of law and reveals best the customs, habits, and character of the people.  A claimant in a civil case might either summon his debtor before a brehon, get a judgment, and seize the amount adjudged, or, by distraining first at his own risk, force the defendant either to pay or stop the seizure by submitting the matter in dispute to trial before a brehon, whom he then could choose.  There was no officer corresponding to a sheriff to distrain and realize the amount adjudged; the person entitled had to do it himself, accompanied by a law-agent and witnesses, after, in “distress with time”, elaborate notices at intervals of time sufficient to allow the defendant to consider his position and find means of satisfying the claim if he could.  In a proper case his hands were strengthened by very explicit provisions of the law.  “If a man who is sued evades justice, knowing the debt to be due of him, double the debt is payable by him.”  In urgent cases “immediate distress” was allowed.  In either case the property seized—­usually cattle—­was not taken to the plaintiff’s home, but put into a pound, and by similar easy stages became his property to the amount of the debt.  The costs were paid out of what remained, and any ultimate remainder was returned.  On a fuidir (foodyir) = serf or other unfree person resident in the territory incurring liability to a clansman, the latter might proceed against the flaith on whose land the defendant lived, or might seize immediately any property the defendant owned, and if he owned none, might seize him and make him work off the debt in slavery.

Seizure of property of a person of higher rank than the plaintiff had to be preceded by troscead (truscah) = fasting upon him.  This consisted in waiting at the door of the defendant’s residence without food until the debt was paid or a pledge given.  The laws contained no process more strongly enforced than this.  A defendant who allowed a plaintiff properly fasting to die of hunger was held by law and by public opinion guilty of murder, and completely lost his eineachlann.  Both text and commentary declare that whoever refuses to cede a just demand when fasted upon shall pay double that amount.  If the faster, having accepted a pledge, did not in due course receive satisfaction of his claim, he forthwith distrained, taking and keeping double the amount of the debt.  The law did not allow those whom it at first respected to trifle with justice.

Troscead is believed to have been of druidical origin, and it retained throughout, even in Christian times, a sort of supernatural significance.  Whoever disregarded it became an outcast and incurred risks and dangers too grave to be lightly faced.  Besides being a legal process, it was resorted to as a species of elaborate prayer, or curse,—­a kind of magic for achieving some difficult purpose.  This mysterious character enhanced its value in a legal system deficient in executive power.