Celtic Law : A Short Summary
From: Raimund KARL (a8700035@unet.univie.ac.at)
To: CELTIC-L@DANANN.HEA.IE
Subject: Celtic Law – a short summary – Part 1 – 12
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:32:32 – Tue, 21 Oct 1997 14:03:56
This article originally appeared as a multi-part message on CELTIC-L@Danann.hea.ie. If you want you may distribute it freely as long as it is not used for commercial purposes and you include the email-adress of the author (a8700035@unet.univie.ac.at) for responses.
INTRODUCTION
A lot of things have been said about Celtic Law, from that it in fact did not exist and the stronger one was right, over that it developed from a matriarchal system, that it was a matriarchal system (please note that matriarchal is a legal term – it defines inheritance) up to that it was a very complex and definitely better system than most of today’s legal systems. All of this is, to a certain extent, right, but the greater part of it is wrong.
What I will try to do now is give a short summary of how Celtic Law really functioned, which things were regulated by law, how the laws looked and how legal problems were solved. Once again, I will start this with looking on the sources that have come down on us.
THE SOURCES FOR CELTIC LAW
Mainly, we have two groups of sources that are of utmost importance to our understanding of Celtic Law. The first one of these is the Irish legal tradition. Mainly written down by Christian monks of the 7th to 10th century AD (though some texts were written even later) these law texts, the bulk of which exists in an edition by D.A. Binchy (Corpus Iuris Hibernici, from now on shortened as CIH), though sometimes severely influenced by Christian motives, perhaps give us the most complete legal codex that had developed separately from Roman Law in Europe that has come down on us. The main part of the Irish law texts is called the Senchas Mór. These texts essentially give us a good view at how the law might have looked before the Roman conquering in most of Europe.
The second one of those is the Welsh legal tradition. First set down in about the 12th century AD, it is definitely a good deal later put into writing than Irish law and, maybe because of this, shows a lot more of foreign influences in the law already, starting with influences of Roman law and going over Christian to Anglo-Saxon and early Norman influences. Still, the basic system of the law and the great bulk of actual laws still very closely parallel similar Irish laws. The Welsh law has been taken down as the Law of Hywel Dda as a single complex. In comparison with the Irish law it is very well possible to filter out common Celtic concepts in the law.
Additionally to those primary sources, which do give us actual law texts, we have some other sources as well that may tell us something about actual use of the law and allow us to try to reconstruct a picture of how old Celtic law might have looked.
First, there are the Irish and Welsh tales which do, even though not often, also tell about judical processes. These can tell us how the laws were actually executed (in difference to the law texts themselves that tell how the laws should be executed).
Second, there are the historical sources about Wales and Ireland, which also tell us about how the laws were actually executed.
Third, there are the ancient historical sources which let us, once in a while, glimpse at “customs” that can be explained by or are even exactly paralleled with later Irish and Welsh legal proscriptions.
This can then be compared to other systems by Comparative IE [Indo-European] Studies, Comparative Linguistics and comparative Legal Studies to provide explanation models and fill in existing blanks with possible reconstructions.
These are the sources which are basically available to us when trying to study Celtic legal systems, even though once in a while it might also be possible that archaeology provides us with a hint or two at legal specialties.