a royal fine specially educated and trained, a ri-cuighidh (ree coo-ee-hee) supreme over five ri-mor-tuathas—­roughly, a fourth of Ireland.  These, with their respective principal supporters, elected the ard-ri—­“supreme king”, of Ireland, who for ages held his court and national assemblies at Tara and enjoyed the kingdom of Meath for his mensal land.  Usually the election was not direct to the kingship, but to the position of tanaiste—­“second” (in authority), heir-apparent to the kingship.  This was also the rule in the learned professions and “noble” arts, which were similarly endowed with free land.  The most competent among those specially trained, whether son or outsider, should succeed to the position and land.  All such land was legally indivisible and inalienable and descended in its entirety to the successor, who might, or might not, be a relative of the occupant.  The beneficiaries were, however, free to retain any land that belonged to them as private individuals.

Membership of the clan was an essential qualification for every position; but occasionally two clans amalgamated, or a small fine, or desirable individual, was co-opted into the clan—­in other words, naturalized.  The rules of kinship determined eineachlann (ain-yach-long)—­“honor value”, the assessed value of status, with its correlative rights, obligations, and liabilities in connection with all matters civil and criminal; largely supplied the place of contract; endowed members of the clan with birthrights; and bound them into a compact social, political, and mutual insurance copartnership, self-controlled and self-reliant. Eineachlann rested on the two-fold basis of kinship and property, expanding as a clansman by acquisition of property and effluxion of time progressed upward from one grade to another; diminishing if he sank; vanishing if for crime he was expelled from the clan.

FOSTERAGE.  To our minds, one of the most curious customs prevalent among the ancient Irish was that of iarrad, called also altar = “fosterage”—­curious in itself and in the fact that in all the abundance of law and literature relating to it no logically valid reason is given why wealthy parents normally put out their children, from one year old to fifteen in the case of a daughter and to seventeen in the case of a son, to be reared in another family, while perhaps receiving and rearing children of other parents sent to them.  As modern life does not comprise either the custom or a reason for it, we may assume that fosterage was a consequence of the clan system, and that its practice strengthened the ties of kinship and sympathy.  This conjecture is corroborated by the numerous instances in history and in story of fosterage affection proving, when tested, stronger than the natural affection of relatives by birth.  What is more, long after the dissolution of the clans, fosterage has continued stealthily in certain districts in which the old race of chiefs and clansmen contrived to cling together to the old sod; and the affection generated by it has been demonstrated, down to the middle of the nineteenth century.  The present writer has heard it spoken of lovingly, in half-Irish, by simple old people, whom to question would be cruel and irreverent.