12 The Senchus Mór
The Irish code of law, entitled the Senchus Mór, preserved only in late MSS., is a work which contains a very ancient code embedded in glosses, commentaries, and accretions. Passages are quoted from it in Cormac’s glossary, a work of the tenth century, and these quotations appear to be the earliest testimonia.
In the tenth century it was believed that the original code was drawn up in the reign of king Loigaire in the fifth century. Here is the note in Cormac’s glossary, in Dr. W. Stokes’s translation (Trip. p. 570).
Nós (customary law), the knowledge of nine [nofis], to wit three kings and three bishops and three sages, namely, a sage of poetry and a sage of literature and a sage of the language of the Féni. All these were composing the Senchus Mór. Thence it is said:—
Loiguire, Corc, dour Daire,
Patrick, Benén, just Cairnech,
Ross, Dubthach, Fergus with goodness,
Nine props, those of the Senchus Mór.
The same account is found in the Introduction which was prefixed in late times to the Senchus, and professes to record the circumstances of its compilation.
Was this tradition, which was current in the tenth century, genuine, or was it an invention made for the purpose of enhancing the prestige of Patrick? In deciding this question, there are two considerations which seem to me important. (1) If the code, which evidently held such a high place in public esteem in the tenth century, had been drawn up in the seventh or eighth centuries, it is inconceivable that an event of such interest and importance as its publication should not have been recorded in the Annals. In my opinion this argument applies also to the sixth century. But in any case, if it be admitted that the silence of the Annals forbids a date later than A.D. 600 at the latest, all the probabilities are in favour of the correctness of the tradition. The entries in the Annals for the fifth century are extremely meagre, so that the omission of a notice of the Senchus Mór would not be surprising.
It may be said, however, that as a matter of fact, the Annals do notice the composition of the Senchus Mór. Under A.D. 438 we find: Senchus mor do scribunn, “the Senchus Mór was written.” But in the first place, this entry is in Irish; if it had been a contemporary record, it would have been preserved in Latin; it is clearly an addition, and perhaps a comparatively late addition. In the second place, the date is suspicious. The year A.D. 438 is the very year in which the Theodosian Code was issued; and therefore we can hardly doubt that the motive of the insertion of the Irish entry under this year was a desire to synchronise the issue of the native with that of the great Roman Code. These considerations force us to reject the entry in the Annals as evidence of independent value.
(2) If the story of the compilation of the Senchus in the reign of Loigaire had been a deliberate invention, say of the ninth century, it could hardly have assumed its actual shape. The persons alleged to have taken part in the compilation would naturally be those who play a prominent or well-marked part in the Patrician story. Now, leaving out Patrick and Loigaire, of the other seven only three, Daire, Benignus, and Dubthach, are conspicuous in the lives and legends of Patrick. Of the other four, Ros appears indeed, but not so conspicuously as his brother Dichu, while Corc, Cairnech, and Fergus are not mentioned at all. The case of Corc, king of Munster, is particularly to be noted, because Oengus (Corc’s second successor) comes into the Patrician story, and would naturally have been selected as Patrick’s colleague if the record were a pure invention.
The record, I therefore conclude, has a genuine and ancient basis. It would be rash to be confident that the number nine, and the arrangement in three classes, may not be an improvement upon the original record; in other words, some names (e.g. Benignus and Daire) may conceivably be additions. The number nine was considered a number of virtue by the Gaels; and it is conceivable that a savant of a later age might have added to the tradition in order to make up that number. But the argument is double-edged. For it is equally likely that, for just the same reason, the number of the real commission should have been fixed at nine.
The story that the occasion of the composition of the Senchus was the slaying of Odhran, Patrick’s charioteer, in order to test Patrick’s doctrine of forgiveness, is told in the Introduction to the Senchus (pp. 4 sqq.) and in the Lehor na hUidre (text and translation, in Stokes, Tripartite, 562 sqq.). A different story of the death of Odhran at the hands of Foilge is told in Vita Quarta, c. 77, and Vita Tertia, c. 59 (where the charioteer’s name is not mentioned): according to this version the missile was aimed at Patrick. This version, but without reference to Foilge, is likewise noticed in the Introduction to the Senchus (p. 6).
The simplest explanation maybe that a driver of Patrick was slain by an enemy, and that the incident was used by Patrick for raising the question of criminal justice; mythopoeic instinct then attributed the murder to a deliberate intention of raising the question.
The story as told in the Introduction seems to preserve a tradition that an attempt was made by Patrick to change the penalty of eric fine for murder into a penalty for death. This is the motive of the poem which is fathered upon Dubthach: “I pronounce the judgment of death, of death for his crime to every one who kills” (p. 13). This is to be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of perfect forgiveness by considering that the body only is killed, the soul is forgiven: the “murderer is adjudged to heaven, and it is not to death he is adjudged” (ib.). The commentator notices the disagreement between this principle, which in the story Patrick is assumed to have established, and the custom of eric fine which actually prevailed, and explains it on the ground that Patrick’s successors had no power of bestowing heaven, hence the death penalty was discontinued, and “no one is put to death for his intentional crimes, as long as ’eric’-fine is obtained.”
The historical fact underlying this story is, I submit, that the Church in Patrick’s day attempted, unsuccessfully, to supersede the system of composition for manslaughter and private retaliation by making the act a public offence punishable by death.
[The questions connected with the material of the laws, and the Feine, lie quite outside my competence, and do not concern the scope of this book. I may refer to Atkinson’s article “Feine,” in his glossary (Ancient Laws, vol. vi.); Rhŷs, Studies in Early Irish History, pp. 52-55 (Proc, of Brit. Acad. vol. i.). For the legal processes and customs, the chief work is M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s Études sur le droit celtique, 2 vols. 1895; see also the Prefaces to the volumes of the Ancient Laws, and Sir H. Maine’s Early Institutions.]