Under Brehon Law (traditional Irish law) that’s exactly what a marriage was. No fucking about in churches or anything like that, but if you got a bird up the spout you were automatically married. Long time ago now though.
Except what happened if you were already married and got another bird up a different spout?
Oh that’s right, we called that girl a degenerate whore and shamed her, and called the kid a bastard. Sure kept the honorable people in good graces and shamed the whores. Now it’s all just whores and they are proud of it. Honk honk
Think he then had to support both “wives”. But women could also divorce men in that scenario afaik, and it was a kind of fault divorce system so would have been punitive on the man in cases of adultery I imagine. However, while there was a kind of standard brehon law at any given time (it wasn’t a static system) its practice would vary between clans, and we don’t know as much as we would like about even the standard versions truth be told.
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