It would be difficult to trace each successive change in the condition of the Odallers, to tell how their Odals, impignorated to Torf-Einar Jarl for their share of the Mulct for the slaughter of Halfdan Halœg (930), were redeemed from Sigurd Jarl by their voluntary service in his Irish wars (1014); or how, by the gift of a mark for each ploughland to Jarl Rognvald’s stately Magnus-Kirk, they purchased an immunity from confiscation (1130), which they forfeited by rebellion against King Sverrer (1196). But Odal law and Odal influence declined more rapidly and continuously with every succeeding race of Scottish Jarls, as each Athol, Angus, Strathern and Sinclair, came attended by clansmen and dependants, the ready tools of the fraud or violence of their chief; as Scottish Bishops followed to the prey, lawyers rather than divines, willing to instruct brute force with clerkly subtilty, and skilled in the devil’s logic to warp even the Divine law into oppression. Even the Lawman, once guardian of the common liberties, and still expounder of the Book of the Laws, was generally some Scottish settler, some Cragy, Hall or Irving, owners of Odal land, but not by Odal-ræd—who, ignorant of Odal law, misinterpreted its principles, and misapplied its terms according to Scottish ideas, and introduced written deeds and Scottish forms, in feudal distrust of an undocumented title. Under such combined influences of ignorance and interest, every generation saw some principle modified, some right invaded. Thus each distribution of Odal heritage came to need the sanction of a SHYND or DOOM OF ERFFD from the Thing and Underfoud, equivalent to a Scottish service, and instead of an equal share, the eldest son claimed the Head Bu, and each daughter was restricted to half a son’s portion. The rights once inalienable from the Odal-born, became the subject of Impignoration, of Forfeiture, of Donation to the Church, and of Alienation on the ground or legal fiction that the Odaller was too poor to retain, or the Odal-born to redeem them. The legal term of Redemption was gradually shortened, and its conditions made more stringent, till finally a modification of the Shynd-bill in presence of the Thing was alone necessary to legalize the purchase, sale, and transference, of almost every Odal right, to evade the claims of the Odal-born, and to give to the Scottish purchaser the un-odal security of a written title in his own language—a combined form of Disposition and Sasine.