Note 84 — Chapter II · THE MARK.
Reading edition
I am inclined to think that the cwealmstow or place of execution was properly in the mark; as it is indeed probable that all capital punishments among the Germans were originally in the nature of sacrifices to the gods. When Juliana is about to be put to death, she is taken to the border, londmearce neáh, nigh to the landmark. Cod. Exon. p. 280. Prometheus hung in the ἄβροτος ἐρημία: though perhaps there is another and deeper feeling here,—that the friend of man should suffer in the desert
“where no man comes,
Nor hath come, since the making of the world!”