Jo Kerrigan

This is a perfect introduction to the unique law system that the Irish had evolved over millenia for governing themselves before the British swept through, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and began the process of trying to destroy a culture and absorb the people. The essence of Brehon Law is this: reparation over retribution. A starving person who stole bread would not be punished as would a perfectly well-fed person and might not even be fined or made to work off the deed. In England (and France and thus Les Miserables) until the 1820's you could receive the death penalty. Couples could decide, after a year, that the whole thing wasn't working out and split up. Whatever you had brought into the marriage would be taken out. If there was a child the father would support it but generally the woman went home to her family. If a husband bragged (or complained) publicly about relations with his wife that was grounds for divorce! And on and on. It was a system designed to calm but satisfy the anger of those who had been wronged and encourage close-knit groups not to get caught up in never-ending feuds. There was a recognized hierarchy (as well as the severity of the crime) that determined the degree of reparation a person was required to make -- to injure a brehon (judge) or the local chieftain would incur a greater fine (generally #'s of cows) than a farmer with his own property and on down the line. It's a fascinating system that we could benefit from examining. I think, in our huge ungainly culture where you are more likely to have a community of like-minded interests, far-ranging family etc, as opposed to living in a closely-knit and very interdependent community might make implementing many of the ideas difficult. Also (some of us anyway) in our effort to avoid overt hierarchical distinctions among people would make placing value on various crimes challenging -- or maybe not. But the main thing is the attitude piece, that people do bad things, harmful things and the best thing is to keep them close and make them work off whatever in an appropriate way -- not isolate them in prisons or hang or kill. But even Brehon law had a limit: If a person was deemed hopeless they would be put in a boat with no oars and taken out 'beyond the ninth wave' and left there. (In essence the 9th wave is the distance out to sea where the tidal currents would not bring the boat back to land.) The book is written very simply with lots of photographs, truly intended as an introduction.****… (altro)