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:—
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]