In general, the oldest textual sources for Celtic laws, which give us at least a very general idea of actual practice, date back to the late Iron Age, about the last two centuries BC and the first century AD. Kinship undoubtedly played a very important role in Celtic societies at the end of prehistory. The importance that ancestry had for the late prehistoric Celts is emphasized by several classical authors,[16] and seems to be confirmed – at least for some regions, at certain periods – also in archaeology by the effort for burials. [17] The structure of Celtic kinship groups can be reconstructed to some extent,[18] but few internal kinship relationships will have been formalized in a way that could be considered law. However, there are a number of important legal principles that can be reconstructed that relate to kinship or external kinship relationships. There is relatively strong evidence of a common requirement for loved ones to support and help each other, both in everyday life and in litigation. This seems obvious from historical sources[19], and would correspond well to what we find in the Irish and Welsh laws of the early Middle Ages. [20] I would like to explain the question of “actors could not get married” because it is really very interesting. Satire was respected in ancient Ireland. It was believed that he had great power, enough to physically mutilate the subject on which jokes were made. Satirists could bring down kings with witty insult. That was actually their original function.
If the king did not do the right thing for his people, a bard would have to write a poem so devastating that he lifted ropes on the king`s skin to move him (it was illegal for an “unclean king” to rule). Unjustified satire was considered a form of attack. So what comes down to this is that the ancient Celts are like this: “These people are too dangerous to reproduce. DO NOT ENTRUST THEM WITH CHILDREN. NEVER. Before Christianity prevailed in Ireland, the country was very liberal in its view of sex and marriage, with everything that was governed by the Brehon Act: the ancient laws of Ireland. It is likely that in early Celtic laws there were other elements that covered various issues of kinship relationships, for example, adoption, expulsion of members of antisocial kinship, and inheritance rules in the event that an entire lineage was hereditary, but there is too little information available on this subject from late prehistory to allow more of a generalization of similarities in these areas. as found in Irish and Welsh law of the early Middle Ages. [31] Under these laws, a man could buy a woman; hence it would follow that what a man could buy, he could also sell. The English laws of Æthelbirht and Ine clearly provide for the purchase of a woman. Irish laws have much more to say about kidnapping than about buying wives. The laws recognized three relationships between men and women.
In the first of them was “a first legitimate woman”, in the second “a first legal woman of Adaltrach”, in the third “a woman of Adaltrach of abduction”. All were legal relationships and could only be dissolved by the will of both parties or by legal proceedings. These relationships are not defined; but I believe that the first was the only one that had religious sanction, and that the second and third were only civil relations, the third being clearly astounding and granting virtually no rights per se. A number of these legal principles, most likely prevalent in early Celtic laws, can reasonably be reconstructed. They mainly focus on kinship and contractual relationships, although we also have some ideas about criminal law and legal proceedings. For all this, we also find somewhat similar principles in Roman and/ or Germanic laws and, in most cases, in other Indo-European laws, making it very likely that these reconstructions are approximately accurate, even if they are not detailed. Since many, if not most, of them come with internal terminology related to Celtic, it is unlikely that these are actually late loans, for example.