If a man be emancipated, his lord shall still retain the right to his mund and wergyld, sý ofer mearce ðǽr he wille, _be he over the mark wherever he may be_, be he out of the district where he may. Ll. Wihtr. § 8. Thorpe, i. 38. Footnote 75: Grimm is of opinion that the word Marc itself originally denoted _forest_, and that the modern sense is a secondary one, derived from the fact of forests being the signs or marks of communities. Deut. Gränzalterthümer; Berl. 1844. There can be no doubt that forests were so: in Old Norse the two ideas, and the words by which they are expressed, flow into one another: Mörk (f) is _silva_, Mark (n) is _limes_. In the Edda and Sögur, Myrkviðr is the common name for a wood: thus, sem þessi her kom saman, riða þeir á skóg þan er Myrkviðr heitir, hann skilr Húnaland ok Reiðgota land; they ride to the forest which is called Myrkviðr (mearcwidu in Anglosaxon) which separates Huna land from Reidgota land. Fornm. Sög. i. 496. Though given here as a proper name, it is unquestionably a general one. Conf. Edda, Völund. cv. 1. meyjar flugu sunnan myrkvið igögnum. and so in many passages. The darkness of the forest gives rise also to the adjective _murky_. ----- Let us first take into consideration the Mark in its restricted and proper sense of a boundary. Its most general characteristic is, that it should not be distributed in arable, but remain in heath, forest, fen and pasture. In it the Markmen—called in Germany Markgenossen, and perhaps by the Anglosaxons Mearcgeneátas—had commonable rights; but there could be no private estate in it, no híd or hlot, no κλῆρος, or _haeredium_. Even if under peculiar circumstances, any markman obtained a right to essart or clear a portion of the forest, the portion so subjected to the immediate law of property ceased to be mark. It was undoubtedly under the protection of the gods; and it is probable that within its woods were those sacred shades especially consecrated to the habitation and service of the deity[76]. ----- Footnote 76: