MacNeill — Ancient Irish Latv : Law of Status or Franchise. 307 



[At the end of Crith Gallach there is added, apparently as an after- 

 thought, a poem which is probably somewhat earlier in date than the prose, 

 since it is quoted from Fenechus, i.e. from the law as it was held to have come 

 down in ancient tradition. The poem is introduced by the words Dligthir hrithem 

 la rig rodbo hrithem cadesin, amal arincan Fenechus. " A (professional) judge 

 should be with a king (in court), even though he himself be a judge, as 

 Fenechus teaches" — meaning, not that a king might be a judge, for the 

 judicial office belonged to every king, but that a king, even if he were 

 himself an expert jurist, ought to have a professional assessor in his court. 

 The poem is in archaic metre, without rhyme or exact measure of syllables, 

 in short verses, each of which, as a rule, contains two fully stressed words, 

 the last stressed word of each verse making alliteration with the first 

 stressed word of the following verse. The type is found in lines 6-9 : 

 mess tire \tomus for rag \ forierta dire | dithle mesraid. From this type, however, 

 there are numerous departures. O'Curry's transcript, from which the text in IV 

 is printed, ended with verse 30. The remaining seventy-three verses are taken 

 here from the copy printed by Meyer in " Zeitschrift fiir Celtische Philologie," 

 XII, 365. This copy would have escaped my notice had not E. I. Best 

 reminded me of it. The abrupt ending may indicate that even here the 

 poem is incomplete. 



The date of composition is earlier than Crith Gallach, and cannot be 

 placed later than towards the end of the seventh century. As my references 

 show, the poem is in the main a kind of metrical list of the contents of 

 Bretha Comaithchesa, of which in several places (11. 28-30, 75, 85-87, 91-95) 

 it reproduces the actual wording. It adds, however, a number of titles, as 

 we may regard them, of a kindred kind not referable to the extant text of 

 BO, but possibly related to another version of that text, since some of them 

 (e.g. 11. 70-74) are in close verbal relation to passages of Old Irish now 

 embodied in the Oommeutary to EC. The orthography exhibits the mixture 

 of earlier, later, and spurious spellings usually found in late transcripts of 

 pieces of very early Irish. A few of the oldest spellings have been allowed 

 to remain. In 1. T,forrag, read *forreg; cp. aireg, in the text of CG, IV, 320, 

 1. 24 ; already in Adamnan is found Ficchrcch beside the earlier Fcchureg. 

 In 1. 71 an, tan, infinitives of ag-, to-ag- ; Pedersen, Vergl. Gram., §§ 634, 652, 

 has only din, tain; Meyer, Contribb., only din, but fragments cited in the 

 commentary aforesaid, IV, 98 and 146, confirm dn.^ In 1. 99, fogeltath. 



' Cp. IV 156 x: Ata annud uclaidh dligeus each cumnithciich did mile, " there is one 

 stay which every co-tenant is entitled to from the other": read Attda an r,dd ucclaid, 

 etc., " there is a driving which is not (subject to) suit, to whicli each joint husbandman is 

 entitled from the other." The right discussed is to drive cattle across a neighbour's land. 



