Above: Picture of St Colm Cille

The Dail was a body to which the ceile had recourse when treated unjustly by the flaith. If the ceile established thffl injustice, the flaith was summoned before a special court for judgment. At the Dail, too, dire and taxes were imposed , means were devised for the maintenance of highways; and the affairs of the clann generally, including questions of peace and war, regulated. It was composed exclusively of the Aires, and like the Tocomrac was summoned by the Bruighfhear and held in his house.
The Tocomrae differed little from the Dail, and seems to have been held on the eve of the election of king, the enacting of a new law, or some other occasion of importance. It was somewhat of the character of the conventions now held say, on the eve of a the election of king.    The Tocomrac of a tttath or morthuath could only enact or adopt ordinances in conformity with the nosa tuatha or territorial customs, that of a province or of all Ireland could enact Cana or general laws. Sometimes laws drafted at a Sabhaid and adopted at a Tocomrac were promulgated at the Aonach.
The Aonach was an ancient institution. Aonach Carman is said to have been instituted 580 years before the birth of Christ. " It continued to be held to the time of Cathaoir Mor, who bequeathed it to the Laoighse and the Fotharta " ; and was, indeed, celebrated by Donnchadh MacGiolla Padraig on assuming the sovereignty of Leinster in 1032. To mourn for kings and queens and to denounce aggression were among its objects ; it lasted from the Kalends to the sixth of August. It also embraced races ; athletic,
military and musical contests ; literature, law and the verification of the national records. Kings, princes and people assembled there, and fair women, the fame of whose beauty and accomplishments reached many lands. Provision on the most lavish scale was made for the entertainment of all classes. The story of the sources of amusement, instruction and edification, fitted into a crowded week, has a glamour surpassed by nothing of the kind in history. It had religious celebrations too, and the law of the assembly was transgressed on pain of death. Among its markets was that of " the foreign Greeks where gold and noble raiment were wont to be." Similarly, in the time of Donnchadh, son of Flann Siona, thousands of trading I-ochlannaigh are known to have attended the Aonach of Ros Cre. Other important Aonaigh, like Aonach Urmh-mumhan and Aonach Macha, were held elsewhere, and their sites are still commemorated not only in Ireland but in Scotland where on the festival of Colm Cille no less than ten lairs were held annually to commemorate him in different parts of Nairn, Inverness, Aberdeen, Forfar, Stirling and elsewhere.1 St. Fechin was similarly commemorated at Grange near Arbroath. Of all these gatherings the most historic is Aonach Tailtean, blessed by Patrick, say the Annals <»i I lster, often interrupted, and held for the last time, according to the Four Masters, in 1168. Founded primarily as an athletic carnival, it came to embrace weapon-shows and military reviews, and was utilised for the framing of military laws and regulations, the hearing of important appeals, the promulgation of general laws. It was also made to serve the purposes of a Synod. Colm Cille is said to have been excommunicated at a Synod held at Tailtean after the Battle of Cuildreimhne, but the decree was soon annulled. In 1008, by the counsel of the men of Ireland, Ferdomhnach abbot of Kells was elected successor of Colm Cille at Aonach Tailtean. About that period it was customary for the laity to interest themselves in the election of successors to Patrick and Colm Cille. A few examples must suffice. In 988 Dubhdalethe, comharb of Patrick, " assumed the successorship of Colm Cille with the approval of the men of Ireland and of Alba." In 1020 the Annals of Ulster record " Amhalghaidh in the successorship " of Patrick " by the will of the laity and clergy." In 1105, Ceallach, on the death of Domhnall at Duleek, " was instituted as comharb of Patrick by the choice of the men of Ireland." Two years later, when on a visitation of Munster according to the Annals of Ulster, " he received the orders of an archbishop by direction of the men of Ireland." In 1121, eight years before his death, he took the episcopacy of Dublin—on the death of its bishop—by the choice of the foreigners and the Gaedhil. For an interval at this juncture the succession to some of the highest ecclesiastical dignities in the land came to be regarded as hereditary, the reflex largely of a very low state of ecclesiastical discipline on the Continent.