To sum up the results obtained from the study of tribal custom as incidentally revealed in Beowulf:—
(1) There is no feud within the kindred when one kinsman slays another. However strong the natural instinct for avengement, it must be left to fate and natural causes. Accidental homicide does not seem to be followed even by exile. But murder within the kindred breaks the tribal tie and is followed by outlawry.
(2) Marriage between two kindreds is a common though precarious means of closing feuds between them. The son of such a marriage takes no part in a quarrel between his paternal and maternal relations.
(3) When a marriage takes place, the wife does not pass entirely out of her own kindred into her husband’s. Her own kindred, her father and brothers, maintain a sort of guardianship over her, and the son in some sense belongs to both kindreds. He may have to join in his maternal kindred’s feuds, and he may become the chieftain of his maternal kindred on failure of direct male succession, even though by so doing he may have to relinquish the right of chieftainship in his paternal kindred to another kinsman.
Finally, in passing from the blood feuds to the composition substituted for them, after what we have learned from Beowulf of tribal custom, there need be no surprise that maternal as well as paternal relations are found to be interested in them. We may fairly judge that tribal custom, in the stage in which we find it in Beowulf and later in the laws of various tribes, would not have been true to itself, had this been otherwise.
