ere invalid:
(1) a servant without his master's authority; (2) a monk without
authority from his abbot or manager of temporalities; (3) a son subject
to his father without the father's authority; (4) an infant, lunatic, or
"one who had not the full vigilance of reason"; (5) a wife in relation
to her husband's property without his authority. She was free to hold
and deal with property of her own and bind it by contract. If a son
living with his father entered into a contract with his father's
knowledge, the father was held to have ratified the contract unless he
promptly repudiated it. "One is held to adopt what he does not repudiate
after knowledge, having the power." Contract of sale or barter with
warranty could be dissolved for fraud, provided action was taken within
a limited time after the fraud had become known. Treaties and occasional
very important contracts were made "blood-covenants" and inviolable by
drawing a drop of blood from the little finger of each of the
contracting parties, blending this with water, and both drinking the
mixture out of the same cup. The forms of legal evidence were pledges,
documents, witnesses and oaths. In cases of special importance the
pledges were human beings, "hostage sureties." These were treated as in
their own homes according to the rank to which they belonged, and were
discharged on the performance of the contract. If the contract was
broken, they became prisoners and might be fettered or made to work as
slaves until the obligation was satisfied. Authentic documents were
considered good evidence. A witness was in all cases important, and in
some essential to the validity of a contract. His status affected the
force of the contract as well as the value of his evidence; and the laws
appear to imply that by becoming a witness, a man incurred liabilities
as a surety. The pre-Christian oath might be by one or more of the
elements, powers or phenomena of nature, as the sun, moon, water, night,
day, sea, land. The Christian oath might be on a copy of the Gospels, a
saint's crozier, relic or other holy thing.

These laws recognized crime, but in the same calm and deliberate way in
which they recognized contract and other things seriously affecting the
people. Although we find in the poems of Dubhthach, written in the 5th
century and prefixed to the _Senchus Mor_, the sentences, "Let every one
die who kills a human being," and "Every living person that inflicts
death shall suffer de