PREFACE
To the two former Essays, on ‘The English Village Community’ and ‘The Tribal System in Wales,’ is now at last added in this volume a third on ‘Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law.’
In the first Essay an attempt was made to approach the early Anglo-Saxon evidence from the point of view of the Manorial system, and mainly by tracing back its connection with the open field system of agriculture—the shell, so to speak, in which it had all along apparently lived.
The object of this third Essay in the trilogy is to approach the Anglo-Saxon laws from the point of view of tribal custom.
As a preliminary to this attempt, a detailed study of Cymric tribal custom was made in the intermediate Essay in the belief that the knowledge so gained might be used as a clue to the understanding of survivals of tribal custom in the laws of the tribes most nearly allied to the invaders of Britain, and lastly in the Anglo-Saxon laws themselves.
The interval which has elapsed between the publication of the three Essays has made it necessary to make each of them, to some extent, independent and complete in itself.
It thus becomes necessary in this volume briefly to repeat, as well as further to develop, what was learned of Cymric tribal custom in the previous volume, especially as regards the ‘gwely,’ or family unit of tribal society, and as regards the methods of payment of the galanas, or death-fine for homicide in lieu of the blood-feud between kindreds.