For entertainment, minstrels sang ballads about heroes or Bible stories, harpers played, jesters joked, and tumblers threw and caught balls and knives. There was gambling, dice games, and chasing deer with hounds. Fraternal guilds were established for mutual advantage and protection. A guild imposed fines for any injury of one member by another member. It assisted in paying any murder fine imposed on a member. It avenged the murder of a member and abided by the consequences. It buried its members and purchased masses for his soul. Merchantile guilds in sea-ports carried out commercial speculations not possible by the capital of only one person. There were some ale-houses. The Law Alfred issued a set of laws to cover the whole country. The importance of telling the truth and keeping one's word are expressed by this law: "1. At the first we teach that it is most needful that every man warily keep his oath and his wed. If any one be constrained to either of these wrongfully, either to treason against his lord, or to any unlawful aid; then it is juster to belie than to fulfil. But if he pledge himself to that which is lawful to fulfil, and in that belie himself, let him submissively deliver up his weapon and his goods to the keeping of his friends, and be in prison forty days in a King's tun: let him there suffer whatever the bishop may prescribe to him: ...". The Ten Commandments were written down as this law: "The Lord spake these words to Moses, and thus said: I am the Lord thy God. I led thee out of the land of the Egyptians, and of their bondage. 1. Love thou not other strange gods above me. 2. Utter thou not my name idly, for thou shalt not be guiltless towards me if thou utter my name idly. 3. Remember that thou hallow the rest-day. Work for yourselves six days, and on the seventh rest. For in six days, Christ wrought the heavens and the earth, the seas, and all creatures that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: and therefore the Lord hallowed it. 4. Honour thy father and thy mother whom the Lord hath given thee, that thou mayst be the longer living on earth. 5. Slay thou not. 6. Commit thou not adultery. 7. Steal thou not. 8. Say thou not false witness. 9. Covet thou not thy neighbour's goods unjustly. 10. Make thou not to thyself golden or silver gods." If one deceives an unbetrothed woman and sleep with her, he must pay for her and have her afterwards to wife. But if her father not approve, he should pay money according to her dowry. "If a man seize hold of the breast of a ceorlish woman, let him make bot to her with 5 shillings. If he throw her down and do not lie with her, let him make bot with 10 shillings. If he lie with her, let him make bot with 60 shillings. If another man had before lain with her, then let the bot be half that. ... If this befall a woman more nobly born, let the bot increase according to the wer."