his two wives to the Óenach of Tailltiu[1] and the chaste and holy Ciaran restored the lost hair of one of them. “Plerique illorum quot volebant uxores habebant,” says Benedict; “the wife on the neck of the chief wife” was lawful bigamy in the Irish laws, and the marriage relations of King Brian Boroimhe, a veritable pillar of the Faith, left much to be amended.
I touch on the Ancient Laws[2] with the utmost diffidence. No critical text of these most obscure documents has been prepared, and the translations are recognized as often doubtful and sometimes incorrect. Howbeit—though we are told St. Patrick and other Christian clerics expurgated them—we find statements apparently allowing connections for a year like the “Telltown marriages.” A woman when put away was entitled to a share of what she had made; if repudiated at Belltaine, to two-thirds of a ninth part, if at Samhain to one-third of an eighty-first part. She could claim a sack of the corn and bacon she had prepared “for every month she was with her mate to the end of the year, i.e. the next Belltaine day—for this is mostly the time for which they make their separate connection.” The Book of Aicill mentions an agreement “to remain together from Belltaine to Belltaine.” Uisnech was like Tailltiu, “marriages were broken off and new ties formed, judgements given and laws amended”;[3] in fact, if the Church failed to ward the sacramental sanctity of marriage, the old Irish Law and public opinion gave it little, if any, help.
Even so late as 1335[4] Pope Benedict III. denounced certain persons in Ireland “acting according to the rites and sects of gentiles and pagans.” In the face of all this testimony it seems impossible to doubt that, down to times well remembered by the peasantry, Telltown was a
