http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CainAdamnain.html
This is a rather interesting treatise. It claims to be the first Irish law to protect women, children, and clergy from violence. In fact, part of the third passage deals with women going to war and being whipped by their husbands to continue fighting. Anyway, the date they claim this treatise deals with is 697.
P2 uses the term 'cumalach'. This is what women were called prior to Adamnan freeing them. Cumalach is the derivative of cumal, a female slave or bondmaid.
P3 states that the best women were fighters going to battle and that the highest prizes at that time were women's heads and their breasts.
P5 Women were granted half of their household by the work of Adomnan.
Reading this treatise is like reading a fantasy, because some of the things supposedly done to Adomnan would not likely be survivable. It seems to be a rather far-fetched fiction, yet is there some truth to it in some form? It sounds like a son who was badgered by his mother, did what he could as a cleric to free women from their slavery. I find it a bit difficult to believe that it can be read literally. That women were fighters and died in battle is not difficult to believe, that they were likely fallen under a certain type of slavery is not difficult to believe, but that Adomnan suffered survival in a stone chest for any long length of time in order to free them, especially with what is said happened to him is hard to believe. I'll need to do more research on what battles were taking place at the time that this was supposed to have been written.
Trying to find a timeline to give me an idea of the battles or wars, this site (http://www.clannada.org/timeline.php) is saying the Book of Darrow was roughly started 680AD and previously to that, a plague killed about a third of the population of Ireland and Britain (664-666AD).
