abuses and vested nuisances. The ancient ethics of Ireland, though the natives were free from the more revolting forms of vice, were very lax as to what the Church taught as to affinity and the sanctity of marriage.[1] Despite all bowdlerizing by late clerics, connections of parents and children, and brother and sisters, abound in the early tales.[2] Let it suffice to refer to the tales of Fiacha Fermara, son of Oengus of Tara (like Guortighern in Britain); to Cairbre Musc and his sister or daughter Duben; to Conchobar and his sister Ness; to Lug and Daire, children of Finn; to Clothra, who married her three brothers in succession; to Mac Lugach and Bresal, son of Bodibad; nay more, if the Life of St. Ciaran be true in its statement, to St. Senan’s mother’s marriage with two brothers—she being a Christian. This confirms Caesar’s and Strabo’s allegations (so bitterly resented by old school Irish antiquaries) and those of Jerome and Benedict, “cognatas suas germanas habere solebant sibi uxores,”[3] and indeed to some degree that of Giraldus, “non incestus vitant.” In fact, in certain religions these marriages were sacrosanct, and, where the father and his sons were regarded as not akin to the daughters and sisters, they were fully permissible. Much more was this true of mere irregularity in the forms of marriage, separation, divorce and even polygamy. Diarmuid, a nominally Christian High King, about A.D. 550, brought
- ↑ Yet immoral women were to be burned, Anc. Laws, v. p. 144, see also Encyc. Relig. v. p. 456.
- ↑ See for these cases—Fiacha, Irische Texte, iii. p. 332; Cairbre Musc, Silva Gad. ii. p. 535; Children of Finn, Ir. Texte, iii. p. 277; Cathaoir Mór, B. of Leinster, f. 23, Leab na g Ceart, p. 199; Mac Lugach, Ir. Texte, iii. p. 227; Cormac, ibid. p. 424, n; Clothra, Keating, ii. p. 223; Ness, Rev. Celt. xvi. p. 149, Keating, ii. p. 215; Bresal, Metr. Dind S. x. p. 45; Senan’s Mother, “Lives of the Saints, Book of Lismore,” p. 275; Caesar, D.B.G. V. xiv.; Strabo, ed. Didot. 167, xix. Duben (in various stages of the legend) is apparently mother, sister, daughter and (when the bowdlerizer triumphed) sun of Cairbre!
- ↑ See Prof. Ridgeway, Brit. Acad. 1905, p. 136, citing Benedict, i. p. 28. See also Giraldus, v. p. 138.
