It will be readily understood that throughout this terrible period of history anything like a peaceful cultivation of the soil or a regular election to the office of chief was out of the question.  It was quite an ordinary thing for a chief to obtain his position by murdering his predecessor.  The annalists give us a long list of Kings of Ireland dating from before the Christian era until the arrival of the Normans.  Of course the word “king” can mean little more than “prominent chief,” for no one man ever had real authority over the whole of the distracted land.  Even of these prominent chiefs, however, according to the annalists, very few died natural deaths.  Some fell in battle, others were assassinated; but the most common fate for a monarch was to be “slain by his successor.”  If this was true of the most powerful men in the country, to speak of the office of chief as elective is really absurd.  But more than this:  there is no evidence that the “tribal system,” in the sense of all the tribe being related by blood and all owning their lands in common, ever existed in Ireland even in theory.  At the earliest date of which we possess any distinct information on the subject, wealth, representing physical force, had become the acknowledged basis of political power and private right; and the richer members of the community were rapidly reducing the poorer freemen—­many of whom were the descendants of an earlier race or of conquered tribes—­to a state of serfdom.  The system (if such a word can be applied at all) was in fact a bad form of feudalism without its advantages.  There was no central overlord (like those in other countries who gradually developed into the sovereigns of mediaeval kingdoms and thus became able to enforce peace and progress), each petty chief being independent; and on the other hand the dues payable by the retainers were not fixed by law or custom.  We must probably reject the suggested derivation of the word “feodal” from the Celtic “Fiudir”; but if so, it is curious that two words accidentally resembling each other conveyed ideas so closely alike; for a Celtic “Fiudir” was practically a tenant at the will of the lord; and it must be admitted that the word “vassal” is of Celtic origin.  Charters which date from before the Norman invasion show that the land was regarded as the private property of the chiefs; frequently the wretched occupiers, instead of paying fixed rents, were liable to unlimited exactions, one of them being the right of the lord to “coigne and livery”—­that is, to quarter himself and his retainers as long as he pleased on any occupier who possessed a few cows (which were the only form of wealth in those days of universal poverty); in some cases, however, land was let for a term of years, on a fixed payment of cattle.