law in Gaelic Ireland

Native law tracts dealing in detail with a wide variety of topics such as contracts, theft, marriage, kinship, insanity, and so on, were in use in Ireland until the break-up of the Gaelic order. Though the date of origin is impossible to determine, a legal system (fénechas) based on early Celtic institutions was fully developed by the arrival of St Patrick. Approximately fifty Old Irish law texts survive in copied versions—often incomplete—with many shorter fragments from intermediate manuscripts now lost. Though the surviving manuscripts are mainly from the 14th to the 16th cents., linguistic evidence shows that the law texts themselves date from the 7th or 8th cents. AD. The largest collection of law texts, Senchas Már (Great Tradition), is thought to have been compiled at a school connected with a monastery in the north midlands during the 8th cent., while others would have been kept in similar schools elsewhere. After the Norman invasion the legal system passed into the keeping of learned families, the most notable being the Mac Aodhagáin family in Co. Galway, the Mac Fhlannchadha of Thomond, the Ó Breisléin of Fermanagh, and the Ó Duibhdábhoireann in Co. Clare. The laws are often known as the Brehon laws (from Irish breitheamh, ‘judge’).