ts, Mackinnons, Macnabs, Macphies, Macquarries
and Macaulays.

The clan system in the most archaic form of which we have any definite
information can be best studied in the Irish _tuath_, or tribe.[1] This
consisted of two classes: (1) tribesmen, and (2) a miscellaneous class
of slaves, criminals, strangers and their descendants. The first class
included tribesmen by blood in the male line, including all illegitimate
children acknowledged by their fathers, and tribesmen by adoption or
sons of tribeswomen by strangers, foster-sons, men who had done some
signal service to the tribe, and lastly the descendants of the second
class after a certain number of generations. Each _tuath_ had a chief
called a _rig_, king, a word cognate with the Gaulish _rig-s_ or _rix_,
the Latin _reg-s_ or _rex_, and the Old Norse _rik-ir_. The tribesmen
formed a number of communities, each of which, like the tribe itself,
consisted of a head, _ceann fine_, his kinsmen, slaves and other
retainers. This was the _fine_, or sept. Each of these occupied a
certain part of the tribe-land, the arable part being cultivated under a
system of co-tillage, the pasture land co-grazed according to certain
customs, and the wood, bog and mountains forming the marchland of the
sept being the unrestricted common land of the sept. The sept was in
fact a village community.

What the sept was to the tribe, the homestead was to the sept. The head
of a homestead was an _aire_, a representative freeman capable of acting
as a witness, compurgator and bail. These were very important functions,
especially when it is borne in mind that the tribal homestead was the
home of many of the kinsfolk of the head of the family as well as of his
own children. The descent of property being according to a gavel-kind
custom, it constantly happened that when an _aire_ died the share of his
property which each member of his immediate family was entitled to
receive was not sufficient to qualify him to be an _aire_. In this case
the family did not divide the inheritance, but remained together as "a
joint and undivided family," one of the members being elected chief of
the family or household, and in this capacity enjoyed the rights and
privileges of an _aire_. Sir H.S. Maine directed attention to this kind
of family as an important feature of the early institutions of all
Indo-European nations. Beside the "joint and undivided family," there
was another kind of family which we might call "