26 THE president's address. 



The process was this. He made formal demand for -what 

 was due to Mm. If this were refused, and lie were unable 

 otherwise to enforce payment or restitution, he seated himself at 

 the door of the debtor and fasted against him. 



It must be understood that there was no executive to enforce 

 law. Every man was supposed to recover damages as best he 

 might. If too weak to compel payment, he had recourse to a 

 Druid to curse the offender, but as a Druid was often shy of 

 offending a strong man, the creditor took the matter into his own 

 hands, and fasted against him. In India the British Govern- 

 ment has been compelled to interfere, and put down this process 

 of dharna. The fact of the levy of a fast against a man at once 

 doubled the eric or fine due for the offence. In India it was the 

 etiquette for the debtor to fast also ; but in Ireland the only 

 means one had of meeting a fast against him without yielding, 

 was to fast also. The fast seemed to have extended to the whole 

 family ; for when St. Patrick fasted against King Laoghaire, the 

 king's son ate some mutton, to the great scandal of his mother. 

 " It is not proper for you to eat food," said the Queen ; "Do you 

 not know that Patrick is fasting against us ?" "It is not against 

 me he is fasting," replied the boy, " but against my father."* 

 Hardly ever did any chief or noble dare to allow the fasting to 

 proceed to the last extremities, because of the serious blood feud 

 it would entail, as also because of the loss of prestige in the clan 

 that would be his. 



When St. Germanus came to Britain, so runs the tale, and 

 preached against the Pelagian heresy, he met with no success 

 with the inhabitants of a certain city. Thereupon he and his 

 clerics sat down before the gate to reduce it to orthodoxy by 

 fasting against the inhabitants. f 



As we have already seen, St. Patrick boldly had recourse to 

 the same method to obtain his demands from King Laoghaire. 

 Again, he found that Trian, an Ulster chief, maltreated his serfs. 

 Trian had set them to cut down timber with blunt axes, and 



* " Tripartite Life," p. 557. 

 t The story is told without mention of the fasting in Neanius, because when 

 the Hist. Brit, was composed, the practice was obsolete, and no longer under- 

 stood. Irish Ncnnius, ed. Todd and Herbert, p. 79. See also Fiecc's Hymn (the 

 gloss) in the Liber Hymnorum, 



