"It cannot be ascertained that any of the Teutonic nations reduced their customs into writing, until the influence of increasing civilisation rendered it expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the maxim or principle in proverbial or antithetical sentences like the Cymric triads. The marked alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon laws is to be referred to the same cause, and in the Frisic laws several passages are evidently written in verse. From hence, also, may originate those quaint and pithy rhymes in which the doctrines of the law of the old time are not unfrequently recorded."[127]
Again, the editors of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulæ, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the passage describing Beowulf engaged in his fatal combat with the fiery dragon, when his "companions," stricken with terror, deserted him, on which Wiglaf pronounced the following malediction:—
"Now shall the service of treasure,
and the gifts of swords,
all joy of paternal inheritance,
all support
of all your kin depart;
every one of your family
must go about
deprived of his rights
of citizenship;
when far and wide
the nobles shall learn
your flight,
your dishonourable deed.
Death is better
to every warrior
than disgraced life."
Mr. Kemble remarks on this passage, that it is not improbable that the whole denunciation is a judicial formula, such as we know early existed, and in regular rhythmical measure.[129]
These early examples may be followed up by others preserved to modern times. The most significant of these occurs in the Church ceremony of marriage, which preserves in the vernacular the ancient rhythmical formula of the marriage laws, and the antiquity of the Church ritual is proved from the fact that it is accompanied and enforced by the old rhythmical verse, which is indicative of early legal or ceremonious usage.
"With this rynge I the wed
And this gold and silver I the geve,
and with my body I the worshipe,
and with all my worldely cathel I the endowe."[130]
Sir Francis Palgrave has noticed the subject, and points out that the wife is taken
"to have and to hold[131]
from this day forward
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,[132]
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part
and thereto I plight thee my troth."
These words are inserted in our service according to the ancient canon of England, and even when the Latin mass was sung by the tonsured priest, the promises which accompany the delivery of the symbolical pledge of union were repeated by the blushing bride in a more intelligible tongue.[133] This is a curious and significant fact, and as we trace out these rhythmical lines farther back in their original vernacular, the more clearly distinct is their archaic nature. According to the usage of Salisbury the bride answered:—
"I take thee, John,
to be my wedded husband,
to have and to hold
fro' this day forward
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sycknesse, in hele,
to be bonere and buxom [obedient]
in bedde and at borde
till death do us part
and thereto I plight thee my trothe."[134]