Re: Re: Dream walking?

From: donald_at_...
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 00:24:29 GMT


In message <4060B296.4020706_at_...> Julian Lord writes:
>Bryan :
>
>>Most relevant to the above was that long after church law was well
>>established, and the upper class's were following it, observers still
>>commented that in peasant villages it was common for people to simply
>>move in together, with "no" ceremony at all (I suspect that actually
>>meant no church ceremony). Certainly this suggests that from a
>>sociological point of view, it is entirely possible for the 'lower
>>classes' to follow a completely different pattern than the upper
>>classes.

As a general rule it takes at least a generation for any change in a behaviour pattern to move down one rung on the social scale. In those days it usually took several generations. So it becomes a certainty that there are different patterns between different social classes.

>This is something that's actually missing, IMO, in both Glorantha and KAP.
>
>Marriage, as the legal institution that we in the West currently know,
>is actually a relatively recent invention. That is, prior to the modern
>invention of pervasive legalism, marriage was, generally speaking, just
>the social recognition that a man and a woman were living together and
>producing offspring (or not). Except for the rich and/or powerful.

What's often called "common law marriage", finally abolished in England during the 18th Century along with the practice of selling wives to their new partner as a cheap alternative to divorce.

I wonder where in Glorantha that practice exists? Teshnos? or perhaps selling husbands is practiced in Esrolia.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/

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