Under the Welsh Laws (ii. p. 105) the liability of the owner of a slave for his homicides was apparently complete.
If a bondman commit homicide of whatever kind, it is right for the lord of the bondman to pay for the deed of his bondman as for a murderer, for he is a murderer.
And this probably must be taken as the general rule of tribal custom in its early stages.
In the laws of the Saxons and of the Anglii and Werini the ancient German tribal custom was still preserved. The owner of an animal or a slave was liable for any injury done by either, very much as if it had been done by himself (‘Lex Sax.’ xii. Ang. and Wer. 16 and 52).
Then made a half-wergeld only, and the slave to be handed over for the other half.
But it would seem that Roman and Christian feeling very early suggested that this was hard upon the innocent owner. Hence in some of the laws the compromise was made that the owner should pay only a half-wergeld and hand over the offending animal or slave instead of the other half.
That this innovation was not altogether acceptable to tribal feeling is shown by clauses in the ‘Pactus III.’ of the Alamannic laws. The whole wergeld was to be paid by the owner if his horse, ox, or pig killed a man (s. 18). But an exception was made in the case of the dog. If a man’s dog killed any one, a half-wergeld (medium werigeldum) was to be paid, and if the whole wergeld was demanded, all the doors but one of the house of the person making the demand were to be closed and the dog was to be hung up nine feet from the only one left open for ingress or egress, and there it must remain till it fell from putrefaction. If it was removed or any other door was used, the wergeld was to be returned (s. 17).
Grimm (‘D. R.’ p. 665) has pointed out that in the Ostgotalaga (Drap. 13, 2) a similar archaic practice is described when a slave had killed a man. The owner of the slave under this law ought to pay the whole wergeld, and if he did not do so the slave was to be hung up at his (the owner’s) house door till the body putrefied and fell. Thus the same archaic method of punishing the delinquent was retained in both cases. But the significant point is that so long as the whole wergeld was due from the owner it was at the owner’s door that the body of the slayer was to be hung up, while when the half-wergeld only was to be paid, the dog was to be hung up at the door of the person who improperly demanded the whole wergeld. Thus, as in so many other cases, the twelfth-century laws of the North preserved the earlier custom of the payment of the whole wergeld, while the Alamanni, after migration into contact with Roman and Christian civilisation, in their laws of the seventh century modified the custom, at the same time retaining the archaic method of forcing compliance with the modification. It must be remembered that every change which relieved the innocent owner from liability, wholly or in part, robbed the kindred of the person slain of the whole or the part of the wergeld.
The compromise of payment of the half-wergeld and the handing over of the offending animal or slave was not confined to the Alamannic laws.
In the Ripuarian Law xlvi. the animal which had killed a man was to be handed over and received ‘in medietatem wirigildi’ and the owner was to pay the other half.