Compensation Frameworks: Éraic, Log nEnech, and Medical Assessment

When harm occurred, compensation was calculated on two tiers.

• Éraic (“body fine” or wergild): a fixed compensation amount scaled to the severity of harm and the victim's rank. For murder, this represented the baseline restitution.
• Log nEnech (“honour price fine”): an additional amount equal to the victim's honour price, compensating not merely for physical injury but for the affront to the victim's social standing.

Together these created a two-part formula: total compensation = éraic + (honour price × a multiplier based on context). This allowed the same injury to different individuals to carry vastly different compensation, reflecting the victim's social worth.

For non-fatal injuries, the Brehon system employed a sophisticated medical assessment framework called Bretha Déin Chécht (“Judgements of Dían Cécht the Physician”). This text, preserved in the Senchas Mór, established detailed procedures for injury evaluation:

• Assessment timing: medical evaluation occurred at nine days post-injury, the point at which the true extent of harm became apparent.
• Wound measurement: wounds were measured using standardised scales, from a grain of wheat (the smallest) through bean sizes for minor wounds; more serious wounds were classified by depth and location.
• Status-scaled compensation: amounts scaled both to wound severity and the victim's honour price.
• Physician fees: if a physician treated the wound, their fees — themselves scaled to injury severity — were added to the injurer's liability.
• Sick maintenance (crólige): the injurer bore ongoing costs for the victim's care during recovery — food, nursing, shelter — until the victim returned to normal activity.

Particularly severe injuries — those affecting the victim's vital functions or senses — attracted enhanced compensation. These injuries opened what Bretha Déin Chécht called the “twelve doors of the soul”: the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and other vital orifices or faculties. Injury to the eyes carried the highest compensation; damage to hearing, speech, or sexual function followed in graduated scale.

This framework directly applied to bee-related injuries. A person blinded by bees warranted compensation as if injured by the “door of the eye.” Someone killed by anaphylactic reaction — though medieval texts would not have used the term — faced fatal injury compensation. Chronic disease or pain resulting from bee venom exposure could be assessed under ongoing sick maintenance provisions.