named, and if the defendant did not possess it, the judgment was "a
blind nut." Crime against the State or community, such as wilful
disturbance of an assembly, was punished severely. These were the
only cases to which the law attached a sentence of death or other
corporal punishment. For nothing whatsoever between parties did the
law recognize any duty of revenge, retaliation, or the infliction of
personal punishment, but only the payment of compensation. Personal
punishment was regarded as the commission of a second crime on
account of a first. There was no duty to do this; but the right to do
it was tacitly recognized if a criminal resisted or evaded payment of
an adjudged compensation. Criminal were distinguished from civil
cases only by the moral element, the sufferer's right in all cases to
choose a brehon, the loss of _eineachlann_, partial or whole
according to the magnitude of the crime, the elements used in
calculating the amount of fine, and the technical terms employed.
_Dire_ (djeereh) was a general name for a fine, and there were
specific names for classes of fines. _Eric_ = reparation, redemption,
was the fine for killing a human being, the amount being affected by
the distinction between murder and manslaughter and by other
circumstances; but in no case was a violent death, however innocent,
allowed to pass without reparation being made. A fine was awarded out
of the property of the convict or of his _fine_ to the _fine_ of the
person slain, in the proportions in which they were entitled to
inherit his property, that being also according to their degrees of
kinship and the degrees in which they were really sufferers. This
gave every clan and every clansman, in addition to their moral
interest, a direct monetary interest in the prevention and
suppression of crime. Hence the whole public feeling of the country
was entirely in support of the law, the honor and interest of
community and individual being involved in its maintenance. The