TRIBAL CUSTOM IN ANGLO-SAXON LAW TRIBAL CUSTOM IN ANGLO-SAXON LAW BEING AN ESSAY SUPPLEMENTAL TO (1) ‘THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY’ (2) ‘THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN WALES’ BY FREDERIC SEEBOHM, LL.D., F.S.A. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1902 [All rights reserved] PREFACE To the two former Essays, on ‘The English Village Community’ and ‘The Tribal System in Wales,’ is now at last added in this volume a third on ‘Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law.’ In the first Essay an attempt was made to approach the early Anglo-Saxon evidence from the point of view of the Manorial system, and mainly by tracing back its connection with the open field system of agriculture--the shell, so to speak, in which it had all along apparently lived. The object of this third Essay in the trilogy is to approach the Anglo-Saxon laws from the point of view of tribal custom. As a preliminary to this attempt, a detailed study of Cymric tribal custom was made in the intermediate Essay in the belief that the knowledge so gained might be used as a clue to the understanding of survivals of tribal custom in the laws of the tribes most nearly allied to the invaders of Britain, and lastly in the Anglo-Saxon laws themselves. The interval which has elapsed between the publication of the three Essays has made it necessary to make each of them, to some extent, independent and complete in itself. It thus becomes necessary in this volume briefly to repeat, as well as further to develop, what was learned of Cymric tribal custom in the previous volume, especially as regards the ‘gwely,’ or family unit of tribal society, and as regards the methods of payment of the galanas, or death-fine for homicide in lieu of the blood-feud between kindreds. The death-fine or wergeld of the Continental tribes forms so important a test of the position of classes in tribal society that it became necessary to ascertain at the outset what were the currencies in which the wergelds were stated and paid. A brief explanation of these will be found in the first chapter. Then follows the summary of the Cymric evidence. And as some of the points connected with the payment of wergelds can only be rightly understood when regarded from the point of view of the blood-feud for which the wergeld was a substitute, the Cymric evidence is followed by a brief examination of the rules of the feud incidentally revealed in ‘Beowulf.’ A chapter on Irish or Goidelic tribal custom completes the preliminary evidence. The inquiry into the tribal custom of the Continental tribes as revealed in their laws is proceeded with in the following order:--