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forms of authority developed. Since this time, the community of Teelin, although respecting the right to private ownership, had showed hostility towards external authorities, and it was this enmity which was culturally and historically carried forward. The rotation system may be relevantly new, but the underlying difficulty with authority appears to be an historical concern. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries priests held strong authoritarian positions in and around Ireland. The fact that Fr McDyer held an authoritarian position may prove to explain, in part at least, the communities' opposition to his proposal, as they may have seen it as the latest imposition of external authorities' (1987:301). As Taylor's research shows that riverine salmon have long been a privately or institutionally owned and managed resource', except of course in the case of Teelin (1987: 294). In 1959 with the objective to preserve the Gaeltacht area, Gael-linn purchased Teelin's River, and along with the Irish government they imposed certain rights and restrictions over fishing in the river with the hope of conserving the resources according to Taylor. However, due to the lack of man-power and being ill-resourced the regulations created by both the government and Gael-linn were rarely enforced.

Both Gael-linn and the Irish Government are sources of external authority in the eyes of the Teelin community, and as they do not enforce the rules and regulations, that which is their responsibility, the people of Teelin do not believe that their fishing activities are entirely illegitimate' (Taylor:1987:296). The community informally regulates the fishing activities within, and they do this without interference from external authorities' (Taylor:1987:296). To some, this informal regulation may seem to provide evidence that Fr McDyer's scheme would work, but this is to look at it from the wrong prospective. The reason the informal rotation systems works so efficiently is precisely because there is no internal authority, all are seen as equal within their egalitarian type society. Any form of authority is external to the community, and this is the way the Teelins wish to keep it. Through his research Taylor discovered that the community generally believed that their rotation system was not to do with formal organisation, but was rather what they considered the natural way' (1987:297). Many pointed out that the system was present before their fathers and their fathers before

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