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. 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?
OTOH, there must surely be a Vingan myth for this situation, since for them, there bleedin' well had better _not_ 'be another way'...
> I don't think a stead would usually have a large number of bloodlines,
> the most would be the clan chief's where specialists such as
> lawspeakers and weaponthanes live irrespective of bloodline.
Agreed. These are probably bordering on becoming villages, in some cases. (OK, hamlets, then...)
> The average stead would have members of maybe three or four bloodlines
> 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.
Again you're assuming bloodline property, which is (in the sense 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.
But the example is handy enough, since it illustrates what I think 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.
> More likely an unrelated bloodline
> 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.
Because they're not the same thing. What's KoS's "confirmation", specifically?
> In KoS a bloodline is described as the smallest social unit in terms
> of _law_ as well as custom and tradition.
It does say this, but what it actually means by this is as clear as mud. ;-)
> Effectively that means the law does not recognise property
> 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.
That's explicitly not true; from G:G, we know they _do_ have property 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.
Bloodline property OTOH I see no evidence of, and no logic for.
Slán,
Alex.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #844
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