BRETTS AND SCOTS, THE LAWS OF THE. The name given, in the Thirteenth Century, to a code of primitive laws in use among the Celtic tribes in Scotland. The 'Scots' were the Celtic people dwelling in the western and more Mann tainous districts north of the Forth and the Clyde, who, when it became necessary to distin guish them from the Teutonic inhabitants of the low country, received the names of 'the wild Scots,' and, more recently. 'the Scotch Highland ers.' Hie 'liretts' were the British or Welsh in habitants of the region lying south of the Forth and Clyde. This province was for some centuries an independent kingdom, known by the mimes of `Cambria,' 'Cumbria,' and 'Strathclyde.' It be came, about the middle of the Tenth Century, a tributary principality held of the King of the English by the heir of the King of the Scots. It so continued till after the beginning of the Twelfth Century. when, Cumberland having been incorporated with England, the gradual absorp tion of the rest of the territory into the domin ions of the King of the Scots seems to have been imperceptibly completed.
No more is heard of Cumbria as a principality, but 'the Welsh' continue to be named among its inhabitants, in the charters of the Scotch kings, and they seem to have retained more or less of their ancient Celtic laws until after the beginning of the Fourteenth Century. It was not till the year 1305 that an ordinance of King Edward 1. of England, who appeared then to have reduced all Scotland to his subjection, decreed "that the usages of the Scots and the Bretts be abolished, and no more used." It is unknown how far this prohibition took effect. Of the code which it pro scribed only a fragment has been preserved. The
best edition is that preserved in the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Vol. 1.. pp. 299-301 ( Edinburgh, 1S44), where the laws are given in three languages—Latin, French. and English. The French version, which is the oldest, is print ed from a manuscript of about 1270, now in the register house in Edinburgh. The fragment of the 'laws of the Bretts and the Seats' thus pub lished is of much the same nature as the ancient laws of the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh, the Irish, and other nations of Western Europe. They are principally concerned with crimes of violence, and contain elaborate provisions for determining the penalty of such crimes, and the terms on which they might be commuted. They fix the cro, or price at which every man was valued, accord ing to his degree, from the King down to the churl, and which, if be were slain, was to be paid to his kindred by the homicide or his kindred. The ero of the King was 1000 cows; of the King's sell, or of an earl, 150 cows; of an earl's son or of a thane, 100 cows; of a thane's son, 66% cows: of the nephew of a thane, or of an ogthiern, 44 cows and 21% pence; and of a villain or churl, 16 cows—all persons of lower birth than a thane's nephew, or an ogthiern. being accounted villains or churls. A chapter "of blood-drawing"—co•re sponding with the blodiryte of the Anglo-Saxons —fixes the fine for a blow to the effusion of Wood according to the degree of the person wounded and the piney of the wound. See 13Loop Fern; BLOOD-MONEY; BREIION LAWS; WERGILD.