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POETIC JUSTICE Most of the laws survive in poetic form, a logical extension of the oral tradition wherein they originated. This essay is centered in an archaic legal poem, found at the end of an ancient Irish legal tract called Crith Gablach, dated around the seventh century. The subject of the tract concerns status, and class. Crith Gablach gives a detailed description of the several social ranks and organizations of the Irish tribes. The poem that follows, however, seems unrelated and deals with laws of neighboring landowners, and gives an overall listing of important areas of law. It opens with the line, "If thou be a king thou shouldst know," which gives htem impression that many of the laws contained are of a national or universal nature, as opposed to local custom or practice. Written in Old Gaelic, the first translation was published in 1879, in Volume Four of the monumental "Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland ("ALI"). It also appears that the present version represents, in fact, a portion of a larger text. Sadly, it survives in only one manuscript, dated from the sixteenth century in which most of the archaic forms and orthography have been ironed out. Yet, enough archaic language remains to place it no later than the seventh century. This poem is unique, for many reasons. First, in it's roughly one hundred lines it contains references to a variety of areas of substantive Brehon law. Second, it poses an interesting problem of definition because of the poetic form of law. Third, it utters an inspiring vision of man's place in nature, without even trying to be beautiful. Literary scholars conclude it is not 'literature' in the true sense because of it's simple rhyme scheme and archaic metre, and ultimately because it was not written with the intent to be 'literature'. Legal scholars don't recognize it as a legal text since it was written in poetic form and seemingly because it is Brehon law. If one leaves preconceptions behind for moment, however, it reappears as a true literary and legislative treasure, a legal poem evoking an impressionistic vision of everyday Celtic experience, filled with grace, nobility and reverence of nature, evoking a vision of beauty and justice that seems sorely missing today. So too it shows itself to be a legal landmark because of the human, conversational manner of conveying legal principle espoused, with it's descriptive listings of rights and duties. This combination of literature and law raise it to an even higher form of written word than simple law or poetry.
PRACTITIONERS OF
THE LAWS The Druids [33] The Senchus of the men of Erin: What has preserved it? The joint memory of two seniors, the tradition from one ear to another, the composition of poets, the addition from the law of the letter, strength from the law of nature; for these are the three rocks by which the judgments of the world are supported. [34] The early Celtic laws were administered by the Druids. They formed, in early Christian times, an itinerant fraternity, and they had very great influence, on account of their prestige, and the universal dread of their satire. [35] It is only when Christianity became established that the men of native learning abandoned the designation of Druid, closely associated with heathen belief and practice, and afterwards became known as Filid. [36] Saint Patrick's success in Christianizing Ireland may be directly linked to his adaptation of Irish laws by retaining most of the Celtic traditions and laws, thus serving as a monumental affirmation of their legitimacy. The Senchus itself describes how he gathered together all the poets, chieftains and druids from around the country and recording all of the laws and customs, a revolutionary idea for Ireland where previously none had been written down. [37] The relationship of the poet to the law created some difficulties, as expressed here in the Senchus Mor:
Many sources show that druids did trust the law to written records. In the noble words of the Senchus Mor, their responsibilities consisted of "...the joint memory of the ancients, the transmission form one ear to another, the chanting of the poets." They administered all the spiritual, intellectual, ritual life of the people; inheritors and interpreters of the old laws and genealogies. They sat at the king's right hand and the king could not speak until the druid had spoken first. [39] The verses studied in the Druidic schools constituted sacred hymns, composed before the introduction of writing, and like the Vedas in ancient India, were preserved by oral tradition, as commission to writing would have constituted profanity. [40] We learn, also, from Caesar that instruction in the Druidic schools, "took the form of learning by heart a great number of verses, because it was unlawful to commit to writing. This instruction filled no less than twenty years." [41] Caesar concluded from this that the Druids feared lest their monopoly of learning be infringed by the common people, or that the memories of the students be weakened by trusting too much to written notes. [42] Out of the Druidic system grew up in Christian times the Order of Filid or Professors of Secular Learning. [43] If the Filid and the Brithemuin (Brehons) represented the true successors of the Druids, the study their function as regards the law seems before dealing with the function of the Filid or of the Brithem, who was the Fili who specialized in law. [44] No definite dividing line between the Filid and the Druids appeared in the beginning. Poetry, undoubtedly a necessary part of the training of the Fili and the Druid, formed the most convenient method of learning the knowledge, unwritten in books. Although the coming of Christianity placed a ban on Druidism, the Druidical character of men of learning did not quite disappear, and the Druidical system of education and the privileges of the Druidical order remained. [45]
The Filid (Poets) The Filid, up to the first century of the Christian era, had not only the custody of the laws, but also the exclusive right of expounding them to the people, and pronouncing judgments in both criminal and civil. [47] At one point there were seven order of Filid, known as Fochloc, Mac Fuirmid, Doss, Cano, Cli, Anruth and Ollam. ***[46] Even when the king himself undertook to adjudicate, the Fili was his official 'assessor,' and that the royal judge was guided by his advice in the administration of justice. [48] The Filid would, naturally, be very jealous of their great power and privilege in this respect and, in order to exclude others from any share in the administration of the law. They preserved the archaic legal formula with the greatest secrecy and tenacity. [49] Not until the reign of Conor Mac Nessa, in the first century of our era, did they resolve to deprive the poets of this exclusive privilege, and to throw open the office of Brehon to all who duly qualified themselves by acquiring the learning necessary to enable to discharge its duties. [50] That the Filid had a long and strenuous course of training is evidenced from the classes of text composed and transmitted by them, without even mentioning the legal works: 1.
