In Ireland of old, there was a practice known as “fasting on” someone, and this was the way of it.

If someone had wronged you, you would sit at his or her doorstep, and keep a fast. There you would sit, if needful, to the death.

This was accounted by the ancestors as a powerful tool of persuasion and justice, even against kings.

For Hospitality is chief of virtues, and it were accounted a grave breach of it, that an unarmed stranger should die of famine at one's very doorstep, and the shame of it upon the house forever.

Nor might one take up violence against the faster, for this also was held a grave dishonor to the house.

But in these days there is neither sitting-out nor fasting-on.

For those that rule are accounted by all as people of no hospitality, as people of no honor.

And the black shame of it be upon their house, forever.