It was, no doubt, owing chiefly to this defective weakness that a system of fines rather than punishments grew up, one which in later times caused much scandal to English legal writers.  In such a society crime in fact was hardly recognizable except in the form of an injury inflicted upon some person or persons.  An offence against the State there could not be, simply because there was no State to be offended.  Everything, from murder down to the smallest and most accidental injury, was compensated for by “erics” or fines.  The amount of these fines was decided upon by the Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number of imaginary rulings, descending into the most minute particulars, such as what fine was to be paid in the case of one person’s cat stealing milk from another person’s house, what fine in the case of one woman’s bees stinging another woman, a careful distinction being preserved in this case between the case in which the sting did or did not draw blood!  Even in the matter of fines it does not seem clear how the penalty was to be enforced where the person on whom it was inflicted refused to submit and where there was no one at hand to coerce him successfully.

As regards ownership of land early Irish law is very peculiar, and requires to be carefully studied.  Primogeniture, regarded by all English lawyers trained under the feudal system as the very basis of inheritance, was simply unknown.  Even in the case of the chieftain his rights belonged only to himself, and before his death a re-election took place, when some other of the same blood, not necessarily his eldest son, or even his son at all, but a brother, first cousin, uncle, or whoever stood highest in the estimation of the clan, was nominated as “Tanist” or successor, and received promises of support from the rest.

Elizabethan writers mention a stone which was placed upon a hill or mound having the shape of a foot cut on it, supposed to be that of the first chief or ancestor of the race, “upon which stone the Tanist placing his foot, took oath to maintain all ancient customs inviolably, and to give up the succession peaceably to his Tanist in due time.”

The object of securing a Tanist during the lifetime of the chief was to hinder its falling to a minor, or some one unfit to take up the chieftainship, and this continued to prevail for centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion, and was even adopted by many owners of English descent who had become “meere Irish,” as the phrase ran, or “degenerate English.”

“The childe being oftentimes left in nonage,” says Campion, “could never defend his patrimony, but by the time he grow to a competent age and have buried an uncle or two, he also taketh his turn,” a custom which, as he adds, “breedeth among them continual warres.”