V. THE METHOD OF PAYMENT OF GALANAS BETWEEN KINDREDS.
Postponing for a while the consideration of the position of the various classes of non-tribesmen, but still keeping in view the fact that in considerable numbers they were practically sharers with the tribesmen in the rights of grazing and occupation of land, we are now in the position to realise to some extent what happened when a murder had taken place.
No galanas for murder within the kindred.
If it was of some one within the kindred, there was, as we have said, no slaying of the murderer. Whether it were a parricide or a fratricide, or the murder of a near kinsman, under Cymric custom there was no galanas, nothing but execration and ignominious exile.
The blood feud and therefore blood fine between kindreds.
But if a tribesman of one kindred were killed by a tribesman of another kindred, then it was a serious matter of blood feud between the kindreds, or of the payment of the blood fine. The tribal conscience demanded vengeance or composition.
The slayer flees to a church with his cattle.
It sometimes happened that the murderer had fled to a church for safety, taking his cattle with him. For the clergy or monks at the place of refuge had a herd of cattle of their own, and with them the murderer’s cattle were allowed to wander and graze so long as they returned nightly to the refuge.[45]
Six cows for the saraad or insult.
There he remained presumably till the kindred of the murdered tribesman, through negotiation and arrangement of the chiefs of the kindreds, had agreed to accept the payment of the galanas, if it were the case of an uchelwr or full tribesman, of 126 cows. Six cows, as we shall see hereafter, were saraad for the insult, and 120 cows galanas for the murder. The saraad was paid first—six cows or other cattle to the same value belonging to the murderer were driven from the herd in payment.
The murderer’s life was then safe, and presumably he might return with his cattle to his place.
Within a fortnight, the tribesmen of the murderer’s kindred met to apportion the payment of the rest. They came from trefgordds far and near, from the territories sometimes of various higher territorial chieftains within whose districts they had grazing rights.
120 cows by fortnightly instalments for galanas.
The collected tribesmen having apportioned the payment, fortnight after fortnight instalments must be paid till the whole number in value of 120 cows was completed.[46]
But by whom was the payment to be made?[47]
The slayer’s near family pay 40 cows.
Forty cows must first be found by the murderer, his father, mother, brothers, and sisters with him. They doubtless helped one another, but theoretically, in one or other of the common herds, there must have been cattle belonging to the murderer, his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, or how could they have paid their shares? There was nothing unreal in this liability of each to pay a share, for had the murderer been slain each one of them would have received, instead of having to pay, a share in 40 cows.
The murderer himself had to pay a third of the 40 cows if he had them. His father and mother between them paid the next third, and the brothers and sisters the remaining third, the sisters paying half what the brothers did.[48] The herds of many a trefgordd must be thinned before this could be done.
The other 80 fall on the kindred.
The remainder of the galanas, viz. 80 cows, fell on the kindred, to the seventh degree or fifth cousins. The paternal relations had to find two thirds of it and the maternal one third, and these kindreds embraced the descendants from the great-grandparents of the great-grandparents on both sides.
In the first fortnight the kindred on the father’s side had to find half what was due from them. In the second fortnight they had to find the other half, and in the third fortnight the maternal kindred had to find their share, till so at last the full tale of the 120 cows was paid. The oath of peace from the kindreds of the murdered man could then be given, and the murderer and his kinsmen, be at peace.[49]
The slayer’s right of ‘spear penny.’
But what happened if the murderer could not find the cattle for his third of the 40 cows which he and his immediate family had to find? He had yet a right, as a member of the greater kindred, to claim in aid a ‘spear penny’ from all those male kinsmen descended from a common ancestor on his father’s side two steps further back, i.e. still more distantly related to him than those included in the kindred to the seventh degree who had already paid their share. Even if the slayer were a woman, she had the same right of spear penny from the men of her kindred to help her to make her payment.[50]
The solidarity of the kindred and individual liability within it.
So this attempt to realise what was involved in the payment of an ordinary case of galanas brings us back to the recognition of the double aspect of the kindred in the structure of tribal society—its solidarity and joint responsibility, on the one hand, as against outsiders, the whole kindred being responsible in the last resort; on the other hand the individual responsibility of its members, graduated according to nearness of relationship, for the crimes of their relative.
Each had his da or cattle for maintenance and so could contribute to the payment.
In Cymric tribal society this was made possible by the broad fact that both males and females in the group of kindred, on both paternal and maternal sides, liable to pay, had cattle of their own in the common herd, each having received his or her da for maintenance by right of kin and descent from the common ancestor or chieftain of the kindred. The two things surely hang together. And therefore, if we find in the laws of other tribes somewhat similar rules regarding the payment of wergelds, it probably will be worth while to inquire further whether the corresponding structure of tribal society, or something more or less equivalent to it, may not be present also.