Note 426.1 — Chapter XV · THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE BLOOD-TIE—CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE LIFE-TOKEN.

I mentioned a page or two back the extreme demands of blood as found in the Italian vendetta. The words were only just written, when I took up the newspaper of the day, and read an account of a trial for murder arising out of a blood-feud in Dalmatia. The actors in the tragedy were not Italians, but Slavs. The facts were shortly these. Two brothers, having quarrelled with a neighbour about some goats, threw themselves upon him with their daggers; but he defended himself with his pistol, and, having killed one, was tried for murder. The jury properly acquitted him, on the ground that he was only acting in self-defence. Hardly had he left the prison when his surviving assailant, with another brother, hastened to his house. They found there only their foe’s wife and daughters; and they waited and watched. Soon they espied the acquitted man’s younger brother, a boy of fourteen, carrying a pitcher of water. Crying “The devil threw thee in our way,” they seized him, and stabbed him so quickly that he had no time even to cry out. They were speedily arrested, tried, found guilty of murder, and condemned, the one to death, and the other to eighteen years’ penal servitude. They protested against the sentence, and appealed to the Court of Cassation at Vienna. There their counsel had the assurance to plead that “in Dalmatia it is every man’s duty to take vengeance where blood has been shed; and that the people feel it right to pursue a family, one of whose members has killed a connection of their own, as long as there is a male descendant.” This was a little more than a civilised court of justice could stand; and it will be no fault of the judges if the Dalmatian savages do not learn that the unity of the kin is not a doctrine of modern jurisprudence.426.1