tured, and it carries on an active transit trade. It was long the seat of a Roman garrison, and in the Middle Ages it gave the title to a powerful family of counts, whose territory passed to Austrian possession in the 16th century. In 1646. the town was captured by the Swedes; and in 1850 it gave its name to a treaty by which Austria, Bavaria,
and Wiirtemberg formed an alliance against Prussia. Population in 1869, 3686.BREHON LAW, the law of Ireland previous to the Conquest, and of some communities of the Irish down to the 17th century (from breitheam, genitive breitheamain, a judge ; root, breith, a judgment ; compare Vergobretus, " vir-ad-judicandum," Caos., De Bell. Gall., i. 16). Three volumes of these laws, comprising the code called the Scnchus Mor, alleged to have been revised by St Patrick, have been published by a Royal Commission appointed in 1852, and other portions in the second series of O Curry s Lectures on the Materials of Ancient Irish History, edited, with a learned introduction, by Dr W. K. Sullivan in 1873. The antiquated and often obsolete language both of the original text and of the interlined glosses, coupled with the fact that portions of both are cited in compilations con sidered not later than the 10th century, are arguments for their acceptance as fragments of a primitive system un modified by Anglo-Saxon, Danish, or Norman influences. The Roman (or civil) law is hardly traceable in them, except as regards ecclesiastical affairs, and that sub modo only. From the first-mentioned cause also, the provisions are often obscure and sometimes unintelligible ; but enough appears to indicate the general nature and much of the details of these laws.
As compared with the collections known under the generic title leges barbarorum, they are remarkable for their copiousness, and furnish a striking example of the length to which moral and metaphysical refinements may be carried under rude social conditions. They present a st#te of society such as may be conceived to have existed under the older manorial organization, when the land was to a greater extent "folk "-land than "boc"-land, and comprised com mons of tillage as well as of pasture. This kind of occupancy entailed annual repartitions of the tillage, recall ing the usage of the ancient Germans (Caes., Bel. Gall., vi. 20), and of which, as practised on a minor scale in Ireland in 1782, Sir Henry Piers has given an account in his description of Westmeath (Vallanccy, Coll., vi. p. 115). Traces of such repartitions survived under the name of Rundale (Irish ranndach, " partire ") in the Highlands of Scotland and in some parts of the West of England till recent times (Maine, Early Inst., p. 101). There is no evidence, however, in the Brehon code, as now published, of merely family occupancy, in which one household living together, or even one village community, enjoyed the land and its produce in common, although such an origin may be theoretically conjectured for the institutions described. The social unit comprised separate families and households numerous enough to occupy a crick or quasi manor, within which existed a court and complete system of primary social organization. In each of these, mensal lands were set per manently apart for the chief, and means existed by which portions of the common land could, within certain limits, be acquired in severally by individual owners. The crick formed portion of the tuath, or quasi barony, one or more of which constituted the mor tuath, or petty kingdom, equivalent to a county or several counties, governed by a ri or regulus, who, in theory at least, bore allegiance, through superior reyuli, to the monarch. The grades of rank were numerous, but the distinctions of wealth which grounded them appear very arbitrary. The upper classes were all "Aires." To be eligible to the aire grade, the freeman should possess, besides a certain amount of wealth in cattle, a prescribed assortment of agricultural implements and household goods, the meagreness of which exemplifies the slow progress of the arts of life in early states of society, and he should have a house of given dimensions, ranging from 17 to 27 feet in length, and containing a given number of compartments. The houses were of timber and wattle-work, surrounded by open spaces of prescribed extent for each class. The lower limit for this space was the distance to which the owner seated at his door could throw a missile of given weight ; multiples of that distance determined its extent for the higher classes. Tacitus has noticed a like custom of keeping clear spaces round the several dwellings among the early Germans ; and this regulation has probably contributed to retard the progress of the early Irish out of pastoral and agricultural into civic habits. There was a serf and slave population, who were designated ernaans, as representing the earlier Firbolg and Pictish colonists, who did not enjoy these privileges, except by the process of becoming fuidhirs or tenants of the separate lands of the nobles, who called themselves Gaidel, or Gael, and claimed a different descent. Besides these tenants, or " feuers," there were dependants called ceiles, who stood to the wealthy classes in a relation re sembling that of the clients of the Roman commonalty to their patrons. Both they and the fuidhirs owed suit and homage to their flat/is or lords, as well as services and rents in kind and in refections. The food-rents, biadh, corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon feorme (whence "farmer"), were supplied both at the residences of the chiefs and at the tables of their tenants, whence originated the customs of coyne and livery of later times.
The use of coined money was practically unknown, and the unit of value (sed, seota, " assets ") was the cow. The ceiles appear to have been attached to their lords by largesses, or " commendations " of cattle which they used in their own tribal lands. It is in the fuidhir class that a law of tenure of land originated, and possibly in these relations we may discover the rudiments of a partly-developed feudalism. " The fuidhir is, in the theory of the native etymologists, the fo-tir or " land- underling," as one who holds land of another. The rules regulating these several kinds of enjoyment of the land are peculiar to the Brehon code, and, as may be observed of all its provisions, are extraordinarily minute, being designed to fix all rights and liabilities, under every prob able state of circumstances, in values numbered, which may be one cause for the slow social progress made under their operation. For each supply of cattle to the ceile a definite return to the aire is fixed to the end of seven years, when the property vests in the ceile. But the supply should not exceed fixed limits if the recipient would pre serve his status as a freeman. The fuidhir, or base tenant, was bound to larger returns in rent and services, and tho lord might, on violation of the tenant s engagements, resume the possession of the land ; but it would appear that during the fuidhir s occupation he could not be otherwise disturbed without a measure of compensation. On the death of the ceile or of the fuidhir, a quasi heriot was payable to the lord.
within hereditary limits ; the succession to tribal rights of occupancy, and individual rights of ownership in the separate hereditaments acquirable by individuals, was hereditary. The law of distribution of a deceased person s property is very minute in its provisions, though obscure, owing to the technical description of the ckisses and persons entitled ; but it appears to have contemplated divisions per capita and not per stirpes. The law of marriage is remarkable for the variety of irregular relations which it appears to
sanction, and for its careful protection of the separate pro-