CHAPTER VI.
TRIBAL CUSTOMS OF THE FRANKS AND OF THE TRIBES CONQUERED BY THE MEROVINGIAN KINGS.
I. THE WERGELDS OF THE LEX SALICA.
In turning now to the Lex Salica the inquiry will again at first more or less be a study of wergelds.
There are many difficult points in the construction of the Lex Salica, and the capitularies connected with it, which, after all the learned labour expended upon them, still remain unsettled. To attempt to discuss them fully would involve an amount of research and erudition to which this essay can lay no claim. All that can be attempted in this survey of the traces of tribal custom in the laws of the Continental tribes is to approach their text afresh in the light of the Cymric evidence, as a tentative first step towards, at last, approaching the Anglo-Saxon laws from the same tribal point of view and from the vantage-ground of a previous study of the survivals of tribal custom elsewhere.
The district within which the Lex Salica had force.
The Lex Salica had force apparently at first over the Franks of the district extending from the Carbonaria Silva on the left bank of the Meuse to the River Loire.
The first sixty-five chapters about A.D. 500, but with later alterations.
The earliest manuscripts of the Lex Salica are considered to belong to the late eighth or early ninth century. And the general opinion seems to be that the first sixty-five chapters may be ascribed to the time of Clovis, or at least to a period before Christianity had become general among the Franks.