Lectures on the Early History of Institutions | Page 3

literature, led farther to some highly interesting results. It clearly appeared from them that communities of villeins were constantly found on the estates of the French territorial nobility. The legal writers have always represented these as voluntary associations which were rather favoured by the lord on account of the greater certainty and regularity with which their members rendered him suit and service. As a rule, when a tenant holding by base tenure died, the lord succeeded in the first instance to his land, a rule of which there are plain traces in our English law of copyhold. But it is expressly stated that, in the case of an association of villeins, the lord did not resume their land, being supposed to be compensated by their better ability to furnish his dues. Now that the explanation has once been given, there can be no doubt that these associations were not really voluntary partnerships, but groups of kinsmen; not, however, so often organised on the ordinary type of the Village-Community as on that of the House-Community, which has recently been examined in Dalmatia and Croatia. Each of them was what the Hindoos call a Joint Undivided Family, a collection of assumed descendants from a common ancestor, preserving a common hearth and common meals during several generations. There was no escheat of the land to the lord on a death, because such a corporation never dies, and the succession is perpetual.
But much the most instructive contribution to our knowledge of the ancient Celtic societies has been furnished by the Irish Government, in the translations of the Ancient Laws of Ireland, which have been published at its expense. The first volume of these translations was published in 1865; the second in 1869; the third, enriched with some valuable prefaces, has only just appeared. No one interested in the studies which are now occupying us could fail to recognise the importance of the earlier volumes, but there was much difficulty in determining their exact bearing on the early history of Celtic institutions. The bulk of the law first published consisted in a collection of rules belonging to what in our modern legal language we should call the Law of Distress. Now, in very ancient bodies of rules the Law of Distress, as I shall endeavour to explain hereafter, is undoubtedly entitled to a very different place from that which would be given to it in any modern system of jurisprudence; but still it is a highly special branch of law in any stage of development. There is, however, another more permanent and more serious cause of embarrassment in drawing conclusions from these laws. Until comparatively lately they were practically unintelligible; and they were restored to knowledge by the original translators, Dr O'Donovan and Dr O'Curry, two very remarkable men, both of whom are now dead. The translations have been carefully revised by the learned editor of the Irish text; but it is probable that several generations of Celtic scholars will have had to interchange criticisms on the language of the laws before the reader who approaches them without any pretension to Celtic scholarship can be quite sure that he has the exact meaning of every passage before him. The laws, too, I need scarcely say, are full of technical expressions; and the greatest scholar who has not had a legal training -- and, indeed, up to a certain point when he has had a legal training -- may fail to catch the exact excess or defect of meaning which distinguishes a word in popular use from the same word employed technically. Such considerations suggest the greatest possible caution in dealing with this body of rules. In what follows I attempt to draw inferences only when the meaning and drift of the text seem reasonably certain, and I have avoided some promising lines of enquiry which would lead us through passages of doubtful signification.
The value which the Ancient Laws of Ireland, the so-called Brehon laws, will possess when they are completely published and interpreted, may, I think, be illustrated in this way. Let it be remembered that the Roman Law, which, next to the Christian Religion, is the most plentiful source of the rules governing actual conduct throughout Western Europe, is descended from a small body of Aryan customs reduced to writing in the fifth century before Christ, and known as the Twelve Tables of Rome. Let it farther be recollected that this law was at first expanded and enveloped, not at all, or very slightly, by legislation, but by a process which we may perceive still in operation in various communities -- the juridical interpretation of authoritative texts by successive generations of learned men. Now, the largest collection of Irish legal rules, which has come down to us, professes to be an ancient Code, with