Note 486 — Chapter XVIII · ON THE CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND

"There were two other customs proper and peculiar to the Irishry, which, being the cause of many strong combinations and factions, do tend to the utter ruin of a commonwealth. The one was fostering, the other gossipred; both which have ever been of greater estimation among this people than with any other nation in the Christian world. For fostering I did never hear or read that it was in that use or reputation in any other country, barbarous or civil, as it hath been, and yet is, in Ireland, where they put away all their children to fosterers; the potent and rich men selling, the meaner sort, buying, the alterage and nursing of their children; and the reason is, because in the opinion of this people, fostering hath always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster-children do love and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept, more than of their own natural parents and kindred, and do participate of their means more frankly, and do adhere to them in all fortunes, with more affection and constancy. The like may be said of gossipred or compaternity, which though by the canon law it be a spiritual affinity, and a juror that was gossip to either of the parties might in former times have been challenged, as not indifferent, by our law, yet there was no nation under the sun that ever made so religious an account of it as the Irish," Davis, 179.