Note 100 — PART II (continued 2)

This classification, in theory at least, regulated the structure of society from top to bottom. There were four ranks of kings, from the Árd Rí, High King, or Emperor, of all Ireland, to the Rí Tuatha, King of a Tribal Territory. The territories themselves were divided according to a descending scale, analogous to the English division into county, hundred, tithing, etc. There were six grades of princes under the king, classified according to the extent of their lands. Society was divided into nobles, freemen, and serfs, and each of these classes was subdivided into a great number of minor grades. The family was traced to the seventeenth degree, and was grouped into six classes, whose rights and liabilities in matters of inheritance, in the receipt or payment of fines and damages, etc., are defined with the utmost minuteness. The land tenure, and the dues to be paid in respect of each kind; the circumstances of crimes and civil injuries, and the fines or damages to be paid for each; in short, all the details of public and private life, were elaborated with similar minuteness. For particulars, the reader may be referred to the ancient legal and customary treatises, and the respective commentaries thereon, printed in the Rolls Series, the Lebor na g-Cert, ed. O’Donovan, 1847, and O’Curry’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ed. W. K. Sullivan, 3 vols., 1873.