(VI) Mater moriens filio terram, mancipia, pecuniam dimittat, filiæ vero spolia colli, id est murenulas, nuscas, monilia, inaures, vestes, armillas, vel quicquid ornamenti proprii videbatur habuisse. (VI) A mother dying shall leave her land, slaves, and goods, to her son, but to her daughter her neck-treasures, _i.e._, necklaces, buckles, collars, earrings, robes, bracelets, or whatever personal ornaments she appeared to have. (VII) Si nec filium nec filiam habuerit, sororem vero habuerit, sorori pecuniam et mancipia, proximo vero paterni generis terram relinquat. (VII) If she had neither son nor daughter, but had a sister, to the sister shall she leave the cattle and slaves, but the land to the next of the paternal kin. (VIII) Usque ad quintam generationem paterna generatio succedat. Post quintam autem filia ex toto, sive de patris sive de matris parte, in hereditatem succedat; et tunc demum hereditas ad fusum a lancea transeat. (VIII) As far as the fifth generation the paternal kin succeed. But after the fifth, a daughter, whether on the father’s or on the mother’s side, may succeed to the whole inheritance; and then finally let the inheritance pass over from the spear to the spindle. [Sidenote: The alod included both land and cattle.] As in the other laws so under these rules the alod clearly embraced both the land and the ‘pecunia’ and ‘mancipia’ upon it. Its object, like that of the similar clauses in the other laws and also like that of the Edict of Chilperic, seems to have been to protect the land in ordinary cases from passing over ‘from the spear to the spindle,’ while at the same time sanctioning inheritance by females even in the land of the alod when otherwise there would be danger of its passing away from the kindred altogether. In certain cases the land of the alod was made to go to male heirs while the ‘pecunia’ and ‘mancipia’ upon it went to females. Whether the word ‘pecunia’ in such cases should be translated by ‘cattle’[170] or the wider word ‘chattels,’ it must have included the cattle, and at first sight it is not easy to see how the rule would work which gave the cattle of the alod to a female and the land to a distant male heir. The cattle must in the nature of things have remained or be put upon land, and the awkward question arises upon whose land they remained or were put. And so we are brought once more to the practical question of the position of women in relation to the land. That in certain cases in default of male heirs they could inherit land is one thing; but this question of the cattle and slaves involves quite another. [Sidenote: Male next of kin takes the land and chieftainship, but females may have cattle upon the land.]