fact which alone speaks volumes both for the vigour and the undying
pugnacity of the race.

While, on the one hand, we can hardly thus exaggerate the rudeness of
this life, we must be careful, on the other, of concluding that these
people were simple barbarians, incapable of discriminating right from
wrong. Men, even the wildest, rarely indeed live entirely without some
law to guide them, and certainly it was so in Ireland. A rule was
growing up and becoming theoretically at any rate, established, many of
the provisions of which startle us by the curious modernness of their
tone, so oddly do they contrast with what we know of the condition of
civilization or non-civilization then existing.

Although this ancient Irish law was not drawn up until long after the
introduction of Christianity, it seems best to speak of it here, as,
though modified by the stricter Christian rule, it in the main depended
for such authority as it possessed upon traditions existing long before;
traditions regarded indeed by Celtic scholars as tracing their origin
beyond the arrival of the first Celt in Ireland, outcomes and survivals,
that is to say, of yet earlier Aryan rule, showing points of resemblance
with the equally Aryan laws of India, a matter of great interest,
carrying our thoughts back along the history of humanity to a time when
those differences which seem now the most inherent and vital were as yet
undreamt of, and not one of the great nations of the modern world were
as much as born.

The two chief books in which this law is contained, the "Book of Aicill"
and the "Senchus-Mor," have only comparatively recently been translated
and made available for English readers. The law as there laid down was
drawn up and administered by the Brehons, who were the judges and the