In many parts of the country in Gaelic Ireland, there was a regular annual redistribution of resources in May: communities came together in May and that would have been the time when marriages were arranged, for example, and all sorts of other allocations of land and property for a year were laid out.

Your contract, if accepted, (it wasn’t described in terms that formal), your arrangement between a lord and his followers only lasted from one May to the next. If a follower didn’t like the way he was being treated by one particular lord in one lordship, he could and frequently did move elsewhere the following year. There was more than enough land to go around so that, in many parts of the country, groups would move from one section of land to another and mightn’t return for five or six years. There seemed to be far more land available in Gaelic Ireland than was actually needed by those who lived there in the 16th century so it gave them freedom to move.

And yes, if your lord didn’t offer you protection, didn’t offer you the kind of economic opportunities you wanted, well then you were free to go elsewhere.