relieved themselves
of the duty of caring for their offspring, while those to whom the
children were committed often looked upon them as so many units of
labor, and made life very hard for them. Homicide was frequently one
of the effects of the baleful practice, and generally occurred under
conditions that made it difficult to fix the guilt.

It is interesting to note, as Gummere points out, that the barbaric
custom of exposing infants "lies at the foundation of the most
exquisite myths--Lohengrin the swan-knight, Arthur the forest
foundling, and that mystic child who in the prelude of our national
epic, _Beowulf_, drifts in his boat, a child of destiny, to the shores
of a kingless land."

Grimm quotes from a Danish ballad, where a mother puts her babe in
a chest, lays with it consecrated salt and candles, and goes to the
waterside:

"Thither she goes along the strand
And pushes the chest so far from land,
Casts the chest so far from shore:
'To Christ the Mighty I give thee o'er;
To the mighty Christ I surrender thee,
For thou hast no longer a mother in me.'"

The custom of exposing illegitimate offspring shows a retrogression
from the standards of rugged chastity which were characteristic of
the earlier period of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain. In those
times, as we have seen, the German women were models of virtue; the
slightest departure from morality was viewed with horror and visited
with severe punishment. If the one guilty of misconduct were married,
she was shorn of her hair, the greatest degradation to which she could
be subjected, and then driven naked from her husband's house, her
own relatives giving their countenance and aid to the husband in thus
banishing her. She was expelled from the village, and not allowed to
return. At a later date, such a woman, married or unmarried, was made
to strangle herself with her own hands; her refusal to do so availed
nothing, as the women of the neighborhood stripped off her garments
to the waist, and then with knives, whips, and stones hunted her from
village to village until death mercifully relieved her from further
torture.

In spite of such harsh penalties, the moral standard could not be
maintained at a high level. It is more than likely that its decline
was due in part to the women whom the Northmen brought with them.
When they touched the shores of Britain, it was often after piratical
voyages that had taken them to the coasts of France