[182] The following is from the Venedotian Code, i. p. 179. ‘The ecclesiastical law says that no son is to have the patrimony but the eldest born to the father by the married wife: the law of Howell, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the oldest (i.e. all the sons), and decides that sin of the father or his illegal act is not to be brought against a son as to his patrimony.’ Bastards were not excluded till the Statute of Rothllan.
[183] ‘Geschlecht und Verwandtschaft im alt-norwegischen Rechte,’ in the Zeitschrift für Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte, vol. vii. (Weimar). To this essay I am much indebted.
[184] Some authorities infer from this that the parents alone were put in the grave. K. von Maurer thinks only the children, and apologises for it as ‘nur eine aus grauer Vorzeit überlieferte Antiquität.’
[185] Skåne, being only divided from the island of Zealand by the Sound, during the Viking period belonged to Denmark. It afterwards became a Swedish province, being finally ceded by Denmark in 1658.
[186] The various views upon the relation of the two versions to each other are very usefully discussed in the introduction to M. Beauchet’s Loi de Vestrogothie (Paris, 1894), pp. 67-75. The Latin version was published in 1846 at Copenhagen as Vol. I. of the Samling af Danske Love and both Latin and Danish versions in Dr. Schlyter’s Corpus Juris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui, Lund. 1859.
[187] See Du Cange, s. v. ‘Moventes’ = pecudes.
[188] ‘Filius-familias’ in another MS.
[189] As to the fælagh or partnership between husband and wife, see the Gulathing Law, 53. The word fælagh seems to be equivalent to the ‘definitio’ of the Latin text, the definitio of the property being made at the time of the marriage. The word seems to be allied to the English word ‘fellowship.’ See Skeat, sub ‘fellow,’ who refers it to Icelandic ‘felag,’ literally ‘a laying together of property.’
[190] See Untersuchungen zur Erbenfolge &c., Julius Ficker, ii. p. 143: ‘Gulathingsbuch und Frostathingsbuch kennen keinen Eintritt der Sohnessöhne in das volle Recht des Parens.’
[191] Beauchet, p. 60.