egular courts and
judges existed in Ireland from prehistoric times. The Anglo-Irish word
"Brehon" is derived from the Gaelic word _Brethem_ (= judge).

The extant remains of these laws are manuscript transcripts from earlier
copies made on vellum from the 8th to the 13th century, now preserved
with other Gaelic manuscripts in Trinity College and the Royal Irish
Academy, Dublin, the British Museum, Oxford University, some private
collections and several libraries on the continent of Europe. The
largest and most important of these documents is the _Senchus Mor_ or
"Great Old Law Book." No copy of it now existing is complete, and some
portions are missing from all. What remains of it occupies the first,
second, and a portion of the third of the volumes produced by the Brehon
Law Commission, which was appointed in 1852.

In the _Annals of the Four Masters_ it is said: "The age of Christ 438,
the tenth year of King Laeghaire (Lairy), the _Senchus Mor_ and
_Feineachas_ of Ireland were purified and written." This entry has ample
historical corroboration. Of many separate treatises dealing with
special branches of the law, the _Book of Aicill_, composed of opinions
or placita of King Cormac Mac Art, otherwise Cormac ua Quim, Ard-Rig of
Erinn from A.D. 227 until 266, and Cennfaeladh the Learned, who lived in
the first part of the 7th century, is the most important.

The text and earlier commentaries are in the _Bearla Feini_--the most
archaic form of the Celtic or Gaelic language. From gradual changes in
the living tongue through a long expanse of time many words, phrases and
idioms in the _Bearla Feini_ became obsolete, and are so difficult to
translate that the official translations are to some extent confessedly
conjectural. In many cases only opening words of the original text
remain. Wherever the text is whole, it is curt, elliptical, and yet
rhythmical to a degree attainable only through long use. The rigorously
authentic character of these laws, relating to, and dealing with, the
actual realities of life, and with institutions and a state of society
nowhere else revealed to the same extent, the extreme antiquity both of
the provisions and of the language, and the meagreness of continental
material illustrative of the same things, endow them with exceptional
archaic, archaeological and philological interest.

In the earliest times all learned men, whether specially learned in law
or not, appear to have acted as judges.