On the whole it may be gathered from the Brehon tracts that, whilst the coirp-dire or body fine was a fixed amount, the eric or full payment was complex, involving, besides the coirp-dire, the honour-price of the slayer according to his rank, and also payments to the relations of the slain, regulated by their honour-price and rank, and nearness of relationship to the slain person, by way of reparation for the insult or injury involved, or for breach of their protection, &c. In order to judge how much these payments of honour-price added to the eric, we must seek to learn something of the character of the various grades and ranks, and the amount of the honour-price of each. III. THE GRADATIONS IN RANK UNDER THE BREHON LAWS. The gradations in the honour-price, as stated in the ‘Crith Gabhlach,’ become very important from the light thrown by them upon the structure of tribal society in Ireland. [Sidenote: The ‘midboth’ or ordinary freeman and his food allowance.] At the bottom of the list of these grades is mentioned the _midboth_ man or ordinary freeman without land or cows (?). He is said to be entitled, as food allowance, to the humblest fare of ‘milk and stirabout’ and for himself alone (iv. 301). His honour-price is only a dairt heifer or colpach heifer, and his honour-price (as that of other grades) is also the limit of the value of his oath or pledge. He is a man who has not yet attained to a household of his own. When he has done that he seems to rise to the next rank of an _og-aire_, _i.e._ a young _aire_. Suddenly, we are told of the og-aire that he has seven cows and a bull, seven pigs, seven sheep, and a horse. He also has a cow land, _i.e._ land to graze seven cows, for which a cow is paid every year by him to his chief. He has an ox, and a fourth part of the needful for ploughing: _i.e._ presumably he joins with others in making up a plough team of four oxen. Surely these have been supplied to him by his chief, as in the case of the Cymric ‘da.’ His proportionate stock (turcreicc) is eight cows, which with his land he gets from a bo-aire, possessed of surplus cattle, and he pays to him a food-rent ‘bes tigi’ (like the Welsh gwestva) of a cow and a pig, &c. Should his stock increase he does not always become at once a _bo-aire_, ‘because four or five such may occupy the land of a bo-aire, and it would not be easy for each of them to be a bo-aire’ (iv. pp. 305-309). [Sidenote: The ‘bo-aire.’] So in the same way a _bo-aire_ has land of twice seven cumhals, and he has half of a full ploughing apparatus, and his proportionate stock (from his chief) is twelve cows; and a colpach heifer is his food-rent; and his honour-price is five seds.