880
AN GAODHAL.
O'Curry's Lectures.
ON THE
MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL OF ANCIENT IRISH HIS¬
TORY.
Lecture II.
(Continued)
And thus when Cormac came to the sovereignty
of Erinn, he found that Conor's regulations had
been disregarded, and this was what induced the
nobles to propose to him a new organization, in
accordance with the advancement and progress of
the people, from the former period. And this Cor¬
mac did, for he ordered a new code of laws and reg¬
ulations to be drawn up, extending to all classes
and professions. He also put the state or court
regulations of the Teach Midhchuarta, or Great
Banqueting House of Tara, on a new and perma¬
nent footing, and revived obsolete tests and or¬
deals, and instituted some important new ones,
thus making the law of Testimony and Evidence
as perfect and safe as it could be in such times.
If we take this, and various other descriptions
Cormac's character as a man, a king, a scholar, a
judge and a warrior, into account, we shall see
that he was no ordinary prince, and that if he had
not impressed the nation with a full sense of his
great superiority over his predecessors and those
who came after him, there is no reason why he
should have been specially selected from all the
rest of the line of monarchs, to be made above all
the possessor of such excellences.
Such a man could scarcely have carried out his
various behests, and the numerous provisions of
his comprehensive enactments, without some writ¬
ten medium. And it is no unwarrantable presum¬
ption to suppose that, either by his own hand, or,
at least, in his own time, by his command, his laws
were committed to writing, and when we possess
very ancient testimony to this effect, I can see no
reason for rejecting it, or even for casting a doubt
upon the statement:
It is not probable that any laws or enactments
forged at a later period, could be imposed on a peo¬
ple who possessed in such abundance the means of
testing the genuineness of their origin, by recourse
to other sources of information, and the same argu¬
ments which apply in the case of the Saltair of
Tara, may be used in regard to another work as¬
signed to Cormac, of which mention will be pres¬
ently made. Nor is this all, but there is no reason
whatever to deny that a book, such as the Saltair
of Tara is represented to have been, was in exist¬
ence at Tara a long time before Cormac's reign, and
that Cormac only altered and enlaregd it to meet
the circumstances of his own times.
These bards and druids, of which our ancient
records make such frequent mention, must have
had some mode of perpetuating their arts, else it
would have been impossible for those arts to have
been transmitted so faithfully and fully as we know
they were. It is true that the student in the learn¬
ing of the File is said to have spent some twelve
years in study, before he was pronounced an adept
and this may be supposed to imply that the in¬
struction was verbal, but we have it from various
writers, even as late as the 16th and 17th centuries
that it was customary with medical, law, and civil
students of these times, to read the classics and
study their profession for 20 years.
All this is indeed but presumptive evidence of
the possession of writing by the Irish in the time
of Cormac, but from other sources we have reason
to believe that the art existed here long antecedent
to his reign, this subject is, however, of too
great extent and importance to admit of its full
discussion at present.
There still exists, I should state to you, a Law
Tract, attributed to Cormac. It is called the
Book of Acaill, and is always found annexed to a
Law Treatise by Cennfaelad the learned, who died
A. D. 677. The following preface always prefixed
to this first work gives its history.
"The locus of the Book was Aicill (or Acaill,
pron. Akill), near Teamair [Tara, and the time
of it was the time of Cairbre Lifeachair (Cairbre of
Liffey), son of Cormac, and the person [author] of
it was Cormac, and the cause of making it was, the
blinding of Cormac's eye by Aengus Gabuaidoch
(Aengus of the poisoned spear), after the abduction
of the daughter of Sorar, son of Art Corb, by
Cellach, the son of Cormac. This Aengus Gabnai¬
dech was an Aire Echta (an avenging chief), at this
time, avenging the wrongs of his tribe, in the terri¬
tories of Luighne (Leyney), and he went into the
house of a woman there, and forcibly drank milk
there. "It would be fitter for you," said the
woman, "to avenge your brother's daughter on Cel¬
lach, the son of Cormac, than to consume my food
forcibly." And books do not record that he com¬
mitted any evil upon the woman's person, but he
went forward to Teamair, and it was after sunset
he reached Teamair and it was prohibited at Tea¬
mair to take a champion's arms into it after sun¬
set, but only the arms that happened to be in it.
And Aengus took Cormac's Crimall (bloody spear)
down off its rack (as he was passing in) and gave
a thrust of it into Ceallach, son of Cormac, which
killed him, and its angle struck Cormac's eye, so
that he remained half blind, and its heel struck in
back of the steward of Teamair, when drawing it
out of Cellach, and killed him. And it was pro¬
hibited to a king with a blemish to be in Teamair,
and Cormac was sent out to be cured to Aicill near
Teamair, and Teamar could be seen from Aicill and
Aicill could not be seen in Teamar, and the sover¬
eighty of Erinn was (then) given to Cairbre Lifea¬
chair, the son of Cormac, and it was then this book
was compiled, and that which is Cormac's share
in it is every place where "Blai" (immunity) oc¬
curs, and "A meic ara feiser" (my son would you
know, and Cenndfaelad's share is, everything from
that out."
Such is the account of this curious tract,
found prefixed to all the copies of it that we
now know, and, though the composition of this pre¬
face must be of much later date than Cormac's time
still it bears internal evidence of great antiquity.
Cormac's book is, as I have observed, always
found prefixed to the laws compiled by Cennfaelad
just mentioned. This Cennfaelad had been an Uls¬
ter warrior, but, happening to receive a fracture
of the skull, at the battle of Magh Rath, fought A.
D. 634, he was carried to be cured, to the house of
Bricin of Tuaim Drecain, where there were three
schools, namely, a Literary (or Classical) school, a
Fenechas, or Law School, and a school of Poetry.
And, whilst there, and listening to the instructions
given to the pupils, and the subtle discussions of the
schools, his memory, which, before was not very
good, became clear and retentive, so that whatever
he heard in the day (it is recorded) he remembered
at night, and thus, he finally came to be a master
in the arts of the three schools, reducing what he
