BRE'HON (Ir. breatlianrir, breitheamh, from 0. Ir. brithcm, judge, from birth, Grath, decision, jedg,ment) LAWS. The ancient laws of Ireland. In the form in which they have come down to ns, they consist of a collection of law tracts, which were compiled by different hands and at different times, and committed to writing probably in the Tenth Century of our era. They derive their name from the Brchon, a class of hereditary law yers and judges, by whom they were preserved by oral tradition, and ultimately embodied in written form. These tracts—the most important of which are the Senchus Nor, or 'Great Book of the Ancient Law,' and the Book of Aieill—con sist of brief and sometimes rude statements of the law, often expressed in verse. accompanied by elaborate annotations and commentaries made by successive Brehon through whose hands they passed. In this way the primitive body of law was modified from generation to generation to conform to the growth of the Irish people in Christianity and civilization. In its original form this law does not differ widely from that of other early systems, such as the Twelve Tables of Rome, the Mosaic Law, and the barbaric codes of the Middle Ages, most of its provisions having to do with crimes of violence, and the commutation of the penalty for such crimes by money or other payments. The poet Spenser, in his View of the Slate of Ireland, written in 1596, describes the Brehon law as "a rule of right unwritten, but de livered by tradition from one to another, in which oftentimes there appeareth great share of equity, in determining the right between party and par ty, 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 —will 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 erica by which
vile law of theirs many murders amongst them are made up and smothered: and this judge be ing, as lie is called, the lord's brehon, adjudgeth for the most part a better share unto iris 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." This characteristic English utterance might have been modified if Spenser had been aware of the fact that pecuniary compensation for manslaughter was a salutary device of primi tive society for mitigating the horrors and incon veniences of private vengeance, and that it had prevailed in England as well as in all other Eu ropean countries. (See BLOOD FEUD: B1.001/ As has been seen, he Was mistaken, also, in believing that the Brehon laws were, at the period of his visit, an unwritten code, though they may still, in that backward state of society, have depended largely on tradition for their pres ervation. Many manuscript, collections of these laws, dating from the Fourteenth to time Sixteenth century, still exist in public and private libra ries in England, Ireland, and Belgium. The first translation into English was published in 1805 G9. (See BRETT'S AND Sco•rs.) Sir Henry Sum ner Maine has considered the primitive Irish law at length and with great learning in his Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (London, 1875). Consult also Ginnell, The Brehon Laws (London, 1894).