From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 13 Sep 2000 - 02:57:42 EEST
Donald R. Oddy:
> On a similar topic, what's the Orlanthi view on bride stealing? Cattle
> raiding is clearly OK and I can imagine the same view applies to
> raiding another clan for a wife. Clearly if she (or he) refuses the
> marriage it won't occur but otherwise it could cause immense complications
> both over dowery and bride price as well as a member of a hostile clan
> within your own.
I'm sure it happens. Often doubtless as either a de facto elopement,
or as a sort of pseudo-consensual Orlanthi S&M practice. ;-) (And
husband-stealing, to be fair! (Isn't that the episode that occurs
in KoDP?)) If everyone kisses and makes up it would be 'expected'
that normal dowry and brideprice be paid, but since the deal has
effectively already been done, this is bound to complicate negotiations,
and change the 'balance of power' therein. (i.e., one clan is not
actually in possession of the partner to be 'negotiated away', to
paraphrase a very old Spitting Image. OTOH, they are technically
the offended-against party, so do have the somewhat drastic option
of prosecuting the matter by forceful, political or legal means.)
> >If a nightmare scenario like open warfare descends, then the women
> >in such situations have some hard choices to make, and will more
> >often than not to be heard to be pointing out, "There is always
> >another way" (perhaps more in hope than in expectation).
> As you were asking earlier, what is the usual result? While I'm sure
> there isn't an absolute rule there must be a traditional response
> if only to avoid a wife picking up a spear and killing a raider who
> turns out to be her cousin. Perhaps we need a myth to cover the
> situation.
The great thing about traditions is that there are so many of them.
OTOH, there must surely be a Vingan myth for this situation, since
> I don't think a stead would usually have a large number of bloodlines,
Agreed. These are probably bordering on becoming villages, in some
> The average stead would have members of maybe three or four bloodlines
Again you're assuming bloodline property, which is (in the sense
But the example is handy enough, since it illustrates what I think
Because they're not the same thing. What's KoS's "confirmation",
> In KoS a bloodline is described as the smallest social unit in terms
It does say this, but what it actually means by this is as clear
> Effectively that means the law does not recognise property
That's explicitly not true; from G:G, we know they _do_ have property
Bloodline property OTOH I see no evidence of, and no logic for.
Slán,
A precedent for every response, and a myth for every situation. ;-)
I really don't think there is a 'usual result' in any strong sense.
It would at the very least vary by the class of marriage (as others
have said), by the wife's circumstances (has she any children?
is she magically and ritually part of the 'local' earth cult?
is she hip-deep in clan politics?), but most fundamentally by
how the woman in question would choose to resolve what's a
fundamentally impossible choice. Your brothers, or your
husband? Your parents, or your children?
for them, there bleedin' well had better _not_ 'be another way'...
> the most would be the clan chief's where specialists such as
> lawspeakers and weaponthanes live irrespective of bloodline.
cases. (OK, hamlets, then...)
> and the reason for this is spread of occupations. In order to be
> largely self sufficent a stead needs carls, cottars, pig tenders
> and even stickpickers. I don't see a bloodline rich enough to own
> an ox team and plough allowing some individuals to be so poor as
> to be reduced to stickpicking.
my pedantic philsopher friends would approve of) begging the
question. I'm not at all sure about the social dynamics of this,
either: why is a large mix of occupations/statuses necessary? It'd
be quite possible for a smallish stead, at least, to be focused on
just one main economic activity.
is the key question: where you have a stead or household consisting
of several bloodlines, which of them is the 'social unit', in
operative terms? It strikes me as odd, to say the least that one
would have 'communal property' which is actually owned at social
right-angles to the actual (micro-)community in which ones lives.
> chooses to live near to a good source of income and so becomes
> part of the stead. KoS confirms this but uses the word household
> rather than stead.
specifically?
> of _law_ as well as custom and tradition.
as mud. ;-)
> as owned by an individual, family or household. Within the bloodline
> there may well be an agreement that that is Ragnar's spade but legally
> it belongs to the bloodline.
at the clan and personal level. Household and stead property may
be, as you say, something of a matter of custom and practice, rather
than law: the hearthmistress's personal property, or the leading
person's of a stead, may often 'act as if' household/stead property.
And conversely, odal property may be 'traditionally for the use of'
a particular stead or hearth, with a simimlar result, from as it
were the opposite direction.
Alex.
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