Fǽhðe is etymologically derived from fá, _a foe_: it is the state or condition of being fá with any one. “Gif hwá ofer ðæt stalige sý he fá wið ðone cyning and ealle his freónd.” “If after that, any one steal, be he foe (at feud) with the king, and all that love him.” Footnote 496: Tacit. Germ. xxii. ----- In the feeling then of the omnipotence of the State, for paramount purposes, over all the several individuals whose proximity to one another necessarily caused the existence between them of relations, amicable or hostile, the Teutonic nations set themselves the task of regulating the _Right of Feud_. They could not entirely abrogate it, for it was the very basis of that freedom which enabled every man to enter into a contract or engagement as to the mode of its exercise; but they defined, and as far as possible limited, its sphere and the extent of its action. The natural right of every man to do himself justice to the extent of his own estimate[497], seems early to have received so much check as could be given by the establishment of a _lex talionis_,—life for life, and limb for limb. The eorl who captured the thane Imma, in the seventh century, could say to him, “I might justly put thee to death, because my kinsmen fell in the battle wherein thou wert made prisoner[498];” and this principle was recognized even in the later legislation, after what we may call a legal commutation of this right had been established: the ordinance respecting oaths to be administered says, “A twelfhynde man’s oath stands for six ceorls’ oaths; because if a man should avenge a twelfhynde man, he will be fully avenged on six ceorls, and his wergyld will be six ceorls’ wergylds[499].” The Teutonic nations generally avoided the inconveniences of such a system by making the State itself the arbitrator between the parties; that is, by establishing a tariff at which injuries should be rated, and committing to the State the duty of compelling the injured person to receive, and the wrongdoer to pay, the settled amount. It thus engaged to act as a mediator between the conflicting interests, with a view to the maintenance of the general peace: it assured to the sufferer the legal satisfaction for his loss; it engaged to his adversary that, upon due payment of that legal satisfaction, he should be placed under the public guarantee and saved from all the consequences of feud. For doing this, the State claimed also some remuneration; it imposed a fine, called sometimes _fredum_, from frið, peace, or _bannum_ from its proclamation (bannan)[500], over and above the compensation between man and man. And this is obviously what Tacitus means when he says[501], “They are bound to take up both the enmities and the friendships of a father or relative. Nor are their enmities implacable; for even homicide is atoned for by a settled number of flocks or cattle, and the whole house receives satisfaction,—a useful