abadidea
Old Frisian laws be like:
If a man’s spine be splintered, such that he may never again bring himself to bath or bed, to wagon or wife, never again to roam on roads or glide on glittering ice: he is owed half the price of a slaughtered life.
And if he’s oozing pus, three shillings.
abadidea
the two-week class on Old Frisian is almost entirely laws on causing miscarriage and sexual harassment — for example, spelling out that flipping a woman’s skirt is a serious crime, with a higher fine than many bodily injuries
To me the most interesting thing is that the fine for killing a pregnant woman is seven(!) times that of murdering a random guy, and it’s characterized as a grim and grisly deed.
✧✦Catherine✦✧
@0xabad1dea @_yossi_ they had a specific law against stabbing someone in the dick?
abadidea
@_yossi_ the specific monetary amount of the weregeld (price of a life) isn’t spelled out in any of the texts I’ve read, it seems it was taken for obvious. But for context:
16 shillings = one mark
Drawing a man’s blood in his sensitive region, but with no permanent damage: four shillings
Sexually harassing a woman by flipping her skirt: fifteen shillings
Causing a miscarriage in the first few months: twelve marks
Causing a miscarriage in the last few months: full weregeld, so clearly more than twelve marks
Yossi
@0xabad1dea what's the exchange rate between a slaughtered life and shillings?
Is 3 a lot?
✧✦Catherine✦✧
@0xabad1dea @_yossi_ oh, yeah, that makes sense: someone's reproductive capacity is worth a certain part of a life because it is upstream of making a life
abadidea
@whitequark @_yossi_ they had specific laws on whether you sundered someone’s left testicle or their right.
✧✦Catherine✦✧
@mcgrew @0xabad1dea @_yossi_ you'd think they've had enough men who lost one testicle to empirically check that!
mcgrew
@0xabad1dea @whitequark @_yossi_ I've read about a medieval belief that which testicle the sperm comes from determined the gender of the child, though I can't find a good reference for that atm. Maybe related to that?
✧✦Catherine✦✧
@0xabad1dea @arachromatics @_yossi_ ... hm, i wonder if that's actually a thing.
abadidea
@arachromatics @whitequark @_yossi_ for some reason they felt a leftie had more chance of begetting than a rightie (so having only the right one remaining was a worse injury)
ara
@0xabad1dea @whitequark @_yossi_ which one was more severe? 🤨
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