The Celts

The marriage of Christianity and Celtic cultures produced in Ireland a society which was essentially conservative; hence some of its features remained unchanged until the overthrow of Gaelic Ireland in the early seventeenth century. It was basically a rural society with no cities or towns. While some of the more important monasteries like Clonmacnoise, Armagh, Clonard and Bangor grew into centres with a large population, one has to wait for the Vikings to see the rise of towns as commercial centres.

The ordinary homestead of the farming classes was the ráth, often erected on a hilltop and surrounded by a circular rampart and fence. These are the ëring fortsí of present-day Ireland. They have often left their imprint as ráth, or lios on the local place-name, as in Rathfriland, Lismore, Lisdoonvarna, and so on. The kingís residence was of course more elaborately built, as at Eamhain Macha, Clogher and Downpatrick.

Gaelic civilisation placed great emphasis on family relationships. The normal family group was the derbhfhine made up of all those who were descended from one great-grandfather. Each member of the king's derbhfhine was eligible to succeed to the throne. He was elected by the freemen of the tuath whenthe throne became vacant. The system had the advantage of ensuring that an imbecile or a cripple would scarcely ever become king, but it had the terrible disadvantage of provoking conflict between two or more equally qualified heirs. The ownership of land was also vested in the family group.

The king's inauguration was originally looked upon as his symbolic marriage with the sovereignty of his kingdom. It may have begun as a fertility rite. The feast held to celebrate the inauguration of a new king of Tara was therefore called the Feis of Tara, the word feis meaning 'to sleep with' someone.

The normal form of inauguration of a king was to hand him a white rod as a token of his sovereignty. Each kingdom had its own proper inauguration site. In the north the inauguration site of O'Neill was at Tullyhogue near Stewartstown. For centuries the inauguration flagstone built into a chair (Leac na Rí) stood on the side of this high hill until it was broken up by Mountjoy in the summer of 1602. O'Cahan, as the senior sub-chieftain, and O'Hagan, warden of Tullyhogue, cast a shoe over O'Neill's head.

The Gaelic king was ruler of his people in peace and military commander in war. He presided over the annual Aonach, which was often held at an earlier cemetery, and included the promulgation of laws and athletic competitions as well as buying and selling. The king of the tuath was bound by personal loyalty to a superior king who in turn was subject to a provincial king. The concept of a High King of all Ireland is absent from the early literature and only emerges gradually during the Viking period. Very few kings of the Uí Néill dynasty did not encounter opposition from either Leinster or Munster. The lower king showed loyalty to his overlord by giving him hostages and accepting a stipend from him.

The learned class or Aos Dána formed a special group among the freemen. They included judges and lawyers, medical men, craftsmen and most important of all the filí. These were more than poets; they were regarded as seers and visionaries as well. After the conversion of Ireland to Christianity they inherited much of the prestige of the earlier druids. They wrote praise-poems for the king on appropriate occasions, preserved and updated his genealogy and were richly rewarded for their services. If the honorarium did not come up to expectations, they sometimes had recourse to satire, and were feared not only for their sharpness of tongue, but for the magical powers which had been associated with the druids of old.

Like most positions in Gaelic Ireland the learned professions tended to become hereditary. In late medieval times the O'Davorens were the experts in law and the O'Hickeys and O'Shiels provided the medical men. The poetic families were particularly numerous: O'Daly's in many parts of the country, Mac a' Wards in Donegal, O'Husseys in Fermanagh, MacBrodys in Clare, OíHigginses in Sligo, Mac Namees in Tyrone. Numerous also were the hereditary families of chroniclers and historians: O'Clerys in Donegal, O'Keenans in Fermanagh, Mac Egans in Tipperary, O'Mulchonrys in Roscommon, Mac Firbises in Sligo. The craftsmen have often ensured remembrance by engraving their name on their work: Noonan on the shrine of St. Patrickís Bell, Ó Brolcháin on the stonework of Iona. Even in the church hereditary succession to benefices appeared as soon as they carried a worthwhile endowment.

The system of church government which Patrick introduced into Ireland was naturally the episcopal one with which he was acquainted in his native Britain and in Gaul. But he also rejoiced to see many of his new converts embrace the monastic life. Within a century of the saintís death new monasteries had ousted some of the earlier Patrician foundations and Ireland ultimately became unique in western Europe in having its more important churches, even St. Patrick's own see, ruled by abbots, many of whom were not bishops.

Click here for part 5, or here for part 3.
click here to go to the start of the article.

From the Appletree Press title: The People of Ireland (currently out of print).
Also see A Little History of Ireland.