Bríg Brethach, ‘Bríg of the Judgements’
Katharine Simms
My original invitation to address your association asked me to speak on or near Feb 1st at a social event to mark the feast of St. Brigid on a theme tied to law and women in some way. It immediately occurred to me that it would be singularly appropriate to the day and the occasion to talk about the judgements of Bríg or Brigit, not the Christian saint, indeed, but the shadowy mythical figure who underlies and influences her cult. One of the striking aspects of St Brigit is that she is the clearest example we have of a merging of the cult of a Christian saint with that of a pre-Christian Celtic goddess also worshipped in Gaul, under the guise of the Gaulish Minerva, and arguably linked to the Romano-British shrine of Sul at Bath or Aqua Sulis in England. In addition to the circumstantial evidence of her sacred oak and perpetual fire tended by nineteen virgins in Kildare, as recorded by Gerald of Wales in the twelfth-century, we have the explicit testimony of Bishop Cormac mac Cuilennáin of Cashel in his early tenth-century glossary, the Sanas Cormaic, where he speaks of:
'Brigit, that is, the poetess, daughter of the Dagda. This is Brigit the female seer or woman of insight, the goddess whom the poets used to worship, for her cult was very great and very splendid. It is for this reason that they call her the goddess of poets … and her sisters were called Brigit the woman of leechcraft and Brigit the woman of smithcraft, that is, goddesses, that is, three daughters of the Dagda are they.'[1]
Kim McCone has argued that ‘The names Bríg and Brigit were prone to interchangeability in early Irish sources’ both with reference to pagan mythology and the genealogies of saints. He adds ‘‘The Christian St Brigit’s cult or attributes may, then, be partly based upon those of the mythical female hospitaller whose name is preserved in a legal context as Bríg the briugu.’[2] The briugu or hospitaller in early Irish society was defined by his - or in this case her - possession of great herds of cattle and other livestock. As the richest non-noble land-owner in the local kingdom or tuath the hospitaller was bound by custom to offer hospitality to travellers, both visiting dignitaries and wandering scholars, unemployed soldiers or beggars. Another mythical Bríg mentioned in the law tracts is ‘Bríg Ambue, Bríg the cowless, or the propertiless, ‘the female expert of the men of Ireland in wisdom and prudence’ as she is called in a version of the ‘pseudo-historical’ prologue to the Senchus Már, which cites as one of its sources ‘Bretha Brígi Ambue’ ‘the judgementsof Bríg the propertiless’ from which she derived a further nickname Bríg Brethach, Bríg of the judgements. Her epithet of ‘cowless’ or ‘propertiless’ serves to distinguish her from Bríg the hospitaller, who was associated with riches, livestock and hospitality, and to make her instead the patron of the wandering scholars or the warrior class.
The fact that Bríg Brethach is variously identified in the law tracts and the Ulster cycle as the wife or daughter of the equally mythical prehistoric judge Sencha mac Ailella, or as the wife of the Ulster hospitaller Blaí Briugu, or of the warrior Celtchar mac Uthechair, tends to confirm both her shadowy unhistoricity and the threefold functions of the underlying goddess, by associating her with learning, hospitality and warfare. It is possible to argue that the cult of her Christian reflex St Brigid of Kildare also bore traces of trifunctionalism in that she was associated with the legendary poet Dubthach moccu Lugair, to whom her brothers originally betrothed her, and with habits of lavish hospitality, and rites to ensure fertility performed on St Brigit’s Day, and with warfare in that she was credited with spreading a protecting cloak over the men of Leinster when they went into battle.
Professor Liam Breatnach, in his Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici, reports that he has searched in vain for a specific text or fragments of a text calledBretha Bríge Ambue ‘the judgements of Bríg the Propertiless’ and considers that it may never have existed formally but instead refers generally to a series of ‘judgements attributed to this mythical personage rather than to any particular text’.[3] The judgements themselves are concerned with adapting the general provisions of customary law to the particular needs of women. The fact that these deviations from the general rules are put into the mouths of a prestigious mythical female figure is meant to underline the view that these are not diminutions of women’s rights as opposed to men, but adaptations to their circumstances. St Adomnán in his Lex Innocentium of 697 A.D. had championed the cause of oppressed women and slaves. The ‘judgements of Bríg’ concern instead freeborn women from propertied families, the female counterparts of the land-owning Féni or free citizens who are the main focus of the Brehon laws. Both Robin Chapman Stacey and Thomas Charles-Edwards have suggested that when the law tracts cite immemorial precedents established by the pronouncements of mythical judges, this actually flags an innovation the Christian jurists of the late seventh or eighth century are introducing into the inherited corpus of Irish customary law.
