NON-CITIZENS.  From what precedes it will be understood that there were in ancient Ireland from prehistoric times people not comprised in the clan organization, and therefore not enjoying its rights and advantages or entitled to any of its land, some of whom were otherwise free within certain areas, while some were serfs and some slaves.  Those outsiders are conjectured to have originated in the earlier colonists subdued by the Milesians and reduced to an inferior condition.  But the distinction did not wholly follow racial lines.  Persons of pre-Milesian race are known to have risen to eminence, while Milesians are known to have sunk, from crime or other causes, to the lowest rank of the unfree.  Here and there a daer-tuath = “bond community”, of an earlier race held together down to the Middle Ages in districts in which conquest had left them and to which they were restricted.  Beyond that restriction, exclusion from the clan and its power, some peculiarities of dialect, dress, and manners, and a tradition of inferiority such as still exists in certain parishes, they were not molested, provided they paid tribute, which may have been heavy.

There were also bothachs = cottiers, and sen-cleithes = old adherents of a flaith, accustomed to serve him and obtain benefits from him.  If they had resided in the territory for three generations, and been industrious, thrifty, and orderly, on a few of them joining their property together to the number of one hundred head of cattle, they could emancipate themselves by appointing a flaithfine and getting admitted to the clan.  Till this was done, they could neither sue nor defend nor inherit, and the flaith was answerable for their conduct.

There being no prisons or convict settlements, any person of whatever race convicted of grave crime, or of cowardice on the field of battle, and unable to pay the fines imposed, captives taken in foreign wars, fugitives from other clans, and tramps, fell into the lowest ranks of the fuidre—­“serfs.”  It was as a captive that Saint Patrick was brought in his youth to Ireland.  The law allowed, rather than entitled, a flaith to keep unfree people for servile occupations and the performance of unskilled labor for the public benefit.  In reality they worked for his personal profit, oftentimes at the expense of the clan.  They lived on his land, and he was responsible for their conduct.  By analogy, the distinctions saer and daer were recognized among them, according to origin, character, and means.  Where these elements continued to be favorable for three generations, progress upward was made; and ultimately a number of them could club together, appoint a flaithfine, and apply to be admitted to the clan.

A mog was a slave in the strict sense, usually purchased as such from abroad, and legally and socially lower than the lowest fuidir.  Giraldus Cambrensis, writing towards the close of the twelfth century, tells us that English parents then frequently sold their surplus children and other persons to the Irish as slaves.  The Church repeatedly intervened for the release of captives and mitigation of their condition.  The whole institution of slavery was strongly condemned as un-Christian by the Synod held in Armagh in 1171.