172 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
These Ancient Laws of Ireland, the so-called Brehon Laws, 
are contained in the two largest of the assemblage of Irish 
Law-tracts, the Senchus Mor, or Great Book of the Ancient Law, 
and The Book of Aicill. From these we gather that village 
groups, or Septs, consisting of related families under a chief, 
held land in common with a periodical redistribution. In a 
word the evidence of these Inish law tracts proves “that the 
elements of what we are accustomed to consider the specially 
Germanic land-system [the Mark] are present in the territorial 
arrangements of the Insh tribe.” An Irish manuscript, that 
is believed to date from the year 1100 A.D., the Lebor na 
Huidre, Book of the Dun Cow, compiled in the seventh 
century, declares that “there was not ditch, nor fence, nor 
stone-wall round land, till came the period of the sons of 
Aed Slane [A.D. 658-694], but [only] smooth fields. Because 
of the abundance of the households in their period, therefore 
it is that they introduced boundaries in Ireland.” “ Rundale”* 
holding still prevails in parts of Ireland, which is a collective 
enjoyment of land by a group of villagers. ‘As lately as 
fifty years since,” says Sir Henry Sumner Maine, “cases were 
frequent in which the arable land was divided into farms 
which shifted among the tenant families periodically, and 
sometimes annually. Even when no such division was made, a 
well-known relic of the Mark-system, as it showed itself in 
Germany and England, was occasionally found: the arable 
portion of the estates was composed of three different quali- 
ties of soil, and each tenant had a lot or lots in the land of 
each quality, without reference to position.” He adds that it 
is true that “ lish holdings in ‘rundale’ are not forms of 
property, but modes of occupation. There is always some 
person above who is legally owner of all the land held by 
the group of families, and who, theoretically, could change 
the method of holding, although, practically, popular feeling 
would put the greatest difficulties im his way. We must 
bear in mind, however, that archaic kinds of tenancy are 
constantly evidence of ancient forms of proprietorship.” ft 
But more than this, he goes on to point out that “the 
naturally organised, self-existing, Village-Community can no 
longer be claimed as an institution specially characteristic of 
the Aryan races. M. de Laveleye, following Dutch authori- 
ties, has described these communities as they are found im 
Java.”t Rénan sees them amongst Semitic tribes in Africa. 
* Also known in Ireland and Scotland as “ runrig,” both rig and dole 
being names of acre strips (See p. 20). Dole (whence “rundale”) was a 
strip of meadow. + Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, 
pp. 101, 102. + Ibid., p. 77. 
