use-carles to have winter-pay. The house-carle three pieces
of silver, a hired soldier two pieces, a soldier who had finished his
service one piece.

(The treatment of the house-carles gave Harald Harefoot a reputation
long remembered for generosity, and several old Northern kings have
won their nicknames by their good or ill feeding and rewarding their
comitatus.)

D. Again a civil code, dealing chiefly with the rights of travellers.

(a) Seafarers may use what gear they find (the "remis" of the text may
include boat or tackle).

(b) No house is to be locked, nor coffer, but all thefts to be
compensated threefold. (This, like A, b, which it resembles, seems a
popular tradition intended to show the absolute security of Frode's
reign of seven or three hundred years. It is probably a gloss wrongly
repeated.)

(c) A traveller may claim a single supper; if he take more he is a
thief (the mark of a prae-tabernal era when hospitality was waxing cold
through misuse).

(d) Thief and accomplices are to be punished alike, being hung up by
a line through the sinews and a wolf fastened beside. (This, which
contradicts A, i, k, and allots to theft the punishment proper for
parricide, seems a mere distorted tradition.)

But beside just Frode, tradition spoke of the unjust Kinge HELGE, whose
laws represent ill-judged harshness. They were made for conquered races,
(a) the Saxons and (b) the Swedes.

(a) Noble and freedmen to have the same were-gild (the lower, of course,
the intent being to degrade all the conquered to one level, and to allow
only the lowest were-gild of a freedman, fifty pieces, probably, in the
tradition).

(b) No remedy for wrong done to a Swede by a Dane to be legally
recoverable. (This is the traditional interpretation of the conqueror's
haughty dealing; we may compare it with the Middle-English legends of
the pride of the Dane towards the conquered English. The Tradition sums
up the position in such concrete forms as this Law of Helge's.)

Two statutes of RAGNAR are mentioned:--

(a) That any householder should give up to his service in war the worst
of his children, or the laziest of his slaves (a curious tradition, and
used by Saxo as an opportunity for patriotic exaltation).

(b) That all suits shall be absolutely referred to the judgment of
twelve chosen elders (Lodbroc here appearing in the strange character of
originator of trial by jury).

"Tributes".--Akin to laws are the tributes decreed