Early Irish law

Everything from the color of clothes you're wearing, the mustaches, the hair, playing hurling, all the usual sort of stuff.

There's also direction that English common law must be used and not Brehon law.

That clearly isn't working very well because we've got the development of what we see as March law throughout the medieval period.

I would argue it continues to an extent in the early modern period.

The contrast between these practices created tension when Norman rule met Celtic traditions.

Irish Brehon Law formalized gavelkind, dividing estates equally among sons.

Normans dubbed it gavelkind because of its similarity to Jute customs in Kent.

This equal split prevented large estates from concentrating power, spreading land among families.

Now, Allil responds, so she finishes off her spiel by saying, you are a man dependent on a woman's marriage portion.

And this refers to that category in the nine types of union recognized in early Irish law, where there are three different categories of how partners can bring property into a formal marriage.

There is the man on woman's property, which is what method is referring to, where the woman actually contributes the majority of the wealth to the relationship.

There is the woman on man's contribution, where it is the opposite.

Staking a claim on your kinship to your mother is going to be much weaker, and it could be even seen as somewhat emasculating that Owl is relying on this particular claim.

It's also unrealistic that this would...

the situation would crop up in terms of Medivh's claim to Connacht, because she essentially has the right to the land of Connacht, but that is something that doesn't make sense either, because there are early Irish laws, which we've already discussed, which restrict the amount of land that a woman can inherit.

So there's something very incorrect, very imperceptible, going on here where the woman is being given much more power in this particular arrangement than is usual even if medivh's claim is false and she is not the one who's contributed the majority to this particular relationship Alil has still undermined himself by claiming that his right to kingship is based on his mother.