BRE'HON LAWS (in Irish. dlighidlt breitheambuin—that is, "judges' laws"), the name usually given to the system of jurisprudence which prevailed among the native Irish from an early period till towards the middle of the 17th century. The breithearn /min (pronounced brei-boo-in, or brebon), from whom the laws had their name, were hereditary judges, who administered justice among the members of their tribe, seated in the open air, upon a few sods, on.• a bill or rising ground. The poet Spenser, in his View of the State of Ireland, written in 1596, describes the B. L. as "a rule of right unwritten, but delivered by tradition from one to another, in which oftentimes there appeareth great share of equity, in determining the right between party and party, but in many things repugning quite both to God's law and man's: as, for example, in the case of murder, the brehon—that is, their judge—wilt compound between the murderer and the friends of the party murdered, which prosecute the action, that the malefactor shall give unto them, or to the child or wife of him that is slain, a recompense, which they call an eric; by which vile law of theirs many murders amongst them are made up and smothered: and this judge being, as he is called, the lord's brehon, adjndgeth for the most part a better share unto his lord, that is, the lord of the soil, or head of the Sept, and also, unto himself for his judgment, a greater portion than unto the plaintiffs or parties grieved." Spenser was ignorant that pecuniary compensation for man slaughter had obtained in the ancient laws, as well of England as of most European nations. He was mistaken, too, in believing that the B. L. was an unwritten code. Many manuscript collections of the B. L. still exist in public and private libraries in Ireland, England, and Belgium. These manuscripts are regarded as varying in date from the early part of the 14th to the close of the 16th century. For the laws them selves, a inueh higher antiquity is claimed. On this point, we must be content to quote what has been said ou the part of the very few persons who have had an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the existing collections of the brelion laws. " So far as we have external evidence to guide us," say Dr. J. H. Todd and Dr. C. Graves, two eminent Irish antiquaries, " there is no reason to suspect that the brehon laws have undergone any material change since the time of Cormac Mac Cuilleanain, king and bishop of Cashel, who died 908 A.D. He was a man of great learning and energy, who certainly promoted the execution of,eonsiderable literary works, and under whose influ ence it is not improbable that a systematic compilation of the laws may have been effected. Of this, however, we have no distinct record. On the other hand, we find scattered through all parts of the laws allusions to a general revision of them made in the 5th c., at the instance of St. Patrick, who, in conjunction with certain kings and learned inen, is said to have expunged front them all those institutions which savored of paganism, and to bave framed the code called the Seanchus Mor. These same docu ments assert the existence of still more ancient written laws, the greater part of which are ascribed to Cormac Mac Art, monarch of Ireland, in the middle of the 3d century.
However slow we may be to acquiesce in statements of this kind, which contradict what we have learned concerning the progress of legislation in the remaining parts of western Europe, we may readily admit that the subject matter of many of the laws demonstrates their great antiquity, as it indicates the primitive nature of the society in which they prevailed. In spite of the attempts to efface it, traces of heathenism are still discernible in many parts of them, They enumerate various ordeals of a pagan character, which are expressly termed magical, and specify the occasions on which a resort to them was prescribed. There are also provisions in the laws of marriage which prove that Chris tianity could have exercised but a feeble influence at the time when they were enacted. The language in which the brelion laws are written is a convincing proof of their antiq uity. They are not composed in a peculiar dialect, as many writers have maintained; but if their style differs from that of the vernacular Irish of the present day, as Anglo Saxon does from modern English, this dissimilarity is to be ascribed mainly to the effects of time, by which the orthography and grammatical forms of the language have been modified, and legal terms and phrases of constant recurrence have become obsolete." The world of letters will be able, in no long time, to judge for itself on the opinions thus expressed. It is now upwards of twenty years since the publication of the B. L., at the charge of the Irish government, was strongly urged by such men as Guizot, Grimm, and Rank abroad, and Hallam, Macaulay, and earl Stanhope at home. A commission was accordingly appointed by the earl of Eglinton in 1852, " to direct, superintend, and carry into effect the transcription and translation of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication." The commissioners intrusted the transcription and translation of the B. L. to the two most eminent of Irish scholars—the late Dr. John O'Donovan, professor of Celtic in the queen's college at Belfast; and the late Eugene O'Curry, professor of Irish archaeology in the Roman Catholic university of Ireland. These gentlemen having finished their task the editor ship of the work was intrusted to Mr. W. J. IIancock, ]ate professor of political econ omy in college. Dublin, and the Rev. Thaddeus Olfaliony, professor of Irish in the university of Dublin. The publication, it is reckoned, will extend to eight volumes, of about 550 pages each. Three of these have already appeared—the last in 1873— under the title of Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland. Along with the Irish text, an English translation is given, accompanied with preliminary dissertations, glossaries, and indexes, and they give a vivid and characteristic picture of the polity and social life of a Celtic people. A. facsimile reprint of the B. L. has recently been published in 17 vol umes by the B. L. commission.