The acquisition of part of the tribe land as the absolute property of individuals, and their advance as wealthy land as well as cattle owners, led to its further development. The _Aire_ who owned an estate in land which raised him to the position of a _Flath_ or chief, and was enabled to transmit it to his descendants, led to the settlement of his family and kinsfolk on the land. He was not considered as fully entitled to the privileges of a territorial lord unless his father and grandfather had likewise been an _Aire_; and when three generations had thus been settled on the land, the offshoots of these generations formed a group consisting of the nearest agnates of the chief, which would increase in number as the generations went on. These were the _Ciné_, or kinsfolk of the head of the tribe, and to them were added those freemen of the tribe who claimed a common origin with them, and who placed themselves under the chief as his _Ceile_ or dependants. [Sidenote: The _Ceile_ or tenants.] The same causes which operated in the feudal system to lead the odal proprietors to commend themselves to an overlord as his vassals, and gradually extinguished the more ancient class of independent landholders, tended likewise in the Irish tribal system to absorb the original freemen of the tribe in the class of the _Ceile_ or dependants of the chief, and thus to add to his following and to form a constituent part of the _Finé_ or sept. With the _Saor Ceile_, or free dependants, the basis was a mutual contract for a fixed period usually of seven years, by which the _Flath_ or chief gave a portion of stock proportionate to the food-rent he was to receive in return, and was entitled along with this to the homage of the tenant during the subsistence of the contract, and to a certain amount of service in the erection of a _Dun_ or fort, the reaping of his harvest, and the _Sluaged_ or hosting; but the contract could be terminated and the parties to it return to their original relation to each other, either by the _Ceile_ or tenant returning the stock he had received, or by the _Flath_ reclaiming it. A more permanent connection was formed between him and the _Daor Ceile_ or bond tenant. Here the _Ceile_ placed himself formally under the protection of the _Flath_ as his permanent follower, and this relation was formed by his receiving a certain number of _Seds_ or cows, by way of subsidy or gift from the superior, and paying him a certain tribute termed _Sed Taurclothe_, or returnable _Seds_, as the price of his protection. This servitude was termed _Aicillne_, and the amount of the _Seds_ was regulated by the Honor price. As soon as this relation was constituted, he received an additional amount of stock in proportion to the food-rent he had to return, in the same manner as in the case of the free _Ceile_.[194] The real distinction probably was, that in the one case the _Ceile_ was in a more independent position, and possessed stock of his own as well as a