Bretha Crólige

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Bretha Crólige ("The decisions regarding bloodshed") is the title of an old Irish legal text that deals with the payment of fines for bloodshed. It is attributed to the healer Dian Cecht of Túatha Dé Danann and is handed down as the third part in the work of Senchas Már ("Great Tradition").

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Bretha Crólige lists the exact fine taxes that have to be paid for bleeding wounds. The unit of account used was the value of a slave ( cumal [ 'kuval ]), a calculation base common in the Celtic area - also for taxes, fines, reparations payments and other things .

Thus, for the wounding of a king ( rí [ ri: ]) or provincial king ( rí rurech [ 'ri' rur'eχ ]) - later also a bishop - there are fourteen, for persons of noble descent depending on their rank ( aire ard [ 'ar' e 'a: rd ] "high nobleman", aire déso / forgill / túise [ ' ar'e de: so / 'forgil' / 'tu: ʃe ] "nobleman", fer fothlai [ ' fer 'foθli ] "low nobleman “) Eleven and a half to seven, for a cattle-owning farmer or free man ( bóaire [ 'bo:' ar'e ]) three and for a non- free man ( betagh [ b'i: ataχ ]) two cumal . The druids ( druí [ dri: ]), poets ( fili [ 'fili ]) and other "people with skills" ( áes dána [ ois' da: na ]), which also included the scholars, were sometimes among the noble, sometimes counted only among the free men.

The class of the nobles ( grád flatha [ 'gra: δ'laθa ]), the free ( grád féne [ ' gra: δ'e: ne ]) and the unfree ( sen-chléithe [ 'ʃen'χle: ​​θe ]) differentiated. Another name for the classification is soír or sóer ("good-free") and doír or dóer ("bad-free").

A woman's wound was usually assessed according to her husband's social status. B. hostages, criminals, whores, vagrants, madmen, werewolves and "sharp-tongued virgins" generally excluded.

See also

literature

  • Helmut Birkhan : Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. 2nd, corrected and enlarged edition. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 .
  • Barry Cunliffe : The Celts and Their History. 7th edition, Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 2000.
  • Myles Dillon, Nora Kershaw Chadwick : The Celts. From the prehistory to the Norman invasion . Parkland-Verlag, Cologne 2004 (first 1966), ISBN 3-89340-058-3 (Kindlers Kulturgeschichte).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. P. 990.
  2. ↑ Jonathan Williams: The Field day anthology of Irish writing. Volume 4, NYU Press, 2002, ISBN 9780814799062 , p. 31 ff.