"No man goes into the woman's assembly;
No woman into the assembly of the men;
No abduction here is heard of;
Nor repudiation of husbands, or of wives.
"Whoever transgresses the Law of the Kings,
Which Benen so accurately and permanently wrote,[1]
Cannot be spared upon family composition,
But he must die for his transgression.
"Here follow his great privileges,—
The rights and enjoyments of the fair.
Trumpets, harps, wide-mouthed horns,
Cusighs, timpanists, without fail;
Poets and groups of agile jugglers."
The poem goes on to enumerate the features of the great fair; the reading of poems, histories, etymologies, precepts; the annals of feasts and fairs; "The History of the Hill of Mighty Teamar" (Tara); the story of the noblest women; of courts, enchantments, conquests, kings; the
- ↑ The law of Benen is the famous Irish "Book of Kights" ("Leabhar na g-Ceart"), published by the Celtic Society, Dublin, in 1847. It gives an account of the rights of the monarchs of all Ireland, and the revenues payable to them by the kings of the several provinces, and of the stipends paid by the monarch to the provincial kings for their services, etc. This Benen, or Benean, was St. Benignus the disciple of St. Patrick, and his successor as Bishop of Ard Macha (Armagh), he resigned his bishopric in 465; died on the 9th of November, 408, and was buried in Armagh. It is probable that the laws and tributes mentioned in "The Book of Rights" were taken from records of great antiquity, and were digested and, perhaps, put into metre by St. Benignus.