The name of the male mythical judge Sencha mac Ailella, who is described as the husband or father of Bríg Brethach actually means a Seanchaidh, a historian or preserver of tradition, possibly derived from the words for ‘old witness’ perhaps originally reflecting a practice of consulting ‘the oldest inhabitant of the village’ to establish what the old custom was in particular instances, and more especially to testify to ancient land boundaries and genealogical ties to determine inheritance of land. The law-tract Din Techtugad concerning the right way to claim possession of inheritance tells us that this male judge Sencha mac Ailella pronounced that women should claim inheritance by the same process as men, and immediately his face broke out into green and purple blisters, a divine punishment for delivering a false judgement. Not until his wife or daughter Bríg Brethach delivered a corrective judgement that women should have a separate process of their own, did his blisters go away, proclaiming the truth of her alternative decision. This may be an indication that traditionally there was no separate rite, but that one had been recently developed to correct what was seen as an error or injustice.
The women’s rite for claiming possession of a disputed land inheritance followed the pattern of the men’s rite but was shorter, and simpler. The man’s rite involved giving notice of claim, by bringing a witness with him and crossing the boundary into the land over an ancestral grave leading two yoked horses, then if the occupant still resisted arbitration after ten days returning with four horses and letting them loose to graze the land, and after a further ten days, if the occupant was still obdurate bringing eight horses, entering the house, lighting a fire, stabling the horses and spending the night. The woman brings a female witness, and crosses the boundary in the first place with two sheep, and returns to let them graze after eight days and if the occupant still resists enters the house after a further eight days, lights the fire makes bread and bakes it and spends the night.
The modification of the ritual is fairer to women, in that they would have a greater problem getting their hands on eight horses and handling them, whereas sheep were normally under women’s care, since women would be employed in milking the ewes and making cheese, and in spinning, dyeing and weaving their wool. The shorter delays between the various stages of the claim reflect the fact that women stood to gain a shorter tenure. A man who successfully put in a claim to a share in the inheritance of family lands, would be entitled to pass on the estate to his children, whereas a woman could only inherit a life-interest in her family’s estates, after which they would revert to her nearest male kinsmen to prevent them from going out of the possession of her clan and into that of her husband’s.
The judgement of Bríg Brethach in relation to Din Techtugad, this rite of claiming possession of land, is cited in another tract, the Cethairslicht Athgabála, or four modes of Distraint, suggesting that she was first introduced into the legal corpus in relation to the very justifiable special treatment accorded to women’s process for claiming land, and then the principle of special exemptions or privileges for women was extended by analogy to other situations where women were allowed to obtain access to arbitration or a right to distrain the property of an opponent who refused arbitration with a shorter period of delay than that accorded to men.
The general principles behind the practice of distraining an opponent’s property when seeking justice or the return of stolen or borrowed goods was that a minimum of one day’s stay of execution, or warning to the opponent was given in really urgent cases, which included forcing a responsible guardian to remove a her child from a female lunatic, or the return of a watchdog, because it was necessary to guard the house. A three-day stay of execution was given for enforcing royal rights, for example against a landowner who failed to answer the king’s summons to a military hosting, or refused to pay royal tax, or neglected to clear the assembly-ground before the tribal gathering or óenach. A ten-day stay was suited to less urgent civil actions initiated by men. Within this framework women’s actions were allotted a two-day stay, between the very urgent and the very important actions in support of men’s claims. A man who claimed against a woman had to give 5 days notice in the case of a woman commoner and ten days notice to a noblewoman, whereas a woman need only give two days notice whatever the social rank or gender of her opponent. The legal commentary only justifies this favoured treatment for women by analogy with the judgement of Bríg Brethach in relation to the special women’s ritual for claiming inheritance of land, but there may be an objective logic, in that if the women’s preliminary warning went unheeded, she might have to seek armed assistance to enforce the distraint, where a man might be in a position to help himself. Besides this, the loans or thefts for which a woman was likely to claim recovery are largely considered to deal with objects of limited value, so that as a woman needed to give shorter notice when claiming possession of a usufruct for the term of her life, as opposed to a man who claimed permanent inheritance, so the limited value of her debts might require only limited stay of execution. The loans a woman might wish to recover are listed in the Old Irish main text of Cethairslicht Athgabála
Distress of two days for the price of the produce of the hand, for wages, for weaving, for the blessing of one woman on the work of another, for every material which is on the spindles, for the flax spinning stick, for the wool spinning stick, for the wool-bag, for the weaver’s reed, for all the implements of weaving, for the flax scotching stick, for the distaff, for the spool-stick, for the flyers of the spinningwheel, for the yarn, for the reel of the spinner, for the border, for the pattern of her handiwork, for the wallet with its contents, for the basket, for the leather scoop, for the rods, for the hoops, for the needle, for the ornamented thread, for the looking-glass which one woman borrows from another, for the black and white cat, for the lap-dog of a queen, for attending in the field, for supplying a weapon – for it is about the true right of women that the field of battle was first entered.
