Mellbretha


Mellbretha is a fragmentarily preserved early Irish legal text on the law of sports. The surviving fragment deals with accidental injuries, and the liability they incur, in various sports. It gives the names of twenty-five sports, some quite obscure, but including such games as hurling and fidchell.

Manuscripts

A fragment of Mellbretha was discovered in 1968 by Anne and William O'Sullivan on a piece of scrap vellum used in the binding of Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1363. D. A. Binchy edited and translated this fragment, connecting it with some unattributed quotes in a legal commentary on liability for injuries caused by games, preserved in British Library, MS Egerton 88. Liam Breatnach disagrees with Binchy about which of these quotations belong to Mellbretha.

Contents

Mellbretha begins with an accessus ad auctores schema, giving a pseudo-historical account of the place, time, author, and cause of the text. Binchy's translation of this foreword is as follows:
Saint Patrick frequently features in accounts of the origin of Irish law texts, as a generator and redactor of early Irish law, putting it in agreement with Christian teaching. The story about the encounter between teams of boys in the time of Conn Cétchathach appears nowhere else in Irish literature. Binchy conjectured that it was "an echo of a lost saga". The jurist Bodainn is also unknown outside this text. The title Mellbretha is revealed by several lines which give etymological variations on the meaning of Mellbretha. Binchy was unable to find any reference to the text's name in early Irish literature, although it is mentioned in John Lynch's Cambrensis Eversus .
The preserved fragment of the Mellbretha deals with the liability for accidental injuries during games. In Irish law, an injured party could demand payment of medical expenses, food, and rent under certain circumstances. In delineating these circumstances, the Mellbretha divides games into three types: ruidilsi cluiche, for which there is no right to a fine or sick-maintenance after accidental injury; fianchluichi, for which there is a right to sick-maintenance; and colchluichi, about which the text is unclear, but presumably incurring a fine and sick-maintenance. This three-fold division is reproduced in the commentaries, but with more variance than is presented here.
In giving these categories, the Mellbretha gives twenty-five games as examples. Identifying these games comes with some difficulty, as they are described in a circumlocutory manner, and some of the technical terms appear to be hapax legomena of Irish literature. Many of the "games with immunity" are childhood games. However, others are games of both adulthood and childhood, such as hurling. Board-games such as Fidchell and Brandub are listed here, though they appear to have been exclusive to adults. The "competitive games" have a more paramilitary flavour. The "guilty games" are mostly quite obscure, but generally appear to be reckless activities, such as "throwing a spear into an assembly".