le freemen]
or ceorls [ordinary free farmers]. Slaves were not free. Freemen
had long hair and beards. Slaves' hair was shorn from their heads
so that they were bald. Slaves were chained and often traded.
Prisoners taken in battle, especially native Britons taken by
invading groups, became slaves. A slave who was captured or
purchased was a "theow". An "esne" was a slave who worked for
hire. A "weallas" was a Welsh slave. Criminals became slaves of
the person wronged or of the king. Sometimes a father pressed by
need sold his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who
increased in number during famine, which occurred regularly,
became slaves by giving up the freeman's sword and spear, picking
up a slave's mattock [pick ax for the soils], and placing their
head within a lord's or lady's hands. They were called wite-
theows. The original meaning of the word lord was "loaf-giver".
Children with a slave parent were slaves. The slaves lived in huts
around the homes of big landholders, which were made of logs and
consisted on one large room or hall. An open hearth was in the
middle of the earthen floor of the hall, which was strewn with
rushes. There was a hole in the roof to let out the smoke. Here
the landholder and his men would eat meat, bread, salt, hot spiced
ale, and mead while listening to minstrels sing about the heroic
deeds of their ancestors. Richer men drank wine. There were
festivals which lasted several days, in which warriors feasted,
drank, gambled, boasted, and slept where they fell. Physical
strength and endurance in adversity were admired traits.

Slaves often were used as grain grinders, ploughmen, sowers,
haywards, woodwards, shepherds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds,
cowherds, dairymaids, and barnmen. Slaves had no legal rights. A
lord could kill his slave at will. A wrong done to a slave was
regarded as done to his owner. If a person killed another man's
slave, he had to compensate him with the slave's purchase price.
The slave owner had to answer for the offenses of his slaves
against others, as for the mischief done by his cattle. Since a
slave had no property, he could not be fined for crimes, but was
whipped, mutilated, or killed.

During famine, acorns, beans, peas, and even bark were ground down
to supplement flour when grain stocks grew low. People scoured the
hedgerows for herbs, roots, nettles, and wild grasses, which were
usually left for the pigs. Sometimes people were driven to
in