tion to sacrifice sense to musical harmony. See K. Meyer, _A
Primer of Irish Metrics_ (Dublin,1909).

Law.

We can conclude this survey of medieval Irish literature by mentioning
briefly two departments of learning to which much attention was paid in
Ireland. These are law and medicine. The so-called Brehon Laws (q.v.)
are represented as having been codified and committed to writing in the
time of St Patrick. There is doubtless some grain of truth in this
statement, as a fillip may have been given to this codification by the
publication of the Theodosian Code, which was speedily followed by the
codes of the various Teutonic tribes. The Brehon Laws were no doubt
originally transmitted from teacher to pupil in the form of verse, and
traces of this are to be found in the texts which have been preserved.
But the Laws as we have them do not go back to the 5th century. In our
texts isolated phrases or portions of phrases are given with a
commentary, and this commentary is further explained by some later
commentators. Kuno Meyer has pointed out that in the commentary to one
text, _Crith Gablach_, there are linguistic forms which must go back to
the 8th century, and Arbois de Jubainville, who apart from Sir Henry
Maine is the only scholar who has dealt with the subject, has attempted
to prove from internal evidence that part of the oldest tract, the one
on _Athgabail_ or Seizure, cannot, in its present form, be later than
the close of the 6th century. Cormac's Glossary contains a number of
quotations from the commentary to _Senchus Mor_, which would therefore
seem to have been in existence about 900. The Irish Laws were
transcribed by O'Donovan and O'Curry, and have been published with a
faulty text and translation in five volumes by the government
commissioners originally appointed in 1852. A number of other law tracts
must have existed in early times, and several which have been preserved
are still unedited. Kuno Meyer has published the _Cain Adamnain_ or
Adamnan's Law from an Oxford MS. Adamnan succeeded in getting a law
passed which forbade women to go into battle. An interesting but
little-investigated text in prose and verse called _Leabhar na gCeart_
or Book of Rights was edited with an English translation by O'Donovan
(1847). It deals with the rights to tribute of the high-king and the
various provincial kings. The text of the Book of Rights is preserved in
YBL. and BB. In its present form it shows distinct traces