Bretha Étgid
Bretha Étgid or Éitgid (Old Irish for "Judgments of Inadvertence"[1]: xvi ) is an early Irish legal text on liability for injury.
Manuscripts and editions
[edit]There are seven manuscripts of Bretha Étgid, none complete. Only one of these manuscripts (Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 P 3) preserves the text of Bretha Étgid in a continuous fashion; the rest only excerpt or quote from it. This continuous manuscript preserves a much less abbreviated text than appears in the quotes or excerpts. In addition to this, O'Davoren's Glossary preserves a number of quotes from Bretha Étgid.[2]: 178–180 D. A. Binchy described these manuscripts as using the quotes from Bretha Étgid as "pegs on which to hang voluminous commentaries".[3]: 28
An incomplete copy of Bretha Étgid (taken from Trinity College Dublin MS 1433) was edited and translated, alongside its commentaries and scholia, as part of the Ancient Laws of Ireland (Vol. 3, 1873). This edition is not very satisfactory. The editors of the Ancient Laws mis-titled as Lebar Aicle ("Book of Aicill"), a name which appears to be a 19th-century invention, and in any case describes the manuscript which it was found in and not the legal tract.[4]: 272 [2]: 180–182 Binchy complained that the inclusion of the commentaries and scholia in this incomplete edition had mislead legal historians into thinking Bretha Étgid was a much more substantial work than it was.[3]: 28–29
Contents
[edit]Bretha Étgid deals with cases of injury or homicide where the perpetrator has no liability. It is our main source for the Irish law of accidents.[4]: 149, 272
Bretha Étgid begins with a discussion of the word éitged ("inadvertence, irresponsibility"). Following this a series of paragraphs beginning a maic ara feiser ("O son so that you would find out"), probably with the implied background of a king instructing his son. Following this are a series of paragraphs beginning blaí ("immunity"), giving cases in which a perpetrator is not responsible for some specific injury. Beyond this, there are paragraphs giving universal rules; a section formatted as questions and answers; and various else.[2]: 180–181 [5]: 139–140 A later editor has given this text a pseudo-historical introduction, attributing the blaí and a maic sections to Cormac mac Airt, and the rest to Cenn Fáelad.[5]: 140
The text is very abbreviated. For example, in the blaí section the author states "the immunity (blaí) of hammers is an anvil", meaning that a blacksmith who injures a person who is irresponsibly near his work station is not liable.[4]: 149 One section of Bretha Étgid deals with pica in pregnant women, notable as it gives some rare insight into the lives of women in medieval Irish society. The nature of medieval Irish agriculture was such that nutritional deficiency was common in the winter months. The Bretha Étgid states that a woman with cravings is not legally liable for stealing some limited amount of food (with different limits, depending on whether it is stolen from a stranger or her husband); that it is an offense for the husband not to satisfy his wife's cravings; and that it is an offence for the wife not to tell her husband about her cravings. The justification given for these rules is that denial of food could harm the foetus.[6]: 2, 18–19 [7]: 33–34
Because so much of the Bretha Étgid survives in excerpts, it is difficult to tell whether it originally contained material of other law tracts, or if later excerpters incorporated those sections in.[2]: 182 Charlene Eska has commented on the difficulty of untangling the fragments of the mostly lost legal tract Muirbretha from the surviving text of Bretha Étgid.[1]: 43
Binchy suggested that Bretha Étgid (alongside the legal tracts Uraicecht Becc, Cóic Conara Fugill, and the first and second Bretha Nemed) was the work of a hypothesised Nemed school, perhaps located in Munster.[4]: 247 Binchy suggested that there was a strong element influence on the writings of this school; this contention has come under criticism from Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Aidan Breen.[8]: 22
References
[edit]- ^ a b Eska, Charlene M. (2022). Lost and Found in Early Irish Law: Aidbred, Heptad 64, and Muirbretha. Medieval Law and its Practice. Vol. 36. Leiden / Boston: Brill.
- ^ a b c d Breatnach, Liam (2005). A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici. Early Irish Law Series. Vol. 5. Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies.
- ^ a b Binchy, D. A. (1943). The Linguistic and Historical Value of the Irish Law Tracts. Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture. London: British Academy.
- ^ a b c d Kelly, Fergus (1988). A Guide to Early Irish Law. Early Irish Law Series. Vol. 3. Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies.
- ^ a b Qiu, Fangzhe (2021). "Law, law-books and tradition in early medieval Ireland". In Gobbitt, Thom (ed.). Law, book, culture in the Middle Ages. Leiden, Boston: Brill. pp. 126–146. doi:10.1163/9789004448650_007.
- ^ Eska, Charlene M. (2010). Cáin Lánamna: An Old Irish Tract on Marriage and Divorce Law. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
- ^ Bourke, Angela; Kilfeather, Siobhán; Luddy, Maria, eds. (2002). "Early medieval law, c. 700–1200". The Field Day anthology of Irish writing, vol. IV: Irish women's writing and traditions. Cork: Cork University Press. pp. 6–44.
- ^ Kelly, Fergus (1992). "Early Irish law: The present state of research". Études Celtiques. 29: 15–23.
Further reading
[edit]- Ancient Laws of Ireland. Vol. 3. Dublin: Stationery Office. 1873. pp. 82-547 (the "Book of Aicill" in English trans.).
- McLeod, Neil (1999). Bloodshed and compensation in ancient Ireland. Perth, W.A.: Centre for Irish Studies.