BRIDGET’S COMPANIONS AND SUCCESSORS 
because of the feeling that divorce worked particular 
injustice to the wife, that even to the present day 
they stand firmly united still refusing to permit the 
privilege of successive polygamy which so many 
other civilized nations have adopted. As a result of 
this, in the Irish Free State no legal recognition of 
divorce has yet come. Under the terms of the legal 
separation of the older time in Ireland, the wife was 
granted the right to take with her all of her 
marriage portion besides her marriage gifts, and an 
amount over and above for damages. In a word 
every phase of the old Gaelic law was calculated to 
insure a woman's rights much better than under the 
national law of any other country at the time, and 
surprising though it cannot but seem, far beyond 
woman's rights in the modern time. 
It is not surprising then that when Christianity 
came to set women free in other countries, the Irish 
women proceeded to lift themselves up to heights 
such as had never been enjoyed by women before 
anywhere up to that time. Education became their 
privilege and literature and the love of beautiful 
things in a productive way became their occupation. 
Knowledge of this preceding history of the pre- 
Christian Irish presents the background on which 
the lives of Bridget and her companions and suc- 
cessors can be most readily and thoroughly under- 
stood. 
The place of women in the life of the Irish at the 
beginning of the great period of Irish achievement, 
is best appreciated from the position assigned to 
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