''Mellbretha'' (

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...

for "Sport-judgements") is an fragmentarily preserved

early Irish legal Early Irish law, also called Brehon law (from the old Irish word breithim meaning judge), comprised the statutes which governed everyday life in Early Medieval Ireland. They were partially eclipsed by the Norman invasion of 1169, but underwen ...

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 Hurling (, ') is an outdoor Team sport, team game of ancient Gaelic culture, Gaelic Irish origin, played by men and women. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goa ...

and

fidchell () or (in Welsh, pronounced ) was a board game popular among the ancient Celts. Fidchell was played between two people who moved an equal number of pieces across a board; the board shared its name with the game played upon it. Based on the ...

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''.

''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'' (1662) (though Lynch misapprehended the nature of the work). 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 (called "sick-maintenance") under certain circumstances. In delineating these circumstances, the ''Mellbretha'' divides games into three types: ("games with immunity"), for which there is no right to a fine or sick-maintenance after accidental injury; ("competitive games"), for which there is a right to sick-maintenance; and ("guilty games"), 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 In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

of Irish literature. Many of the "games with immunity" are childhood games (such as juggling). However, others are games of both adulthood and childhood, such as

. Board-games such as ''

Fidchell () or (in Welsh, pronounced ) was a board game popular among the ancient Celts. Fidchell was played between two people who moved an equal number of pieces across a board; the board shared its name with the game played upon it. Based on the ...

'' and ''

Brandub Tafl games (), also known as hnefatafl games, are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. Names of different variants of tafl include hnefatafl, t ...

'' are listed here, though they appear to have been exclusive to adults. The "competitive games" have a more paramilitary flavour (such as horse-riding and pelting). The "guilty games" are mostly quite obscure, but generally appear to be reckless activities, such as "throwing a spear into an assembly".

Manuscripts

Contents

Notes

References

Further reading