ABSTRACT
The principal sources used repeatedly by historians in the 19th and early 20th centuries are the multi-volumed editions of the old Irish law tracts edited and translated by Eugene O'Curry and John O'Donovan and published posthumously by other editors between 1864 and 1901. Scientific study of the Irish law tracts had to await the development of Celtic philology. The greatest departure from the system of male tutelage over women is found in the law tract called the Senchus Mor composed in the early 8th century and reflecting the teachings of a school of law operating in Northern Ireland. One of the more difficult problems in studying the Irish law of land ownership is the property of a family or kindred group. In all the oldest legal texts women have no legal capacity to act or own property in their own right.
