Dewi and all,
Thanks so much for the three replies to by cowyll query. Dewi, thanks
inparticular for typing all that in, that was very kind. This is what I was
looking for; an original source that describes cowyll in detail. It is
exactly as the book described it and I wanted to read more about it as it
helps us to create a picture of how our long ago ancestors lived.
Many thanks,
Elysia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dewi Evans" <dewi.evans(a)web.de>
To: <POWYS-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 5:54 AM
Subject: [POWYS] Re: Cowyll
Have just read Lysi's query re Cowyll.
I recently read "The Law of Hywel Dda" (ISBN 0 86383 277 6) printed by
Gomer Press, Llandysul.
The book is well worth reading.
He wrote a whole book called "the Laws of Women".
Anway, Cowyll is well defined and regulated. If you contact me off list, I
can scan
the pages and mail them on (7 in all regarding Cowyll), but
essentially it is as follows (quoted extracts):
"The 3 privy things of a wife: her cowyll and her gowyn and her sarhaed.
This
is the reason those three are callled thre privy things, that they are
three things proper to a wife and cannot be taken from her for any reason.
This is her cowyll, the thing she gets for her virginity. ..."
" and if they [husand and wife] separate before the end of the seventh
year,
let him pay her agweddi and her dowry and her cowyll if she was given
as a maiden. And if she leaves her husband before the seventh year she loses
all that except her cowyll and her wynebwerth i discharge of her gowyn. If
her husband is leprous or of stinking breath or cannot copulate with his
wife: if because of one of these things she leaves her husband, she is
entitled to get the whole of what is hers."
" There are three legal agweddiau: the agweddi of a kings daughter, twenty
four pounds (and her cowyll eight pounds); the agweddi of a goodmans
daughter, three pounds (and her cowyll a pound); the agweddi of a villeins
daughter, a pound (and her cowyll six score pence).
And the husband pays the cowyll for it is land which he pays to
her."
"if it happens that a maiden is given to a man, and her cowyll is not
claimed
before she rises from bed on the morrow, he is not bound to answer
for it from then on. If it happens to a maiden that she does not appropriate
her cowyll before she rises from bed on the morrow, it is right for her
cowyll from then on to be in common between them".
--
Dewi Evans
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dewievans/index.html
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