Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law / Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'

by Frederic Seebohm

And if there be any dispute concerning her milk, she is to be taken on the 9th day of May to a luxuriant place wherein no animal has been before her, and the owner is to milk her without leaving any for the calf, and put the milk in the measure vessel, and if it be full twice a day that is sufficient; and if it be not, the deficiency is to be compensated by oatmeal until the feast of St. Curic, thence until the feast of St. Michael by barley meal, and from thence until the calendar of winter by rye meal.

Others say that the worth of the milk deficient in the measure is to be returned to the possessor of the cow; if half the milk be deficient, half the worth; if a third of the milk, a third of the worth; and that is the best mode.[54]

Then the milk measure is described thus:—

The measure for her milk is, three thumbs at the bottom, six in the middle of the vessel, and nine at the top, and nine in its height diagonally (enyhyd en amrescoeu), and the thumb whereby the vessel is to be measured (in case of dispute) is the breadth of the judge’s thumb.

In the Dimetian Code substantially the same rules are given, except that the measure of the cow’s milking is smaller.

The measure of a vessel for a cow’s milk is nine thumbs at its edge, and three at the bottom, and seven diagonally from the off-side groove to the near-side edge in height.[55]

The only difference is between the seven and the nine thumbs of diagonal measurement. Possibly there may be some error in the figures, and the measure may have been the same in both Codes.

Returning to the galanas; although it was reckoned in the Codes in scores of cows, a fixed equation had already been made between cows and silver.

The cow reckoned as three ‘scores’ or ounces of silver.

The normal cow was equated in the Codes with ‘three scores of silver.’ And in the Latin version of the Dimetian Code the ‘score of silver’ is translated by ‘uncia argenti.’ The score of silver at the date of the Code was therefore an ounce of silver. So that the reckoning is the Frankish or Anglo-Saxon one of twenty pence to the ounce.