EN019.08 Common
Ott 2025
E. Laws
Common Laws
19.08 Common laws
1. All Frya children are born in like wise. Therefore, they must also have the same rights, whether on land or on water,[1] or any place Wralda provides.
2. Every man may ask the wife of his choice, and every daughter may respond by offering her cup of welcome to the one she loves.[2]
3. When a man has taken a wife, they are given a house and yard. If there is none, it must be built.
4. If he has gone to another village for a wife and he wishes to remain there, they must provide a house and yard, as well as free use of the commons.
5. All shall be provided with a share of land behind their house as a yard. None may have a share before their house, much less a surrounding share. Only someone who has done a worthwhile deed serving the common good may be given such, and his youngest son may inherit it. But after that, the village must take it back. [020]
6. Every village shall possess common land as required, and the alderman shall see to it that all fertilize and nurture their alloted share, so that those who come after might suffer no scarcity.
7. Every village may have a market for buying and selling — or trading. All the remaining land shall be reserved for agriculture and woodland. But the trees thereof, none shall fell without common consent and without the knowledge of the forest-alderman, as the woods are for common use. Therefore, no one may own them.
8. The village may not take market charges exceeding one-twelfth of the receipts,[3] neither from locals nor from strangers. And the market portion may not be sold before the other goods.
9. All the market revenue must be annually divided into a hundred parts, three days before the Yule Day.
10. The reeve and his aldermen shall receive twenty parts thereof; the market judge and his helpers five parts, ten parts for the market itself; the Folksmother one part and the regional mother four parts; the village ten parts, and the poor — that is, those who are unable or in no position to work — fifty parts.
11. Those who come to the market are strictly forbidden [021] to practice usury. If any should do so, the maidens are obliged to make them known throughout the whole land, so that they will never be chosen for any office. For such people have covetous hearts. To accumulate wealth, they would betray all; the folk, the mother, their relatives, and ultimately themselves.
12. If any man is so corrupt that he sells diseased cattle or damaged goods as sound,[4] the market judge shall expel him and the maidens shall denounce him throughout the land.
Notes
- ↑ ‘water’ (É. THÀT IS WÉTER — ‘ea — that is, water’) — an association is suggested with ÉWA (eawa: laws) and É.LIKA (ea-like: equally, the same).
- ↑ ‘cup of welcome’ (HELD.DRVNK) — lit.: ‘hail-drink’. Wedding traditions include the couple sharing a drink from a two-handled ‘coupe de mariage’ in France or a ‘quaich’ (also called a ‘cup of welcome’) in Scotland; a 'loving cup' is a two-handled ceremonial cup associated with weddings and often awarded as a trophy.
- ↑ ‘one-twelfth (share)’ (THA TILLIFTE DÉL) — a better spelling would have been THAT TWILIFTE DÉL.
- ↑ ‘diseased’ (SJVCHT.SIAK) — more specifically: dropsy or water sickness (swelling and accumulation of fluid).
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Chapter E: Sandbach 1876