professions and "noble" arts, which were similarly endowed with free
land. The most competent among those specially trained, whether son
or outsider, should succeed to the position and land. All such land
was legally indivisible and inalienable and descended in its entirety
to the successor, who might, or might not, be a relative of the
occupant. The beneficiaries were, however, free to retain any land
that belonged to them as private individuals.

Membership of the clan was an essential qualification for every
position; but occasionally two clans amalgamated, or a small _fine_,
or desirable individual, was co-opted into the clan--in other words,
naturalized. The rules of kinship determined _eineachlann_
(ain-yach-long)--"honor value", the assessed value of status, with
its correlative rights, obligations, and liabilities in connection
with all matters civil and criminal; largely supplied the place of
contract; endowed members of the clan with birthrights; and bound
them into a compact social, political, and mutual insurance
copartnership, self-controlled and self-reliant. _Eineachlann_ rested
on the two-fold basis of kinship and property, expanding as a
clansman by acquisition of property and effluxion of time progressed
upward from one grade to another; diminishing if he sank; vanishing
if for crime he was expelled from the clan.

FOSTERAGE. To our minds, one of the most curious customs prevalent
among the ancient Irish was that of _iarrad_, called also _altar_ =
"fosterage"--curious in itself and in the fact that in all the
abundance of law and literature relating to it no logically valid
reason is given why wealthy parents normally put out their children,
from one year old to fifteen in the case of a daughter and to
seventeen in the case of a son, to be reared in another family, while