Lectures on the Early History of Institutions | Page 5

if we could do so, Caesar expressly states of the Gauls that, though they were acquainted with writing, they had superstitious scruples about using written characters to preserve any part of their sacred literature, in which their law would then be included. Such objections would, however, necessarily disappear with the conversion of the Irish people to Christianity. On the whole there is no antecedent improbability in the tradition that, soon after this conversion, the usages of the Irish began to be stated in writing, and Celtic scholars have detected not a little evidence that parts of these more venerable writings are imbedded in the text of the Book of Aicill and of the Senchus Mor.
It is extremely likely that the most ancient law was preserved in rude verse or rhythmical prose. In the oldest Irish traditions the lawyer is distinguished with difficulty from the poet, poetry from literature. Both in the Senchus Mor and in the Book of Aicill the express statement of the law is described as 'casting a thread of poetry' about it, and the traditional authors of the Senchus Mor are said to have exhibited 'all the judgements and poetry of the men of Erin.' Modern Irish scholarship has, in fact, discovered that portions of the Senchus Mor are really in verse. The phenomenon is not unfamiliar. Mr Grote, speaking of the Elegiacs of Solon, and of the natural priority of verse to prose, says (History of Greece, iii. 119), 'the acquisitions as well as the effusions of an intellectual man, even in the simplest form, (then) adjusted themselves not to the limitations of the period and semicolon, but to those of the hexameter and pentameter.' There is no question, I conceive, that this ancient written verse is what is now called a survival, descending to the first ages of written composition from the ages when measured rhythm was absolutely essential, in order that the memory might bear the vast burdens placed upon it. It is now generally agreed that the voluminous versified Sanscrit literature, which embraces not only the poetry of the Hindoos, but most of their religion, much of what stands to them in place of history, and something even of their law, was originally preserved by recollection and published by recitation; and even now, in the Sanscrit schools which remain, the pupil is trained to exercises of memory which are little short of the miraculous to an Englishman.
The tracts are of very unequal size, and the subjects they embrace are of very unequal importance. But all alike consist of an original text, divided into paragraphs. Above or over against the principal words of the text glosses or interpretations are written in a smaller hand, and a paragraph is constantly followed by an explanatory commentary, also in a smaller hand, written in the space which separates the paragraph from the next. The scarcity of material for writing may perhaps sufficiently account for the form taken by the manuscripts; but the Celts seem to have had a special habit of glossing, and you may have heard that the glosses written by early Irish monks between the lines or on the margin of manuscripts belonging to religious houses on the Continent had much to do with the wonderful discoveries of Zeuss in Celtic philology. A facsimile of part of two Brehon manuscripts, one in the British Museum, and the other in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, may be seen at the beginning of the second published volume of the translations. It seems probable that each tract was the property, and that it sets forth the special legal doctrines, of some body of persons who, in modern legal phrase, had perpetual succession, a Family or Law School; there is ample evidence of the existence of such law schools in ancient Ireland, and they are another feature of resemblance to the India of the past and in some degree to the India of the present.
The text of each of the published tracts appears to have been put together by one effort, no doubt from pre-existing materials, and it may have been written continuously by some one person; but the additions to it must be an accumulation of explanations and expositions of various dates by subsequent possessors of the document. I quite agree with the observation of the Editors, that, while the text is for the most part comparatively consistent and clear, the commentary is often obscure and contradictory. Precisely the same remark is frequently made by Anglo-Indian Judges on the Brahminical legal treatises, some of which are similarly divided into at text and a commentary. As regards the ancient Irish law, the result of the whole process is anything but satisfactory to the modern reader. I do not know that, in any extant body of legal rules, the