Note 708 — Chapter IV · RISE OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

We have here the case of an "appointed daughter." The son of a "brotherless maiden" was sometimes reserved to be the heir of her father, not of her husband. How could a man marry such a brotherless girl and secure himself in the possession of his child, to continue his own hearth-worship? This might be effected by payment of the "official" price of one hundred cows and one wagon (Wagen), and this was so even in the later period when the law-books frowned upon wife-purchase: Leist, op. cit., 110 n. 10, 127 n. 3, 130, 131, and the references to the ancient law-books there given.