the arrival of Anglo-Norman settlers to the end of the medieval period (c.1200 ce). It is shown that from early stages on, early Irish society has been multilingual. In this society the Irish language was a language of high prestige until the arrival of the first Anglo-Norman settlers and for a considerable period beyond this. Historical developments as well as the societal and political situation in the pre-modern period are related to and discussed in the context of typical developments in language contact.

Redefining Family in Jennifer Johnston's Foolish Mortals Mara Reisman (bio) To date, Irish writer Jennifer Johnston (1930–) has published eighteen novels and written numerous stage and radio plays. She has won prizes such as the prestigious Whitbread Award, and her book Shadows on Our Skin (1977) was short-listed for the Booker Prize. In 2012, her literary achievements were recognized by the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards, which honored her with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award. Beginning with her first novel, The Captains and the Kings (1972), Johnston has explored the effects of Irish nationalism and politics on individuals. In Foolish Mortals (2007), Johnston focuses on the issue of family at both a personal and political level in order to reveal and inspire transformations in domestic relationships and gender roles in twenty-first-century Ireland. This book signifies a change in Johnston's depiction of family relationships. These relationships may begin as difficult, as in her earlier work, but end in reconciliation. In addition, the family structure is redefined and reconfigured to include more types of families. Patricia Craig (2007) recognizes Johnston's perspicacity about contemporary Irish society and notes that "Part of the author's achievement here is to undermine … conventional ideas about family relations and activities." The questions that Ciara, the daughter in Foolish Mortals asks—"What, anyway, is a happy family?" (Johnston 2007, 148) [End Page 516] and "What's normal?" (172)—are among the central concerns of the text and part of the political discussions happening in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Ireland. By addressing who constitutes a family, Foolish Mortals participates in the debates about homosexuality, marriage, divorce, and the Irish family that were in the foreground in the 1980s and were still taking place at the time of the book's publication. These changing attitudes about families and relationships can be seen in the characters' negotiations of structural changes to their families. The novel documents the shift from idealizing the nuclear family to recognizing and accepting a multiplicity of families including two gay couples, a divorced mother and her daughter, an older woman and her caregivers, and the large family these smaller units compose. Memory is crucial to this renegotiation of relationships. This attention to the past, as many critics argue, is a prominent feature in Johnston's fiction.1 Yulia Pushkarevskaya contends: "Like many other Irish writers, Jennifer Johnston exhibits a particular fascination with memory. … However, rather than the past itself, it is the interpretation of the past … that assumes a particular significance in Johnston's oeuvre" (2007, 73). In keeping with Pushkarevskaya's observation, the characters in Foolish Mortals must not only uncover the past but also must reinterpret it. The novel offers a complex look at memory and shows that both actively dealing with the past as well as the seemingly contradictory need to forget some of it (in this case through amnesia or dementia) are necessary to facilitate positive changes to the Irish family structure. Foolish Mortals also expands the focus on mother-daughter relationships to look at other familial relationships. Anne Fogarty (2002), Heather Ingman (2007), and Ann Owens Weekes (2000) argue that a shift takes place in the late 1980s and 1990s in relation to mother-daughter narratives: in earlier Irish novels, the daughter's story is foregrounded; in later Irish novels, the mother's story begins to be told. In this context, part of what differentiates Foolish Mortals is that Johnston gives both mother and daughter a voice, privileging neither of their stories. Other characters in the text also get a voice, which expands this subject position even further and heightens the novel's themes of tolerance, inclusion, and the need to understand disparate perspectives. I begin with a brief discussion of some of the contemporary political battles about family and gay rights in Ireland. I then address how Johnston uses moments of fissure—breaks in memory, in the [End Page 517] privilege of the heteronormative family, in marital stability (infidelity, divorce, attempted murder), and in maternal expectations (wanting a career, not wanting children)—as opportunities for change to family structures, gender roles, and belief systems. In these moments, characters realize...

Ireland on a Plate: Curating the 2011 State Banquet for Queen Elizabeth II

Early medieval Irish society was highly stratified, possessing a formalized ranking structure, and ritual played an important part in legitimizing the possession of rank and office, especially kingship. Power was ultimately dependent on physical force, but was maintained through the control of land, agricultural production, exchange, and—in particular—livestock. The basis of power, however, was inherently unstable. Although some kingdoms and dynasties exhibited powerful centralizing tendencies, political power was essentially transitory, a product of the pattern of royal succession and the segmentary nature of royal dynasties. According to Ó Corráin, “great overkingdoms are dismantled by fission and segmentation, and are built up again by later dynastic expansion and reconquest.”

A consideration of political participation in early Stuart Ireland suggests modifications to the prospectus outlined by Peter Lake and Steven Pincus in “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England.” By investigating the structures that facilitated public debates about politics in Ireland, as well as the factors that complicated it, this article challenges the periodization of the public sphere offered by Lake and Pincus and suggests that there is a clear need to integrate a transnational perspective. Unlike England, Scotland, and Wales, the majority of Ireland's population was Catholic. The flow of post-Tridentine Catholic ideas from the Continent and Anglo-Britannic political culture meant that competing ideas of what constituted the common good circulated widely in Ireland and led to debates about the nature of authority in the early modern Irish state. These divisions in Irish society created a distinctive kind of politics that created particularly unstable publics. Thus, Ireland's experience of the early modern public sphere differed considerably from concurrent developments in the wider archipelago.