# Which Gaelic term would feudal 11th century Scots have used for death duty? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 6, 2023, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663 "2023-11-06T02:12:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/1 "2023-11-06T02:12:38Z")
Which Gaelic term would feudal 11th century Scots have used for death duty? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/2 "2023-11-06T02:22:11Z")
On what basis do you assume there was a death duty at that time? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/3 "2023-11-06T02:50:05Z")
What even is death duty? ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/4 "2023-11-06T03:56:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What even is death duty? Estate Tax. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/5 "2023-11-06T05:05:36Z")
I don’t think that feudalism was introduced into Scotland until the 12th century, so “feudal 11th century Scots” may not be a meaningful category. This isn’t just a nitpick, since feudalism largely revolves around a particular mode of landholding, the how the taxation of wealth (e.g. death duty) is structured and administered is going be heavily influenced by how land, the predominant form of wealth, is held or owned. SFAIK in pre-feudal Scotland land was not owned by individuals, but rather by a kin group, and the group allocated some land to individuals (e.g. for tillage) while other land was used in common (e.g. for grazing). The land allocated to an individual might change from time to time, depending on the number of kin group members who had to be provided for, and the individual didn’t in any sense “own” it; what he owned, if anything, was a right to be provided with land/the use of land on an equitable basis with other kinfolk. As that right would necessarily expire at his death, and as his sons wouldn’t acquire their rights by inheritance from him but rather by entitlement as members of the kin group themselves, there wasn’t any inheritance of land and hence death may not have been seen as an occasion for levying tax. People might have owned wealth in other forms — e.g. slaves, livestock — and possibly these were heritable; I don’t know. But it doesn’t follow that a tax would have been levied. ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/6 "2023-11-06T07:20:57Z")
Thanks UDS1. I guess tanistry would have been a more correct term for the Scottish legal system at the time. I thought perhaps that by the 10th century, some aspects of Anglo-Saxon feudalism would have crossed over into Gaelic tanistry. As far as you know was there anything due to a chieftain upon the death of a lower-ranking thegn or peasant under the tanistry system similar to the Anglo-Saxon heriot (death tax)? ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/7 "2023-11-06T10:26:41Z")
The short answer: I don’t know. The longer answer: In the feudal system, interests in land were granted by an overlord in return for services rendered. As the grantee’s children had not rendered any service, there was no inevitability in the interest in land being granted to them on the death of the original grantee, and a practice arose by which the grantee’s eldest son would make a payment (known as a “relief”) to the overlord in lieu of rendering military or other service in order to have the grant confirmed to him. This wasn’t strictly speaking a tax since there was no obligation to pay it; if the heir was in fact someone who rendered service to the overlord the grant might be confirmed on the basis of that service, or the heir could simply not pay the fine and forego the grant. But in practice it functioned a lot like a death duty. The same rationale didn’t arise in the tanistry system. An individual wasn’t granted land in return for service rendered to the clan chief or to the clan; rather he was entitled to the use of land by virtue of his status as a member of the clan, and the clan chief’s role was to allocate the available land resources on an equitable basis among those entitled. Because this was an entitlement, there was no argument for saying that someone should have to make a payment in order to have land use rights allocated to him. There was an expectation that, when a clan member died, the land that had been allocated to his use would then be allocated to his son or sons, if only because this enable the rights of the son/sons to be satisfied without disturbing the use of land by other clan members. And, again, the fact that this was the expected treatment should make it difficult for the chief to try and extort money from the sons as a condition of allocating their father’s land to them. The reallocation of a father’s land to his sons in this way did create inequities over time. In, um, more fertile families land was subdivided more than in less fertile families, so over the generations a disparity would grow between the amount of land allocated to different individuals. But the clan as a whole had an interest in avoiding excessive disparities of this kind developing, and also an interest in avoiding over-exploitation of land by those with not enough, so from time to time land use within the clan would be revised and reallocated. It generally wasn’t the practice for an individual to be allocated a single block of land for his exclusive use; rather, clan members were allocated a number of distinct strips of land, in different locations and of differing quality, to facilitate the equitable sharing of productive land and less productive land in the clan. So land use could be reallocated without depriving someone of all land; he might simply e.g. lose _this_ strip, while perhaps getting the use of _that_ (smaller, lower-quality) strip. Plus, from time to time land that had been reserved for common grazing might be reallocated to tillage, or vice versa, so there were mechanisms for shaking up the allocation of land to counteract growing