Download or read book Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. 4 written by Commissioners for Publishing the Law and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-10-21 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. 4: And Certain Other Selected Brehon Law Tracts The Brehon Law Tracts contained in this volume have been selected by the Editors as specially illustrating the land laws of the early Irish, and the constitution of the Celtic family and tribe. Upon the former of these subjects it is not to be antici pated that we should find in any work, composed by a lawyer of the Brehon school, a series of definite rules systematically arranged; or even an attempt to lay down the general principles upon which, in any class of cases, the judge or arbitrator proceeded. The idea of law in its technical sense was wholly foreign to the ancient lawyers. They dealt not with laws, but customs; which, of unknown origin, handed down from remote antiquity, often obscure, and frequently misconceived, influenced the public Opinion of each tribal community as to what it was right should be done in each particular case. The Brehons were gradually approaching the idea of general legal propositions by an induction from numerous and distinct cases which had been decided in accordance with pre-existing customs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.