In the Cymric codes, the normal wergeld was a payment of one hundred and twenty cows, but the number varied according to the rank of the slain. For the death of a chieftain the amount was one hundred and eighty cows: for the death of a stranger, from thirty to sixty cows.[24] Over and above the wergeld or _galanas_, there was payable an insult-price or _saraad_, consisting of six cows. This amount was always paid first, from the murderer’s own cattle. Within fourteen days of the murder, a meeting of the slayer’s clan or wider kindred was convened, at which the proportion of wergeld due from each family was determined. Usually the murderer’s family paid forty cows, or one-third of the total wergeld. Of this amount the murderer himself paid one-third, or about fourteen cows; his father and mother paid one-third, and his brothers and sisters one-third, the brothers paying twice as much as the sisters. The remaining portion of the wergeld, namely, eighty cows, was paid by the wider kindred. Relatives on the paternal side paid two-thirds, those on the maternal side, one-third. As the clan comprised very often a large number of people, the actual contribution of individual cousins of the murderer would have been rather small. The murderer himself paid, in _saraad_ and _galanas_, a total forfeit of twenty cows. But if the murderer was poor, there was paid ‘spear-penny,’ which was one-ninth of the wergeld, but was collected from male kinsmen on the paternal side. It was not necessary that these payments should all be made at the same time, or immediately. They were frequently made in fortnightly instalments. The system of receiving wergeld seems to have been parallel. It is probable that the cows paid by the murderer’s family went to the family of the victim: those paid by first cousins went to first cousins: those paid by paternal kindred went to paternal kindred: all being distributed in the last resort to individuals, if the clans involved had developed the principle of individual ownership at that particular period of time. It is clear from the Cymric codes that individual ownership was assumed as universally prevalent. But it is certain that such a condition is not a characteristic of all tribal communities. In the Salic law, which operated amongst the Germans from about A.D. 500 onwards, a distinction was made between the inheritance of ‘wergeld’ and that of the ‘allod’ or family-domain.[25] While the latter could only be inherited by a family group which did not extend beyond second cousins, a group which in Wales was called a ‘gwely,’ the wergeld was inherited by all persons who could trace any kind of direct descent, however remote, from a common ancestor of the original receivers of the wergeld. This law seems to us to reflect an ancient system of communistic ownership in movable property amongst the Germans. Indeed we may infer the existence of such a system from the account which Caesar[26] gives of the pre-Christian Germans.