inequities. All of this mean that no individual ever had a permanent interest in any particular plot of land; it was always provisional. If he still had the use of that plot at his death he might reasonable expect that it would be allocated to one of his sons but they, too, would take it on the basis that they didn’t own it, and it might at any time be reallocated. And that would disincentivize them from making any substantial payment to have a plot allocated to them on their father’s death, because why make a capital payment for what might turn out to be an allocation of quite short duration? So it seems to me that the conditions and incentive for the development of a system of payments on death to secure continued land rights didn’t really exist in Gaelic society. But - and this is purely speculative on my part - this system could have incentivised payments (or other inducements) paid by clan members to secure the favour of the chief in the hope that, when land use was reallocated from time to time, they would be among those tending to do well, rather than badly, in reallocation decisions. But there is no reason why these payments would have been particularly associated with death or inheritance; if they functioned like a tax it would have been not so much death duties as rates or property tax. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/8 "2023-11-06T12:50:24Z")
> [@Octagon](#): > > I thought perhaps that by the 10th century, some aspects of Anglo-Saxon feudalism would have crossed over into Gaelic tanistry. I didn’t think the Anglo-Saxons used a feudal system. It was Normans who brought it to the British isles. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/9 "2023-11-06T15:37:00Z")
This is a broadly shared misperception - I was taught much the same in UK schools. The Saxons also followed a feudal arrangement. It just wasn’t as rigid (or as widespread) as the Norman system, and title to land remained with the crown under the Normans. But the broad strokes - grants of land in exchange for loyalty, repeated at lower levels - were the same. Neither the Normans nor the Saxons used the term feudal - it was adopted in the 18th century. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/10 "2023-11-06T16:22:23Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > title to land remained with the crown To me, that’s the critical part separating feudalism from the previous land ownership system. A substantial number of Anglo-Saxons held land in their own right, independent of any higher power. The Anglo-Saxon kings had vast land holdings, and sublet much of it, but didn’t own most of England. Then William the Conqueror claimed all the land, and systematically destroyed anyone who disagreed. Hence the Harrying of the North. By the end of the process, everyone agreed the king owned all land, and all land holdings were through the feudal system. But back to the Gaelic system, which I’m not as familiar with. It’s unclear to me when a Scottish king first claimed ownership of all the land. When did kings first start interfering with a clan’s disposition of their lands? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2023, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/11 "2023-11-08T00:23:46Z")
In 11-century Scotland, you’d want Old Irish for the Gaelic world. The Dictionary of the Irish Language has: “_marbgabáil_, f. a death-due , apparently a duty levied on tenants after their chief’s death by his successor in order to pay to the church the ‘cennaithe [bequest]’ of the deceased.” > **[eDIL - Irish Language Dictionary](https://dil.ie/31569)** > > The electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) is a digital dictionary of medieval Irish. It is based on the ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY’S Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials (1913-1976) which covers the... ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/12 "2023-11-11T15:15:17Z")
Thanks Dr. Drake. I was trying to find a scholarly article that makes use of the term _marbgabáil_ in relation to Irish law/Gaelic Tanistry law but haven’t found anything so far. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-gaelic-term-would-feudal-11th-century-scots-have-used-for-death-duty/992663/13 "2023-11-11T18:25:30Z")
The dictionary cites “Plummer MS slips” as the source, so it may not be there in anything published. Or it might have the later spelling with all the Hs (marbhghabháil), which I do find in the dictionaries (“marbhghabháil, f. (gs. & npl. -ála).Lit: Death tax,” from [https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/marbhghabháil](https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/marbhghabh%C3%A1il)) Looking up Plummer (just in case), I find this passage: maybe useful to you, maybe not: " 14. At III. 32 _ad calcem_, is a passage relating to services due from the church to the laity, and among the matters mentioned are testamentary dispositions: _a nudacht_, _a nimna_; and the gloss explains the difference between the two: _a nudacht … fri bas_; _a nimna .i. i neart-slainte_ (misprinted _.i. netarslainte_) ib. 34, 14. The gloss is translated: ‘their bequests, i. e. at the point of death; their grants i. e. for the health of/the soul’. The insertion of these three last words ruins the whole sense. The meaning is: _udacht_ is the technical name for a testamentary disposition made _in arliculo mortis_, imna for one made in full (bodily) health. The mistake is repeated at p. 42, 30, where _a imna i nert-slaine_, is translated: ‘his gift for the perfect health of his soul’; and again at 52, 1. In 46, 21 the mistake is even more unfortunate, as the provision that bequests to the church must be a _nert-slainte_, is specially significant; cf. II. 344, 29, where the phrase is rightly translated: ‘in strong health’. from Charles Plummer, “Notes on Some Passages in the Brehon Laws,” _Ériu_ 9 (1921/1923), pp. 31–42.