Two items in this list might require further explanation. One is the reference to ‘borders’. From references in the bardic poetry and in sagas, it seems that a chieftainess and her waiting women spent much of their time embroidering long ornamental strips of cloth with designs of birds and animals and interlace which were then sewn on to the hemlines, sleeves and necklines of the men’s tunics, decorating what was otherwise plain cloth. An embroideress might make her living sewing these borders and then find her customers reluctant to pay for her work. Hence she would give them two days warning before taking action. More significantly a woman heiress with a life-interest in her father’s estate was allowed to keep one half of it without owing any military service to the local king, but if she wished to hold the entire estate she had to accept the obligation to furnish an armed man with weapons and three days supply of food whenever the king issued a general summons to a hosting. Normally this armed man would be one of her own kinsmen. If this person did not turn out on her behalf, she would be liable to pay the fine. The king’s summons to war was issued with a three days delay, so it was very necessary that her claim on her kinsman’s services should be actionable with a two days delay, giving her a chance to sort out the dispute before she became liable for hosting-failure or meath slógad.
The tract on Claiming Possession and the tract on the Four Modes of Distraint are the two main sources of references to the judgements of Bríg Brethach, but there are scattered references elsewhere in the corpus. In a tract on responsibility for dogs that bite, we are told that Bríg the Propertiless was the first person to train a lap-dog. This may hark back to the list in Cethairslicht Athgabála of women’s claims for which a two day delay was appropriate, which included if you remember, a black and white cat and the lap-dog of a queen. Not only were lap-dogs considered to be exclusively the property of women, because then as now, men preferred larger more utilitarian breeds, but there was a superstition among the early Irish that a woman in labour should keep a lap-dog on her pillow, because dogs could see and frighten away invisible spirits of witches or vampires that might be hovering round to harm the new-born child.
Another fragmentary tract which cites Bríg as an authority is Tosach Bésgnai ‘the beginnings of Discipline’ which discusses the distribution of a woman’s inheritance. Normally speaking a woman only held a life-interest in family land if there were no sons, and could not pass on this property to her children. But this restriction applied only to her own kindred’s family lands and was intended to preserve the kin-group’s inheritance intact. Wealthy father’s might divide their landed estate among their sons, and leave their daughters moveable goods and any external lands they had recently acquired by purchase or mortage. Another way in which women who had brothers acquired lands was after their marriage, when a satisfied husband might settle ‘land of hand and thigh’ on his bride after the wedding-night. With appeal to the judgements of Bríg Brethach, it was suggested that even where there were sons of the marriage, the daughters might have a claim to their mother’s land of hand and thigh if she wished to leave it to them, because of course since this land came from her husband, leaving the girls a life-interest in it was not taking it out of the husband’s kindred. The judgements of Bríg Brethach were invoked because if the brothers in this case were unwilling to recognise their sisters’ claim on the mother’s ‘land of hand and thigh’ the sisters could implement the women’s rite of claiming possession as outlined in the Din Techtugad.
All the Old Irish law tracts which contain references to Bríg as a female judge form part of the major early eighth century compilation of 34 tracts known as the Senchas Már ‘The Great Tradition’. In contrast to the Bretha Nemed and Críth Gablach schools of Old Irish law which are associated with Munster, the Senchas Már was compiled in the north of Ireland, and drew many of its mythical precedents from the Ulster saga cycle. Within that cycle Sencha mac Ailella features as the orator and spokesman of Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Ulster. Although a learned man and counsellor to the king, he is not specifically described as a judge. So it may have been simply his name Sencha, historian or guardian of tradition that caused the jurists composing the Senchas Már to cite him as the ancient authority for their interpretation of customary law. Bríg Ambue was also a pre-existing prestigious female character in the Ulster cycle, though not always described as the wife or daughter of Sencha. It seems likely that she was first cited in the law-tracts in connection with Din Techtugadthe right method of claiming inheritance at a point when it dawned on the jurist author that women were not in point of fact claiming the same kind of inheritance as men, since they could only acquire a life-interest, and that therefore he should invent for them a variant of the traditional ritual. Since this variant was a recent invention, he felt the need to cite an age-old precedent, and who more suitable to correct Sencha’s mistake than his wise wife Bríg Ambue. So successful was this fable voicing the need to adapt men’s customs to women’s special needs that Bríg was invoked again in the Ceithirslicht Athgabála, the Four Modes of Distraint, giving women’s causes a stay of only two days explicitly following the analogy of the shorter stays for women’s claims in Din Techtugad with reference once again to the same fable about her correction of Sencha’s false judgement that lay at the centre of that tract. All the other tangential references to Bríg in the legal corpus can be linked to her appearance in these two major tracts, which tends to confirm Liam Breatnach’s conclusion that there never was a formal separate tract called The Judgements of Bríg. It also implies that both Sencha mac Ailella and Bríg the Propertiless or Cowless did not have a longstanding tradition as prehistoric judges in pagan times, but were pressed into service by jurists who were familiar with the tales of the Ulster cycle such as the Táin Bó Cuailgne, or Cattle-raid of Cooley in which these characters figured as influential courtiers in a time before the coming of Christianity to Ireland. However the mythical Bríg the female hospitaller, and Bríg the Cowless as they figure in the Ulster sagas seem clearly to relate to the tripartite goddess Brigit, the exalted one, the daughter of the Dagda or Good God, whose other name was Eochu Ollathair, the all-Father.