and imposed by kings
and conquerors of old. Tribute infers subjection in archaic law. The
poll-tax in the fourteenth century in England was unpopular, because of
its seeming to degrade Englishmen to the level of Frenchmen, who paid
tribute like vanquished men to their absolute lord, as well as for other
reasons connected with the collection of the tax.

The old fur tax (mentioned in "Egil's Saga") is here ascribed to FRODE,
who makes the Finns pay him, every three years, a car full or sledge
full of skins for every ten heads; and extorts one skin per head from
the Perms. It is Frode, too (though Saxo has carved a number of Frodes
out of one or two kings of gigantic personality), that made the Saxons
pay a poll-tax, a piece of money per head, using, like William the
Conqueror, his extraordinary revenue to reward his soldiers, whom he
first regaled with double pay. But on the conquered folks rebelling,
he marked their reduction by a tax of a piece of money on every limb a
cubit long, a "limb-geld" still more hateful than the "neb-geld."

HOTHERUS (Hodr) had set a tribute on the Kurlanders and Swedes, and
HROLF laid a tribute on the conquered Swedes.

GODEFRIDUS-GOTRIC is credited with a third Saxon tribute, a heriot of
100 snow-white horses payable to each Danish king at his succession, and
by each Saxon chief on his accession: a statement that, recalling sacred
snow-white horses kept in North Germany of yore makes one wish for
fuller information. But Godefridus also exacted from the Swedes the
"Ref-gild", or Fox-money; for the slaying of his henchman Ref, twelve
pieces of gold from each man of rank, one from every commoner. And his
Friesland tribute is stranger still, nor is it easy to understand from
Saxo's account. There was a long hall built, 240 feet, and divided up
into twelve "chases" of 20 feet each (probably square). There was a
shield set up at one end, and the taxpayers hurled their money at it; if
it struck so as to sound, it was good; if not, it was forfeit, but not
reckoned in the receipt. This (a popular version, it may be, of some
early system of treasury test) was abolished, so the story goes, by
Charles the Great.

RAGNAR'S exaction from Daxo, his son's slayer, was a yearly tribute
brought by himself and twelve of his elders barefoot, resembling in part
such submissions as occur in the Angevin family history, the case of the
Calais burgesses, and of such criminals as the Corporation of Oxford,
whose