556
THE GREEN BAG
THE ANCIENT IRISH LAW OF TANISTRY BY JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN MILESIAN conquerers at some unknown period divided Ireland into five king doms, Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Meath. Historians have been unable to determine at what exact time the country was united under a single monarch. These kingdoms were again subdivided into separate principalities, inhabited by dis tinct septs and each ruled by its own chieftain. The election of the chieftains of these different septs was regulated by the law of tanistry, which had existed among the Irish from very ancient times. Legally denned, tanistry was a tenure of family lands by which the proprietor had only a life estate to which he was admitted by election. Tanistry limited the hereditary right to the family but not to the individual. The selection of the chieftains was confined wholly to those of noble birth, but there was not a member of any royal or noble family who might not become a candidate for the office of tanist or chieftain-elect. The custom was to elect the tanist or chieftainelect immediately after the accession of the chief, otherwise the love of offspring would probably have induced the chief to limit the right of succession to his immediate descendants, but under the system of tanistry described above such a thing was impossible. The primitive intention seems to have been that the inheritance should descend to the oldest or most worthy of the name of the deceased. This was in reality giving it to the strongest, and the practice of it often occasioned bloody feuds in families, for which reason it was abolished under James I. This system produced civil war and great misery. The chiefs looked with revengeful eyes on those who only waited for their death to attain the rank of princes; and the tanists or chieftains-elect very often conspired to accelerate the advent of their
own succession by open war or secret assassination. This heir or chieftain-elect was called "Tainiste," from the name of the ring finger, and as this finger by its place and length is next to the middle one, so that prince was next to the monarch in rank, dignity, and power. From this antiquarians give the name "tanistry" to the law governing the succession to the crown of Ireland. The particular regard to this finger is of high antiquity. It has been honored with the golden token and pledge of matrimony preferable to any other finger, not as Levinius Lemnius in his "Occult Miracles of Nature" tells us, because there is a nerve as some thought, but because a small artery runs from the heart to this finger, the motion of which in women may be per ceived by the touch of the index finger. This peculiar manner of succession accord ing to the law of tanistry is still in force among the Tuareg Arabs of the Sahara desert at the present day. The tanist was obliged to prove his origin by the registries of his family and the Psalter of Tara, which induced the Milesians to preserve the genealogies of their families with as much care and precision as the Hebrews. Besides his birth, the tanist should be a knight of the golden chain, called eques torquatus, from a chain of gold which was worn on the neck. The knight of the golden chain above described resembled the Equites torqitates of a later age, who wore a glas, or chain of gold, around their necks. These decorations were known as "numtorcs " when designed to encircle the necks, and "failghe" when worn as armlets or leg bangles. A very celebrated collar was the one mentioned in Irish annals as the "lodhain Morain, " which was so termed
