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a permanent dependant. This process, therefore, not only led to 
the freemen of the tribe being gradually absorbed into the .class of 
the dependants or following of the chief, but placed a powerful 
weapon in the hands of the latter, by which he could transform his 
temporary free ceile into permanent and more servile dependants.” * 
The separate ownership of land by inheritance seems to have 
resulted in the Celtic tribes at first from a tacit prescription, the 
precise origin and foundation of which it would be very difficult to 
determine. The firm hold which from the first each member of the 
tribe evidently had on his homestead gave to the skilful breeder or 
the careful tender of his herd a fulcrum no doubt on which he could 
work the lever of his wealth; and when for three generations a 
family retained possession of land, that possession became the basis 
of title and of a right transmissible by the holder to the succeeding 
members of his family;! originated, it would seem almost by 
accident or intuitively the right of separate perpetual tenure, on 
which was raised the superior class of territorial magnates — ^the 
original chieftains of the septs and clans into which in its later 
development in Scotland, preparatory to its final extinction, the tribe 
broke up. 
And when that time for its extinction came, when Alexander III. 
died in 1286, and the fresher, freer, nobler influences of Saxon and 
Norman life stirred the stagnant system of Celtic society and gave 
life and vigour to our Scottish institutions, the form which the tribe 
had assumed in Scotland was this ; there was the central figure, the 
thane, possessing a large part of the lands as his demesne, represent- 
ing the mensal lands of earlier days, and very large rights of 
superiority and service from the inferior members of the tribe ; over 
these thanes there held rule more or less defined, and originating in 
circumstances exterior to the tribal organisation, the earls of the 
seven provinces, but that rule was less, I apprehend, a matter of land 
tenure than of personal rule; below the thanes came a class 
which can best be described as freeholders holding their lands 
in absolute fee, but bound as the condition of their tenure to give 
personal service and to pay certain definite and elaborately regulated 
duties; below them again came a class of free or kindly tenants, 
* Skene’s Celtic Scotland, vol. iii. pp. 172, 173. 
t Idem,^, 144, 
