CLAN. The Goidelic word eland or clann (in Welsh, plant) signifies seed, and in a general sense children, descendants. In the latter sense it was used as one of many terms to designate groups of kindred in the tribal system of government which existed in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Through the latter country the word passed into the English language, first in the special sense of the Highland clan, afterwards as a general name for a tribe or group of kinsmen. The results of inquiries into the tenure of land in different countries and the ancient laws and institutions of Aryan nations, and the publication of various Celtic documents, particularly the ancient laws of Ireland and Wales, have thrown much light on the constitution of the clan system, and given to it a wider and more important interest than it had hitherto possessed.
Before the use of surnames and elaborate written gene alogies, a tribe in its definite sense was called a tuath, a word of wide affinities, from a root tu, to grow, to mul tiply, existing in all European languages. When the tribal system began to be broken up by conquest and by the rise of towns and of territorial government, the use of a common surname furnished a new bond for keeping up a connec tion between kindred. The head of a tribe or smaller group of kindred selected some ancestor and called himself his Ua, grandson, or as it has been anglicized , e.g., Ua Conchobair (O Conor), Ua Suilleabhain (0 Sullivan). All his kindred adopted the same name, the chief using no fore-name however. The usual mode of distinguishing a person before the introduction of surnames was to name his father and grandfather, e.g., Owen, son of Donal, son of Dermot, This naturally led some to form their surnames with Mac, son, instead of Ua, grandson, e.g., Mac Car- thai.gh, son of Carthach (Mac Carthy), Mac Ruaidhri, son of Rory (Macrory). Both methods have been followed in Ireland, but in Scotland Mac came to be exclusively used. The adoption of such genealogical surnames fostered the notion that all who bore the same surname were kinsmen, and hence the genealogical term clann, which properly means the descendants of some progenitor, gradually became synonymous with tuath, tribe. Like all purely genealogical terms, clann may be used in the limited sense of a particular tribe governed by a chief, or in that of many tribes claiming descent from a common ancestor. In the latter sense it was synonymous with sil, siol, seed, e.g., Siol Alpine, a great clan which included the smaller clans of the Macgregors, Grants, Mackinnons, Macnabs, Macphies, Macquarries, and Macaulays.
The clan system in the most archaic form, of which we have any definite information can be best studied in the Irish tuath, or tribe. This consisted of two classes : (1) tribesmen, and (2) a miscellaneous class of slaves, criminals, strangers, and their descendants. The first class included tribesmen by blood in the male line, including all illegiti mate children acknowledged by their fathers, and tribesmen by adoption or sons of tribeswomen by strangers, foster-sons, men who had done some signal ssrvice to the tribe, and lastly the descendants of the second class after a certain number of generations. Each tuath had a chief called a rig, king, a word cognate with the Gaulish rig-s or rix, the Latin rey-s or rex, and the Old Xorse rik-ir. The tribes men formed a number of communities, each of which, like the tribe itself, consisted of a head, ceann fine, his kinsmen, slaves, and other retainers. This was the fine, or sept. Each of these occupied a certain part of the tribe-land, the arable part being cultivated under a system of co-tillage, the pasture land co-grazed according to certain customs, and the wood, bog, and mountains forming the marchland of the sept being the unrestricted common land of the sept. The sept was in fact a village community like the Russian mir, or rather like the German gemeinde and Swiss almend, which Sir H. S. Maine, M. de Laveleye, and others have shown to have preceded in every European country the existing order of things as respects ownership of land.
What the sept was to the tribe, the homestead was to the sept. The head of a homestead was an aire, a repre sentative freeman capable of acting as a witness, com- purgator, and bail. These were very important functions, especially when it is borne in mind that the tribal home stead was the home of many of the kinsfolk of the head of the family as well as of his own children. The descent of property being according to a gavel-kind custom, it con stantly happened that when an aire died the share of his property which each member of his immediate family was entitled to receive was not sufficient to qualify him to be an aire. In this case the family did not divide the inheritance, but remained together as " a joint and undivided family," one of the members being elected chief of the family or household, and in this capacity enjoyed the rights and privileges of an aire. Sir H. S. Maine has directed attention to this kind of family as an important feature of the early institutions of all Aryan nations. Beside the "joint and undivided family" there was another kind of family which we might call " the joint family." This was a partnership composed of three or four members of a sept whose individual wealth was not sufficient to qualify each of them to be an aire, but whose joint wealth qualified one of the co-partners as head of the joint family to be one.
its cattle upon the tribe-land without restriction ; unequal increase of wealth and growth of population naturally led to its limitation, each head of a homestead being entitled to graze an amount of stock in proportion to his wealth, the size of his homestead, and his acquired position. The arable land was no doubt applotted annually at first; gradually, however, some of the richer families of the tribe succeeded in evading this exchange of allotments and converting part of the common land into an estate in sevralty. Septs were at first colonies of the tribe which settled on the march-land ; afterwards the conversion of part of the common land into an estate in sevralty enabled the family that acquired it to be come the parent of a new sept. The same process might, however, take place within a sept without dividing it ; in other words, several members of the sept might hold part of the land of the sept as separate estate. The possession of land in sevralty introduced an important distinction into the tribal system it created an aristocracy. An aire whose family held the same land for three generations was called a fiaith, or lord, of which rank there were several grades according to their wealth in land and chattels. The aires whose wealth consisted in cattle only were called bo-aires, or cov-aires, of whom there were also several grades, depending on their wealth in stock. When a 16-aire had twice the wealth of the lowest class of fiaith he might enclose part of the land adjoining his house as a lawn ; this was the first step towards his becoming a fiaith. The relations which subsisted between the faiths and the bo- aires formed the most curious part of the Celtic tribal system, and throw a flood of light on the origin of the feudal system. Every tribesman without exception owed ceilsinne to the rig, or chief, that is, he was bound to become his ceile, or vassal. This consisted in paying the rig a tribute in kind, for which the ceile was entitled to receive a proportionate amount of stock without having to give any bond for their return, giving him service, e.g., in building his dun, or stronghold, reaping his harvest, keeping his roads clean and in repair, killing wolves, and especially service in the field, and doing him homage three times
