sir 



country determine and judge causes. These consider of wrongs offered 

 and received among their neighbours, be it murder, or felony, or tres- 

 pass, all is redeemed by composition, (except the grudge of parties 

 seek revenge,) and the time they have to spare from spoiling and 

 proining, they lightly bestow in parling about such matters. The 

 Breighoon (so they call this kind of lawyer) sitteth him down on a 

 bank, the lords and gentlemen at variance round about him, and then 

 they proceed." And such an ancient judgment-seat of the Brehons 

 is to this day shewn on the hill of Kyle, (Queen's County,) of which 

 Ledwich in his Antiquities, (p. S21,) furnishes a print. 



The law of Tanistry was recognised by the English government 

 €ven in the sixteenth century,* and gavelkind may be said still to 

 prevail among the humbler classes of the Irish to a ruinous degree, 

 though perhaps necessitated by the want of manufactures to employ 

 the younger branches. :^ 



SECTION III. 



Morals and Religion. 



The taint left in the manners of the people of Ireland, by their 

 intercourse with the Danes, seems sadly evidenced through the histo- 

 rians of this age, and though Brien Boroimhe is said to have laboured 

 most assiduously to restore the schools, and encourage religion and 

 the sciences ',-f yet, if the picture drawn by the pen of Saint Bernard 

 were accurate to the whole extent, the degeneracy in his day was in- 



* See Hume's History of England, reign of James the First, 

 f See Warner, vol. ii. p. 192. .^i — .*it^ ^«i,i .o a>«',*'-'jJ ^m aii • 



