Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing
meals, and making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and
wove wool into cloth. Flax was grown and woven into linen cloth.
The weaving was done on an upright or warp- weighted loom. People
draped the cloth around their bodies and fastened it with a
metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, glass, and shell, which
were glued on with glue that was obtained from melting animal
hooves. They also had amber beads and pendants. They could tie
things with rawhide strips or rope braids they made. They cut
things with flint dug up from pits. On the coast, they made bone
harpoons for deep sea fish.
The King, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting groups
to kill deer and other wild animals in the forests and to fish
in the streams. Some men brought their hunting dogs on leashes
to follow scent trails to the animal. The men attacked the
animals with spears and threw stones. They used shields to
protect their bodies. They watched the phases of the moon and
learned to predict when it would be full and give the most light
for night hunting. This began the concept of a month.
If hunting groups from two clans tried to follow the same deer,
there might be a fight between the clans or a blood feud. After
the battle, the clan would bring back its dead and wounded. A
priest officiated over a funeral for a dead man. His wife would
often also go on the funeral pyre with him. Memorial burial
mounds would be erected over the corpses or cremated ashes of
their great men. Later, these ashes were first placed in urns
before burial in a mound of earth or the corpses were buried
with a few personal items.
The priest also officiated over sacrifices of humans, who were
usually offenders found guilty of transgressions. Sacrifices
were usually made in time of war or pestilence, and usually
before the winter made food scarce, at Halloween time. Humans
were sometimes eaten.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire, and
fruits and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They
drank water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful.
There were eggs of different colors in nests and many rabbits to
eat. The goddess Easter was celebrated at this time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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