Sagas or romances, The relationship between the poet and the law seems peculiar to Ireland but other tribal cultures exhibit this sort of organization. Celtic countries such as France, Wales and Scotland had the same. Further, comparisons have been made to Hindu and other systems. This may be attributable to the Indo-European origins of the Celts. Ireland, like India, lies on the periphery of the Indo-European world, and it might therefore be supposed that the ancient institutions of both countries would have preserved traditions more archaic than those closer to the center. This may be seen for example, in certain features common to the Druids and the Brahmins. [51] The law recurrently appears to have formed a sacred rite of religious sorts. The 'receptacles' of the knowledge and wisdom of the tribe administered the law, which formed essentially the collective customs of a people.
The Brehons The Brehon became the newest class in the order of development, so
far as the law was concerned. The Brehons, early in the Christian era,
became recognized as a professional class. The Brehon seems different
from a judge. He appears as a specialist, who knew, preserved and to
some extent, developed the law. It was to him that the disputes and
difficulties were referred, and his decisions or opinions were usually
accepted as binding. [54] The decision of the Brehon, though called
a judgment, differed from what the word 'judgment' means with us. The
Brehon rather declared what the law stated, as applied to the facts
brought before him, and it seems more an award founded, in each particular
case, on a submission to arbitration. The Brehon stood, therefore, more
in the position of an arbitrator, and resembled to a great extent the
'juris prudentes' of the Roman law. [55] He also taught the law to his
pupils, and his interpretations and commentaries became handed down
from generation to generation. The ancient laws of Ireland, less accurately
referred to and known as the Brehon Laws, formed the textbooks of the
ancient law schools and they created the only law records. [56]
The Celtic Act of Truth Various myths describe the Celtic Act of Truth, which arose from the
belief in the supernatural power of true utterance. This extended to
social intercourse and there must have been strong feelings of honorable
conduct and the 'fitness of things'.[57] When the Brehons deviated from
the truth of nature, their appeared blotches on their cheeks, as first
of all on the right cheek of Sen Mac Aige, whenever he pronounced a
false judgment, but they disappeared again when he passed a true judgment.
Sencha Mac Col Cuin was not want to pass judgment, until he pondered
upon it in his breast the night before. When Fachtna, his son, had passed
a false judgment, if in time of fruit, all of the fruit in the territory
in which it happened fell off in one night, ...if in the time of milk,
the cows refused their calves; but if he passed a true judgment, the
fruit was perfect on the trees. [58]
Fine Fiery Fellows As long as Ireland remained Celtic and tribal, split up into several
score of petty kingdoms, wandering Brehons and Filid kept alive fragments
of the Druidic heritage. But when the English took over the country
in the sixteenth century, like the Romans before, they wanted nothing
to do with any tribal society. They wanted settled agricultural communities,
likely to pay their rents on time. Landlords like Sir Walter Raleigh
saw their most bitter enemies in the Brehons and the poets; "fine fiery
fellows with great rages when their tempers are roused." They dealt
with them as savagely as the Romans dealt with the Druids in ancient
Britain and Gaul. [62]
To praise God in His might, When the tiny mindless birds Praise Him in their flight. Fools "To seek out and watch and love nature, in its tiniest phenomena as in its grandest, was given to no people so early and so fully as the Celt." The dysfunction innate in the scholarly dismissal of these legal documents
as sub-literature is exemplified by a brief comparison between the poem
that forms the subject of this essay and popularly heralded early Gaelic
nature poetry. Early Irish nature poems have been praised and translated
often. The unique cleanliness of line has been commented on; "The tang
and clarity of a pristine world, full of woods and water and birdsong
seems to be present in the tang of the words." In its precision and
suggestiveness, this art has been compared with the art of the Japanese
haiku, and the comparison is a good one. "Basho's frog, plopping into
its pool, in seventeenth century Japan, makes no more durable or exact
music than Belfast's blackbird clearing its throat over the loch almost
a thousand years earlier."
