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Pagan Ireland.by Eleanor Hull Condition of the Country in Early Times1923 |
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CHAPTER III. CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY IN EARLY TIMES. |
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| ; | Authorities: Ancient Laws and Institutes
of Ireland, co.mmonly called the " Brehon Laws." Let us try now to realise what the country was like before the coming of Christianity. What we learn about the early times of paganism will in the main remain true of the habits of the people for many cen- turies after; in fact, till the coming of the Northmen and Normans taught them other ways of life. For though with the introduction of Christianity a monastic system peculiar to these countries was introduced which profoundly modified the conditions of life, it took the form of an adaptation of the old system to new wants, so far as outward things were concerned, rather than of an entire re-organisation. Of native growth, the church organisation was formed on native lines, and adapted itself easily and naturally to the circumstances of the nation. Ireland in early times, before the coming of the Northmen, was very different in appearance to what it is at present. A large part of the country was covered with forest, and even many parts that are now chiefly bog-land were then dense woods. The cutting down of the forests has been a great misfortune to Ireland. The surface of the country consisted either of wood, bog, or pasture-land, with portions given up to cultivation. There were no towns with houses and streets; but only settlements in cleared places amongst the forests or on the sea-coast. Up to the time of the Northmen, Dublin was a mere group of huts on the banks of the Liffey, with a wooden bridge thrown across for travellers going North or South, whence the place was called Ath Cliath, or the " Ford of the Hurdles." Similar groups of simple huts or wooden buildings were at the same time to be found at the ports of Cork, Limerick and Waterford, and each of these afterwards formed a nucleus round which the towns grew up. It was the Northmen who first used stone in the construction of large buildings, and whose stone towers, keeps and churches laid the real foundation of the existing cities. At the time we speak of, the villages placed in clearings of the forests, or gathered round the dwellings of the large farmers, were mere collections of wattled huts of the most primitive kind. Land Ownership. In the earliest times of which we know anything, the whole face of the land was open, unbroken by land- marks or fences, and we hear of the chariots driving right across country. The pasture lands were not divided up into fields, for very little of the land, if any, at first belonged to private persons, or remained long in the hands of one family; it was constantly being- re-distributed, so that it would have been useless to hedge it about in any way into separate farms. The country was divided up into tribes or clans, and the district on which a clan settled seems at first to have been the property of the whole clan, not of separate members of it. To each household was allotted a piece of ground, of which one part was wood, one bog, and one part fields or arable land, so that each might share the good and bad together. It was the duty of the family to cultivate the property and live upon it, but they might not part with it or sell it, except by consent of the tribe. The only land property they were allowed to sell seems to have been what they acquired as a reward for some senice or work of skill, or for some such reason; this, which came to them in a different way, it would seem they might part with if they wished. When a family settled down on a piece of land, the members generally cultivated it together for the first year; later, when the family increased, it was divided among them by lot; after a certain time, each chose his own portion, and the boundaries were fixed. It is uncertain whether even then they could look upon it as their own, in the same way as a land-owner now thinks of his property, or whether it was still in part the property of the whole tribe. Even the chief does not seem to have actually owned any portion of the tribal-land, except the immediate pleasure-garden within the raths of his fort. Certain properties had in later times to be set apart for the support of the Kings of Tara, from which they drew the sustenance of the royal household, and there was at one time a dispute between them and a King of Ulster about some lands in Meath, which had formed the royal patrimony of the Kings of Ulster, so that probably the provincial chiefs followed the example of the High-King in appropriating special estates to their private purposes. The chiefs also had control over the waste lands belonging to the tribe, and these they could allot as they pleased. " Private property consisted not of land, but of cattle, goods and household effects; these were a man's own, and he could give them away or exchange them as he thought fit. In the famous scene in which Ailill and Maive, a King and Queen of Cnnaught in pre-historic days, count up their several possessions to see which of them could boast of having the most, there is no mention of landed property, only of swine and cattle, droves of sheep, horses, ornaments and jewels, garments, mugs, vats, and household appliances. Land, indeed, was not thought of as valuable : there was more than a sufficiency for the small population; it was easy to get, and every family could have as much as it could cultivate. It was only when the households increased so much that land began to be sought after that they thought of fencing in their portions with walls or ditches and hedges. This, we are told, happened first in the reign of the sons of Aedh Slaine (658-694 A.D.), who lived well on in Christian times. After this time we may suppose that the cultivator's household had some definite ownership in his land. When the Xormans came to Ireland, they being quite ignorant of Irish methods of land-ownership, obliged the chiefs to take just such an oath of fealty for their tribe-lands as they would have exacted from their Xorman nobles at home. Probably the Irish chief did not understand one word of the oath that was being administered to him in a foreign tongue, and so he quite cheerfully snore away his tribal estates to the Norman King, receiving them back on military tenure. Had he understood, he could not possibly have sworn away what did not belong to him, but to his tribe. This difference of system crops up again and again in the course of the history. At the time of the Xorman invasions, probably both parties were equally ignorant that the other was thinking of something totally different to that which each had in his own mind. Riches, then, in the early days consisted not in land, which could not be alienated, or in money, which did not exist, but in the possession of sheep and cattle, ornaments and household utensils, garments and weapons of war. It is necessary, if we would understand the importance attached to these things, to bear this in mind. Roads and Bridges. At what time the first roads were made through the country we do not know; but the announcement in the annals, that on the day of the birth of Conn of the Hundred Battles (177 A.D.), a number of great main roads suddenly sprang into existence, leads us to conclude that there was a tradition that somewhere about his reign thoroughfares began to be made through the country. The old writings give us the names of quite a number of well-known and important main roads. The chief centres, especially Tara, had several roads leading up to them; so had the six Hospitable Houses of Ireland, of which we shall speak later; and probably there were roads leading to the places where the annual or triennial fairs were held. Bridges, even of hurdles, like the one at Dublin, seem to have been scarce all through the ancient period; they apparently did not know how to build them. We read of large armies wading through the Boyne and the Shannon. The building of the first bridges for armies is noticed with great care in the Annals, and we do not hear of it till well on in the Norse period; even then, they were only light wooden structures, as is shown by the ease with which they were destroyed, and the necessity there was constantly to renew them. The fords are often heard of in Irish story in connection with another purpose; namely, the combats of single warriors, which seem to have always taken place close to the rivers or in the shallows. Sometimes the combatants seem to have actually fought in the water.* |
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