significance. Whoever disregarded it became an outcast and incurred
risks and dangers too grave to be lightly faced. Besides being a
legal process, it was resorted to as a species of elaborate prayer,
or curse,--a kind of magic for achieving some difficult purpose. This
mysterious character enhanced its value in a legal system deficient
in executive power.

NON-CITIZENS. From what precedes it will be understood that there
were in ancient Ireland from prehistoric times people not comprised
in the clan organization, and therefore not enjoying its rights and
advantages or entitled to any of its land, some of whom were
otherwise free within certain areas, while some were serfs and some
slaves. Those outsiders are conjectured to have originated in the
earlier colonists subdued by the Milesians and reduced to an inferior
condition. But the distinction did not wholly follow racial lines.
Persons of pre-Milesian race are known to have risen to eminence,
while Milesians are known to have sunk, from crime or other causes,
to the lowest rank of the unfree. Here and there a _daer-tuath_ =
"bond community", of an earlier race held together down to the Middle
Ages in districts in which conquest had left them and to which they
were restricted. Beyond that restriction, exclusion from the clan and
its power, some peculiarities of dialect, dress, and manners, and a
tradition of inferiority such as still exists in certain parishes,
they were not molested, provided they paid tribute, which may have
been heavy.

There were also _bothachs_ = cottiers, and _sen-cleithes_ = old
adherents of a _flaith_, accustomed to serve him and obtain benefits
from him. If they had resided in the territory for three generations,
and been industrious, thrifty, and orderly, on a few of them joining