Early Irish Marriage Law

Early Irish Brehon Law, so-called because it was administered by Brehons (from Old Irish breithem ("judge"), was more interested in proper conduct for social concord rather than punishment for wrongdoing. It was a progressive system that recognized equality in many ways for women not found in other parts of Europe until centuries later.

The approach to marriage was very flexible—something that alarmed the Roman Church very much, which is why they encouraged the Anglo-Norman Invasion in the late 12th century. Several forms of union were recognized as legitimate between a man and a woman.

There were three types of marriage based on property: whether the husband, or the wife, or both equally brought assets to the marriage. Wives could keep control of their property; it did not become their husband's property. A woman could also help to keep property in the family by marrying a cousin, a level of consanguinity that the Roman Church really didn't like to see.

Polygamy (but not polyandry) was also a legitimate form of marriage. The first/principal wife had some interesting advantage in a polygamous family: not only could she simply divorce the husband if she did not like his choice of an additional wife, but she had a three-day period on the arrival of a new wife when she was allowed to beat the new woman (so long as she did not leave a mark, of course!), and the new wife was allowed to scratch back and pull hair.

A man could also have concubines, whose status in the household was much lower than any wives—but it was still a legal status. Marriages in Brehon Law did not require church involvement (although no doubt when Richard de Clare married Diarmait's daughter Aoife he used a Roman ceremony, as in the illustration above, a detail of "The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife" by Daniel Maclise, c.1854).

Women could even initiate divorce for several reasons:

• Husband too fat for sex.
• Husband hit her hard enough to leave a mark.
• Husband boasted about their sex life in public.

The Gaelic approach to male-female unions was clearly quite different. Rulers' authority and their succession was also quite different, but that's for tomorrow.