of the wisest and at the same time most just and honourable of men. This
gift ran in families, for Helgi Njal's son had it, and it was beyond a
doubt one of the deepest-rooted of all their superstitions.


SOCIAL PRINCIPLES.

Besides his creed and these beliefs the new settler brought with him
certain fixed social principles, which we shall do well to consider
carefully in the outset.... First and foremost came the father's right
of property in his children. This right is common to the infancy of all
communities, and exists before all law. We seek it in vain in codes
which belong to a later period, but it has left traces of itself in all
codes, and, abrogated in theory, still often exists in practice. We find
it in the Roman law, and we find it among the Northmen. Thus it was the
father's right to rear his children or not at his will. As soon as it
was born, the child was laid upon the bare ground; and until the father
came and looked at it, heard and saw that it was strong in lung and
limb, lifted it in his arms, and handed it over to the women to be
reared, its fate hung in the balance, and life or death depended on the
sentence of its sire. After it had passed safely through that ordeal, it
was duly washed, signed with Thorns holy hammer, and solemnly received
into the family. If it were a weakly boy, and still more often, if it
were a girl, no matter whether she were strong or weak, the infant was
exposed to die by ravening beasts, or the inclemency of the climate.
Many instances occur of children so exposed, who, saved by some kindly
neighbour, and fostered beneath a stranger's roof, thus contracted ties
reckoned still more binding than blood itself. So long as his children
remained under his roof, they were their father's own. When the sons
left the paternal roof, they were emancipated, and when the daughters