is a much more general description than the writer of the line imagined. The Norse traditions are full of similar facts[272]. The king is in truth essentially one with the people; from among them he springs, by them and their power he reigns; from them he receives his name; but his land is like theirs, private property; one estate does not owe allegiance to another, as in the feudal system: and least of all is the monstrous fiction admitted even for a moment, that the king is owner of all the land in a country. ----- Footnote 271: Abbo de Bello Paris. Civit. Pertz, ii. 779. Footnote 272: Langebek. ii. 77. Dahlmann, Gesch. d. Dänen, p. 51. ----- The Teutonic names for a king are numerous and various, especially in the language of poetry; many of them are immediately derived from the words which denote the aggregations of the people themselves: thus from þeód, we have the Anglosaxon þeóden; from folc, the Old Norse Fylkr; but the term which, among all the Teutons, properly denotes this dignity, is derived from the fact which Tacitus notices, viz. the nobility of the king: the Anglosaxon cyning is a direct derivative from the adjective cyne, _generosus_, and this again from cyn, _genus_[273]. ----- Footnote 273: The Old High Dutch word is Chuninc; the Old Norse Konungr: the Gothic equivalent has not been found, but certainly was Kuniggs. ----- The main distinction between the king and the rest of the people lies in the higher value set upon his life, as compared with theirs: as the wergyld or life-price of the noble exceeds that of the freeman or the slave, so does the life-price of the king exceed that of the noble. Like all the people he has a money value, but it is a greater one than is enjoyed by any other person in the state[274]. So again his protection (mund) is valued higher than that of any other: and the breach of his peace (cyninges handsealde frið) is more costly to the wrong-doer. He is naturally the president of the Witena-gemót and the ecclesiastical synod, and the supreme conservator of the public peace. ----- Footnote 274: In Kent, Mercia and Wessex, the king’s wergyld was 120 pounds: half belonged to his family, half to his people. -----