Analysis: Duinetháide murders where the killer didn't leave a trace or a body carry all the intrigue of a classic murder mystery
By Viktoriia Krivoshchekova, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
Stories of warfare and death permeate medieval Irish literature and historical records. But while martial violence often merited praise, killing outside the battlefield was proscribed by the law. However, not all homicide was of equal gravity. For example, Irish legal texts, which were in use between the seventh and the 16th century, distinguished between fatal accidents (manslaughter) and premeditated murder. Naturally, the latter was a much more serious offence since it revealed a profound flaw in the culprit's moral character.
But arguably the most intriguing category of homicide found in medieval law is secret murder. In Irish texts it is called duinetháide, which can be literally translated as 'person-stealth'. It is murder accompanied by concealment, when the killer avoids leaving a trace. Duinetháide could take place either in a populated area, whereby the body of the victim would be purposefully hidden, or in the wilderness where it was simply unlikely to be found.
From DIAS, Dr Viktoriia Krivoshchekova on how not to get away with murder in medieval Ireland
In contrast to duinetháide, other types of homicide would usually have witnesses and leave behind a body. This made it easier for the victim’s kin to exact penalties from the killer and allowed them to bury the deceased, as required by the Christian custom. Secret murder, with its lack of evidence and the missing body, complicates both of these tasks. No wonder it was considered a particularly gruesome offence.
The aggravated nature of duinetháide is reflected in the penalties it incurs. A person convicted of 'regular’ premeditated murder must pay two fines to the victim’s kinsmen. One of them is the fixed fine for murder which equals to 21 cows or 21 ounces of silver. The other is the honour-price, the value of which depends on the status of the recipients, in this case the deceased person’s kin. If the victim happened to belong to a noble family, the fines could become astronomical.
However, this penalty was deemed not heavy enough for a secret murder. The fines for a duinetháide are double that amount because it comprises two crimes: the murder itself, compounded by the concealment. Such a sizeable payout would surely offer some consolation to the victim's family.
But the problem with secret murder is in the name: it is done in secret, meaning that the culprit is not easily brought to justice. Sadly, there were no professional homicide detectives in medieval Ireland so the courts had a handful of strategies at their disposal to deal with these 'cold cases'.
First, a suspect had to be found and brought to trial. The laws do not explain how this was done, but indirect evidence was likely used to identify the presumed killer. Once the accused was summoned to court, testimony as to his character needed to be obtained. Both the plaintiff and the defendant could bring their own witnesses, on the condition that they were reputable members of the community.
The person accused of secret murder had five days to find character witnesses to swear an oath of denial on his behalf and clear his name. The number of oath-takers required for this procedure is – unsurprisingly – twice as high as for non-secret murder.
If the accused failed to find reliable witnesses but still refused to confess, he had one final opportunity to prove his innocence – by submitting to an ordeal. An ordeal is a ritualised form of violence which in early medieval societies served to divine a suspect’s guilt by whether they can pass a physical challenge presented to them. Ordeals could take different forms, but cases of secret murder were solved specifically by means of a duel. If the accused prevailed, it was not through his fighting prowess but due to the divine justice affirming his innocence.
To our modern sensibilities this approach does not seem very sound, but for centuries ordeals were the main method of prosecuting cases with insufficient evidence. Their role started to diminish from the 13th century onwards, when trial by jury was introduced into the Irish legal system, a borrowing from the English common law tradition.
Unfortunately, we do not have descriptions of real cases of duinetháide to illustrate how they might have been solved in practice. However, there are a few concise reports of secret murder in the Irish annals. For instance, the Annals of the Four Masters record the death of Flann mac Lonáin, the chief poet of Connacht and ‘the Virgil of the Irish race’, who fell victim to a duinetháide in 896. He was an influential, but contentious figure, sometimes depicted as an unscrupulous satirist. While his murder is vaguely attributed to the members of a minor political dynasty in Munster, its circumstances remain mysterious. It is tempting to imagine that his notoriety was the ultimate cause of his demise.
Flann mac Lonáin, the chief poet of Connacht and 'the Virgil of the Irish race', who fell victim to a duinetháide in 896
Secret murder as a concept is primarily associated with medieval jurisprudence, but it did not vanish entirely from modern language. Although the Irish term duinetháide eventually went out of use, the English vocabulary still preserves a vestige of this idea.
The concept of covert homicide was not exclusive to medieval Irish law and is also found in other European legal traditions. For example, the laws of Merovingian France refer to it with the Germanic term morther, and Anglo-Norman law-tracts use the Latin form murdrum. Indeed, the modern English word ‘murder’ initially signified concealed killing in the narrow sense, but later came to represent all aggravated homicide. Although modern murder is not always secret, the intrigue of a classic murder mystery still has a firm grasp on our collective imagination.
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Dr Viktoriia Krivoshchekova is a post-doctoral scholar in the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
