Marriage a link between two gwelys. But as regards galanas the wife remained in her own kindred.
In such matters it is obvious that a good deal must depend upon the view taken of marriage itself at the particular stage of evolution in which the society might be. And it may as well be said at once that we should be quite wrong were we to regard marriage from the Roman point of view, i.e. as a transfer of the woman out of the potestas of her parents into the potestas of the husband. The Cymric example, to begin with, was quite different. The marriage of sisters to tribesmen from whom their sons could inherit tribal rights was a duty cast upon the kinsmen of the gwely.[26] It was thus an arrangement between two gwelys—a link between them—but no transfer. If a wife were slain, her galanas or death fine did not go to the husband and his family; it went to her kindred.[27] If a wife should commit murder, it was the wife’s family and not the husband’s on which rested the payment of galanas for her crime.[28] If the husband were killed the wife took one third of the saraad or fine for insult and wounding, but she took no part of the galanas of her husband.[29]
These points are in a sense unexpected. They belong to a stage of social life as far removed from Roman rules, or modern ones, as they are from the stage in which a wife was either purchased outright or stolen. And yet we shall find them in principle more or less clearly repeated in the varying customs of some of the tribes whose laws we are about to examine.
IV. THE FISCAL UNIT FOR THE PURPOSE OF FOOD-RENTS TO THE CHIEFTAINS.
The geographical unit for food rents.
The structure of tribal society in Wales is one thing. The practical working of its rules is another. Until we can to some extent realise its methods and see how its results could be worked out in everyday life, it must remain to some extent vague and mysterious. The nearer we get to its core, the greater its value as an instrument in further research.
We cannot, therefore, afford to disregard any hints that the Codes and surveys may give us, attention to which would help us to realise its methods or ways of working.
Districts called villatæ.
The Denbigh Extent, as already said, enables us to realise that, on the English conquest, the lordship of Denbigh was divided into grazing districts which had become the units of tribal food-rents, and which were adopted for purposes of future taxation. These districts were called by the scribes villatæ, and were occupied by gwelys of tribesmen and sometimes also by gwelys of non-tribesmen. Their homesteads or huts were occupied in severalty. Their grazing rights were undivided common rights, and within each gwely the rights of families and individuals were also undivided common rights.