The Blackbird
of Belfast Lough [72]
Equally clear, reverent and delicate are the lines of a different
poem beginning, without a formal title:
Seamus Heany said of this poem that, "I can think of only a few poets in English that give us the sharp tooth of winter anywhere as incisively as that." In nature poetry, he feels, the Gaelic muse may vie with that of any other nation. Indeed, these poems occupy a unique position in the literature of the world. [76] The 'archaic legal poem' of this paper, reveals that the laws deal with man's interaction with nature as comprehensively as they do man's interaction with other men. Long verses classify the various grades of tree and the penalties for crimes, such as negligently driving through the forest. "Larceny of the fruit-tree," "the maiming of the [W]hitethorn," "the peril of the [A]lder" obviously constitute crimes against man, as much as they are crimes against nature, as if the trees were human themselves, or even greater than merely human. Love lies, not only at the heart of these words of law, but on the very face of them, in sharp contrast to the cold Anglo-Roman "Thou Shalt Not..." form of law. This humble humanity, deep reverence of the world around us and our connection to it, in the ancient language of these laws, raises them above the modern definition of law, through the realm of literature, and into a place long forgotten and sorely lacking in these new, dark ages. "It is a characteristic of [the nature poems] that in none of them
do we get an elaborate or sustained description of any scene or scenery,
but rather a succession of pictures and images, which the poet, like
an impressionist, calls up before us by light and skillful touches."
[78] To some, the long lists of crimes and penalties in the legal poems
are monotonous and repetitious, but are they not as beautiful, in their
own succession of images. Are they not infinitely more powerful in that
they were recognized as the true song of a collective soul, the dreams
and judgments of a lost world, sung in its strongest voice, not simply
poetry, but legal prayer? Each line conjures a complete image, stirring
ancient sensibilities, which dwell deep in us all, as Haiku-like and
precise in literary terms as any nature poem we have seen. For example,
lines 69 to 77:
Leave the intent of the author aside for a moment and simply let the images fly across the mind. The beauty of the written law is precise, conjuring up images as mystical and stark as any Gaelic poem, especially in Gaelic form. The only major outward difference between the legal poems, that have been scorned, and the poetry praised, is the metre. This archaic legal poem exhibits archaic metre, without rhyme or exact measure of syllables, in short verses, each of which as a general rule contains two fully stressed words, the last stressed word of each verse making alliteration with the first stressed word of the following verse. [82] Ironically, while allegedly primitive, the Eighteenth Century saw this Amharain metre become universal and the dominant stress accent became once more the dominant feature of Irish verse. [83]
Gaelic Metre The early native Irish type of poetical metre expressed itself in short, heavily alliterated lines with a strong stress accent. This continued in use well into the Christian period and is found, noticeably, in the law tracts. Dan Direch, the later characteristic metre of the Filid, opposed the old form, since it based itself on a strict counting of syllables quite regardless of the accent. [80] It existed from the Seventh Century until the break-up of the Bardic schools in the Seventeenth Century. The Dan Direch' metre appears modeled on the Latin hymns of the early Church. [81] Yet, as noted, as remarkable as were its literary progeny, Dan Direch lost favor with modern scholars and poets, in favor of the ancient style of Amhrain metre that was evident in the literature of the law tracts. But instead of being appreciated finally as literature, the laws were again stigmatized as nonliterature, despite sharing the popular metre. The numerous reasons for this stigma are such that this paper can hardly begin to address, or fathom them.
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