galloglasses, they were called in later times--who surrounded every
important chief, whether of English or Irish descent, and were by them
quartered forcibly in war time upon others, and so there grew up that
system of "coyne and livery," or forced entertainment for horse and men,
which is to be met with again and again throughout Irish history, and
which undoubtedly was one of the greatest curses of the country, tending
more perhaps than any other single cause to keep its people at the
lowest possible condition of starvation and misery.

No system of representation seems ever to have prevailed in Ireland.
That idea is, in fact, almost purely Teutonic, and seems never to have
sprung up spontaneously amongst any Celtic people. The family was the
real root. Every head of a family ruled his own household, and submitted
in his turn to the rule of his chief. Blood-relationship, including
fosterage, was the only real and binding union; that larger connection
known as the clan or sept, having the smaller one of the family for its
basis, as was the case also amongst the clans of the Scotch highlands.
Theoretically, all members of a clan, high and low alike, were held to
be the descendants of a common ancestor, and in this way to have a real
and direct claim upon one another. If a man was not in some degree akin
to another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed like one
without compunction whenever occasion arose.

Everything thus began and centred around the tribe or sept. The whole
theory of life was purely local. The bare right of existence extended
only a few miles from your own door, to the men who bore the same name
as yourself. Beyond that nothing was sacred; neither age nor sex,
neither life nor goods, not even in later times the churches themselves.
Like his cousin of the Scotch Highlands, the Irish tribesman's life was
one perpetual carnival of fighting, burning, raiding, plundering, and he