Senchus Mor

Both in the Senchus Mor and in the Book of Aicill the express statement of the law is described as ‘casting a thread of poetry’ about it, and the traditional authors of the Senchus Mor are said to have exhibited ‘all the judgment and poetry of the men of Erin.

The volumes officially translated and published contain the two largest of these tracts, the Senchus Mor, or Great Book of the Ancient Law, and the Book of Aicill.

The Senchus Mor, the Great Book of the Ancient Law, was doubtless a most precious possession of the law-school or family to which it belonged;

The subject discussed in the great Code, the Senchus Mor, next after Distress is the law of ‘Hostage-securities,’ and it may certainly be asserted that this must have been an important branch of law amid a community perpetually belligerent like the ancient Irish.