Likewise also if there were legitimate daughters, one or more, or natural sons, one or more, let them have their rights as is decreed in this edict. Because it seems to us inhuman and impious that for such a cause sons should be disinherited from the inheritance of their father because their father died in the mund of their grandfather. But let them take an equal portion with their uncles of everything in the place of their father. The continued existence of community in the family property is shown by the fact that, even after the concession made in this clause, during the grandfather’s lifetime everything fell into the common stock and not till a family redivision was made after the grandfather’s death was the new rule admitting the sons’ succession along with their uncles to take effect. To trace further the survivals of tribal custom in the Lombardic laws would lead us too far afield. The clauses already quoted are sufficient to show a remarkable similarity of custom in the case of tribes once neighbours on the Baltic notwithstanding that they had been widely separated and that there was an interval of five or six centuries between the dates of their laws. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. _TRIBAL CUSTOM IN SCOTLAND._ I. TRACES OF TRIBAL CUSTOM IN THE LAWS OF THE EARLY KINGS. [Sidenote: Tribal custom in the ancient laws of Scotland.] The population of Scotland was so various in origin and language that it would be unreasonable to expect uniformity of custom. Even where Celtic custom was best able to hold its own there must naturally have been a mixture of Cymric and Gaelic elements. In districts, on the other hand, where Frisian and Northumbrian and Danish and Norse influences may have once predominated, whatever survivals there may have been of tribal custom from any of these origins may well have been afterwards submerged under legal forms and ideas from Anglo-Norman sources. It is worth while, however, to examine what scattered survivals of tribal custom may be found in the laws of the early kings, and in the various documents collected in the first volume of the ‘Ancient Laws of Scotland.’ * * * * * That tribal custom as to wergeld existed and was recognised is proved by the necessity to abolish what remained of it. Thus in the ‘Leges Quatuor Burgorum’ is the following clause:-- [Sidenote: Laws of the Four Burgs.] XVII. _Of bludewyt and siklyk thingis._ And it is to wyt at in burgh sall nocht be herde bludewyt na yit stokisdynt [styngisdynt] na merchet na heregelde na nane suilk maner of thyng. This wholesale and disdainful disregard of feudal and tribal customs on the part of the townsmen of the four Burgs was followed somewhat later by an Ordinance of Edward I. (A.D. 1305) which again testifies to the wider survival of more directly Celtic tribal usages by forbidding their continuance.[195]