In this primitive epoch of German historical existence, the pride of blood and descent seems to have been deeply ingrained in the German mind; and there was a strong aversion against corrupting the lineage by intermarriage with a _schalk_ man or woman, even although they were of the same race and family. Among the Saxons immemorial custom even punished a _mesalliance_ with death. Thus the very ancestors of many American slaveholders, now so proud of their Saxon blood, were considered unworthy of marriage with their masters. But concubinage with slave women was then common (as it now is in the South), whatever Tacitus may say concerning German conjugal fidelity. The bastards of parents one free the other slave, became serfs to the soil. If a freeman married a slave woman, their children were _schalks_, and sometimes the father even was reduced to slavery. A free woman marrying a slave, might be killed by her parents or became a slave of the king--when the Germans had kings in their new, post-Roman monarchies. Most of these cruel legal customs, and many others found in the codes, belong to the heathen epoch, to the period of pure Germanic existence unadulterated by contact with the corruptions of civilized life. They prove how deep was the Germanic contempt for the ignoble or unfortunate among their own brethren; they show also the very ancient appearance of slavery among them, and its violent and criminal origin, like that of slavery always and everywhere. Ancient usages and laws regulating inheritance perpetuate themselves remarkably among peoples and nations. From their forests the Germans transplanted the right of primogeniture over Europe. The land was given to the males, while the daughters received the movables, _mancipia_, and the schalks--a conclusive evidence that not alone bondage to the soil, but positive chattelhood, prevailed in the primitive forests of Germany. Cities and organized industry had then no existence. Freemen, _i.e._, masters, had but a few crude wants, and these were supplied by the work of the schalks in the dwelling or in the _hof_ (court) of the master. In primitive prehistoric times, as in the time of Tacitus and afterward, all the male and female household menials, peasants and workmen, were _schalks_. Manumissions were common, but depended wholly on the will of the master. They could be obtained in various ways--might be bought with labor, produce, money, etc. The manumitted did not, however, enter at once into full enjoyment of the rights of freeman or master; indeed, only his descendants of the third generation became fully purified and capable of entering into the noble class. They then constituted, probably, the inferior nobility or freemen, who were followers and companions of the first class; and perhaps from them sprang the free yeomanry, who originally possessed but small property and a small number of schalks and serfs.