Lectures on the Early History of Institutions

cumstances it is not wonderful that the Brehon law, growing together without legislation upon an original body of Aryan custom, and formed beyond the limit of that cloud of Roman juridical ideas which for many centuries overspread the whole Continent, and even at its extremity extended to England, should present some very strong analogies to another set of derivative Aryan usages, the Hindoo law, which was similarly developed. The curious and perplexing problems which such a mode of growth suggests have to grappled with by the student of either system.

The ancient laws of Ireland have come down to us as an assemblage of law-tracts, each treating of some one subject or of a group of subjects. The volumes officially translated and published contain the two largest of these tracts, the Senchus Mor, or Great Book of the Ancient Law, and the Book of Aicill. While the comparison of the Senchus Mor and of the Book of Aicill with other extant bodies of archaic rules leaves no doubt of the great antiquity of mu