We are dealing evidently here with a family of leysings growing into a kindred, as under Cymric custom the family of the Aillt and Alltud grew into a kindred. During all these four generations the family were leysings with a rett of six ores. But the fifth generation seems to rise into a second grade of social rank and to attain the rank of ‘leysings’ sons’ with a rett of eight ores. And further in another four generations, those of the ninth generation again rise in social rank and seem to become árborinn or ættborinn men, i.e. men born in a kindred, with a rett of sixteen ores. They can now boast of a full leysing kindred. Their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were born in a kindred, and they have now full rights of inheritance. The master and his descendants have no further hold on them or obligation for their maintenance. Any lapsed inheritance now goes direct to the king.
The árborinn or ættborinn man, therefore, seems at last, at the moment when a full kindred of his own has risen up to swear for him and protect him by feud or wergeld, to have become clear from any claims on the master’s side. And accordingly if any claim be set up he has to prove his freedom by witnesses ‘that he can count four of his forefathers as árborinn men and himself the fifth.’ That is, he shows that his great-grandfather was a man with an ætt or kindred. If he can prove this he is free from any claim in regard to his leysing descent.
En ef sá callaz árborinn er fyrir söc verðr, þá teli hann fióra langfeðr sína til árborinna manna, en siálfr hann hinn fimta, oc hafi til þess .ii. búanda vitni árborinna. En ef hann er svá liðlauss at hann fær þat eigi, oc hefir þó þessa vörn fyrir sér, þá sanni ætt sína árborna með guðscírslum. En ef hann verðr scírr með iárne eða vitnisburð, þá gialldi hinn honum fulrétti, en biscopi eiða sect. En ef hann fær sic eigi scírt, þá hefir hann fyrirgort fé sínu öllu við scapdróttin, oc liggia á .iii. mercr sylfrmetnar, nema hann launi af sér. Oc svá um vánar mann.
(Frostathing, IX. 10.) But if the accused calls himself árborinn let him reckon up four of his forefathers as árborinn men, he being the fifth himself, and have for it the evidence of two árborinn householders. But if he is so supportless that he does not get this, and yet sets up this defence [viz. that he is árborinn], then he shall prove his kin to be árborinn by ordeal. And if he is cleared by iron or evidence, the other shall pay him full atonement, and to the bishop an oath fine. If he cannot clear himself, he has forfeited all his property to his master, and is liable to pay three marks in silver, unless he work it off. The same applies to a vánar mann [man of hope, i.e. the higher class of leysing].
So far the conclusions drawn from the laws respecting the leysing do not vary much from the views expounded by Dr. Konrad von Maurer in his ‘Die Freigelassenen nach altnorwegischem Rechte,’ and confirmed by so great an authority they can hardly have wandered very far from the truth.
The theory of this gradual growth of the kindred of the leysing is so nearly analogous to that of the Cymric alltud, and the Irish fuidhir, and at the same time so logical, when the tribal theory of blood-relationship is applied to it, that we cannot be dealing with the fanciful theory of legal enthusiasts which never had an actual place in practical life. Behind all this imperfect description, in the laws, of social conditions and landholding there was, no doubt, a reality, the features of which may be difficult to grasp from our modern point of view, but which become, I think, fairly intelligible when approached from a tribal point of view.
The leysings have become a family group, and the descendants of the master also.
When we consider that in the course of the successive generations, during which some kind of shadowy lordship seems to have prevailed over the family of leysings, they must generally have multiplied into considerable numbers, and that the descendants of the master of the leysing ‘who made freedom ale’ must during the same period also have multiplied; and further when we consider that the descendants of the leysing were in some sense, it would seem, adscripti glebæ, we have to recognise not merely a relation between individuals but something approaching to a relation between two classes, tribesmen and non-tribesmen, the one in some sense in a kind of servitude to the other. In other words, we have to conceive of a kindred of half-free tenants, living under the joint shadowy lordship of a kindred of fully-free men, probably in some tribal sense landowners, with complicated tribal rights among themselves.
It would seem that this semi-subject class of leysings were mostly the descendants of a class of thralls, it may be perhaps in origin some conquered race, members of which had gradually grown into leysings and were now gradually in successive stages growing into freemen.
Before we can fully understand this process we must examine the other side of the question and learn what was the position of the fully-free class by whom this more or less shadowy lordship over the leysing class was exercised. In the meantime it may be remarked that the shadowy lordship of one class or tribe over another finds parallels enough in Indian experience, and that, coming nearer home, we have only to remember the petty exactions of the cadets of French noble families upon a peasantry over whom their family, or the feudal head of it, held a quasi-manorial lordship.