Similar evidences of the sale-marriage are afforded by the South German folk-laws.[853] Among the Salian Franks the bride-price appears in form of the _arrha_, to be described presently, through the payment to the guardian by the bridegroom of the "golden shilling and the silver penny." In this form the _arrha_ was paid by the representatives of Chlodwig, the Frankish king, at his betrothal with Chlotilde, sister and ward of Gundobad, king of the Burgundians.[854] Faint traces of wife-purchase survive in the Bavarian[855] and Alamannian codes;[856] while in the _lex saxonum_ marriage is simply described as _uxorem emere_, or "buying a wife."[857] The sale-contract retains much of its primitive character, in spite of ecclesiastical influences, in the West Gothic, Burgundian, and Lombard codes. Among the West Goths the betrothal was almost as binding as a marriage. The father or other legal protector might contract his daughter or ward against her will. If she disregards such a contract and marries another man, both bride and bridegroom are "handed over to the power" of him to whom she was betrothed by her father or guardian, "and any relatives abetting the marriage shall pay a penalty of gold."[858] The provisions of the other two codes last mentioned are conceived in a similar spirit.[859] Moreover, even in the customs of the Scandinavian North forms and phrases have survived which seem to point unmistakably to the former existence of wife-purchase.[860]
[853] An exhaustive study of these laws is, of course, not attempted. They are thoroughly exploited in the works of Sohm, Brunner, Schroeder, Friedberg, Dargun, and others.
[854] "Legati offerentes solidum et denarium, ut mos erat Francorum, eam partibus Chlodovei sponsant: placitum ad praesens petentes, ut ipsam ad conjugium traderet Chlodoveo."--FREDEGARIUS, _Greg. Turon. hist. epit._, c. xviii: in GUADET AND TARANNE'S ed., IV, 172, 173; or in GIESEBRECHT'S trans., II, 273-75. Compare SOHM, _Eheschliessung_, 32 n. 21; SCHROEDER, _Güterrecht_, I, 55 n. 3, and authorities cited; MERIL, _Des formes_, 30; LEBER, _Des Coutumes_, 24; WEINHOLD, _Deutsche Frauen_, I, 323; FRIEDBERG, _Eheschliessung_, 19 n. 7. The price of a maid is not fixed in the _lex salica_; but in c. 44 the price of a widow is given (BEHREND, 58); and elsewhere the woman's _mund_ is fixed at 62-1/2 solidi. FICKER, _Untersuchungen zur Rechtsgeschichte_, III, 400, 401, regards the _arrha_, not as a survival of the bride-price, but as a symbol of mutual troth.