Political and Social Grades
Above : One Of Irish Clan Family Logo
The political organisation was based upon groups of various sizes from the family upwards. The family was the group consisting of the living parents and all their descendants. The fine* was a group related by blood within certain recognised degrees. The sept * was a larger group descended from common parents long since dead. All the members of a sept were nearly related, and in later times bore the same surname. The clan * or house was still larger. Clann means children, and the word therefore implied descent from one ancestor. The tribe * was made up of several septs or clans, and usually claimed, like the subordinate groups, to be descended from a common ancestor. The entire basis, therefore, was kinship. But as strangers were often adopted into all the groups, there was much admixture ; and the theory of common descent became in great measure a fiction except in the leading families.
Septs, clans, and tribes were governed by chiefs : the chief -of a tribe claimed allegiance from the chiefs of the several clans or septs composing the tribe, and received tribute from them. If the tuath, or territory occupied by the tribe, was sufficiently extensive the ruling “fiaith” was a Ri (ree) or king. There were 184 tuaths in all Ireland, but all had not ” kings.”
The king or chief was always elected from members of one ” fine “: but the succession was not hereditary in our sense of the word ; it was elective with the above limitation of being confined to one ” fine,” the freemen being the electors. Any freeborn member of the ” fine ” was eligible : the tanist might be brother, son, nephew, cousin, etc., of the chief. That member was chosen who was considered best able to lead in war, and govern in peace, and he should be free from all personal deformities or blemishes.
As the ” fine ” was the basis of succession, so the tuath f was the basis of political organisation. Sometimes three or four tuaths were grouped into a mdr-tuatha under the ” king of the m6r tuath.” In each state, therefore, the ri or king had under him the kings of the m6r-tuatha and tuatha. An under king was called an ur-ri, and such subordinate chiefs in later times were called urriaghs by the English. The title ” Ri,” therefore, was one borne by numerous chiefs whose power and influence varied considerably.
*Notb.—The fine (pro. finna) and the clan were the most important of these groups, the fine being the basis of succession (and also the economic unit), and the clan the unit of political organisation, as pointed out later on in the text. The words ” sept,” ” clan ” and “tribe ” are used arbitrarily and with conflicting meanings by different authors. As clann indicates ” posterity ” the word is used to indicate, at one time, the original clan, or political unit of the period of the “Book of Rights”; and, at another time, the smaller family groups, with different surnames, into which, in course of time, it became divided. The words ” sept ” and ” tribe,” as used by Dr. Joyce, would respectively indicate— sept, the groups into which the political unit became divided ; tribe, the union of these groups as representing the original political ‘* clan ” or “tuath.”
More correctly the group clan which occupied it. “Tuath” means both a group 0/ kindred and the land they occupied.
With the object of avoiding the evils of a disputed succession, the person to succeed a king or chief was often elected by the tribe during the lifetime of the king or chief himself; when elected he was called the tanist. The person who was generally looked upon as the king’s successor, whether actually elected tanist or not—the heir apparent—was commonly called the roydamna.
