Now it would seem that this payment for the death of a hauld was not the whole wergeld but only the bauga part of it. No details even of the bauga payments of eighteen marks are given in this clause. It seems to be inserted in this place simply with reference to the full limit of payments for injuries. Liability for wounding, under Cymric custom, was confined to the kinsmen of the gwely, and so it may well be that under Norse custom it was confined to the bauga group.
But the amount in this clause is only eighteen marks, while that of the bauga payments of the wergeld we have just been considering, as probably the earlier one, was twenty marks. How is this to be accounted for? The answer surely must be that eighteen marks of Charlemagne, reckoned in wheat-grains, were exactly equal to twenty of the Roman or Merovingian marks of the earlier period.
Another detailed statement makes the bauga payment 18 or 20 marks.
The other statement alluded to is also a statement avowedly of the bauga payments, and begins with almost the same words, ‘Now the giöld for the hauld shall be told.’ In this case the details are given and the detailed payments add up between eighteen and nineteen marks, and yet the total is given as a little more than twenty marks.
This statement differs from the older one in its divisions, but it has an air of antiquity and reality about it which suggests that it may represent a local custom actually in force. Little touches of picturesque detail seem to bring it into contact with actual life, and to show how local custom might work out a common object by its own peculiar method.
It meets us abruptly in clause 243 under the heading ‘On baugar,’ and commences thus:—
Now the giöld for the hauld shall be told—
6 marks (of 12 ells to the ore) in the head-baug,
4 marks in the brother’s-baug,
2½ marks in the brœðrung’s baug.