He is to be slain like a wild beast, for a wild beast he is: he bears the “wolfs-head”! This, the oldest term, is also the most expressive. Nor will native expressions such as “a friendless man,” or “a man without peace,” serve our enquiry. We shall have to go back further than the Latin word utlagere, a monkish transcription into the language of the Caesars of the Saxon words ut, meaning out, and lagan, to make law. The most ancient words which our ancestors use to describe the outlaw may prove to be of interest. It is every man’s duty, as it is his privilege, to pursue him, to track him down as a wild beast, and to slay him. If the villain escape, he becomes an outlaw he is then outside the peace. “Hue and Cry,” says Matthew Bacon, writing in the eighteenth century, “is the Pursuit of an Offender from Town to Town, till he be taken, which all who are present when a Felony is committed, or a dangerous Wound given, are by the Common Law, as well as by Statute, bound to raise against Offenders who escape, on Pain of Fine and Imprisonment.” “Note,” says the book called “Crompton,” however, “that a person having a parsonage is not held to follow the hue and cry, for that he should be about the visitation of the sick”!
0 kommentar(er)
