Blood feud

“ When the blood-feud is satisfied a reconciliation of the contending factions takes place. In all the feuds the heads of the murdered champions are cut off and taken home, and the headhunters celebrate the affair festally. ”

“ Why should there be feud, ever feud, ever bloodshed, useful blood poured out by both sides? Why ever dream of a past that is no more, and can nevermore be? You vanquished, despoiled, dominated, exploited and tortured us fifteen centuries at a stretch! ”

“ This was the law of the blood-feud truce; that the injured party might grant, when it desired to do so, on holy days or at a time of common danger from without, a reprieve of a stated length of time. During that time the families or tribes involved would meet and greet each other courteously, although on the day that the truce ended the law of the blood debt applied again, and they must kill each other at sight. ”

“ But if they will not pay, I will that all the kindred be free from the feud except the murderer, provided they do not afterwards give him food and protection.’ In such laws as these we catch a glimpse of a system of blood-vengeance which once prevailed amongst tribal peoples, but which soon became a mere echo, a phantom shadow of its former self, in the march of mightier movements, in the onward course of civilisation. ”

“ As may be supposed, therefore, the blood feud among them is a stern reality, and the function of the avenger of blood a solemn obligation. Should an opportunity not come soon for the achievement of their purpose, they can wait with grim patience ”

“ In this part of the Holy Land there are blood-feuds that have lasted hundreds of years. A man of one tribe or family has been killed by a man of another—the losing party proceeds to take revenge by killing a person of the offending one, then the latter takes its revenge, and so the fight goes on. These feuds exist between tribes, villages, or families, and are perpetuated through centuries. Every man goes armed, because he fears to be killed by some avenger of blood, and he is constantly on the lookout both to slay and to prevent being slain. ”

“ These two modes of vengeance, which we will call respectively Achaean and Pelasgian, may be thus described: (1) Amongst the Achaeans the normal penalty for homicide is death. Their system is private vendetta, of a restricted character, such as we have already described in our introductory chapter. The vengeance is quite personal and individual, that is, the murderer alone is liable to the blood feud, which is therefore neither collective nor hereditary. ”

“ Yet blood was shed and life taken more often than before, in sudden quarrel and old hereditary feud, daily—yea, hourly,—without other punishment or remedy than such as the nearest clansman or kinsman might inflict with the sword and torch—and these were seldom idle. ”

“ And then again what a fearful glimpse of those blood feuds which, having once begun, seem as if they could never end, blood touching blood, and violence evermore provoking its like, have we in the following: Kill, and thou shalt be killed, and they shall kill him who kills thee. ”

“ The ‘f’ki,’ or chief priest in a village mosque, draws up, with the aid of ‘tolba’ or public notaries, all legal documents regarding marriage or property. In other matters the Rifian does not submit to legislation; his gun, pistol, and dagger are his judge and jury—yet crimes such as robbery, theft, or outrages on women are rarely known, but murder from feud is rife throughout the country to a frightful extent. No man’s life is secure, even though he be a distant relative, such as the great-grandson, of some one who may have taken a life thirty years before in a blood feud. ”

“ A man's fellow-tribesmen were bound to avenge his murder; and so one slaughter led to another, and from generation to generation the land was filled with a perpetual series of blood-feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these feuds took place ”

“ The excitement and the intricate revolutions often bring the scene to the brink of a real warfare, and not infrequently it ends in bloodshed. In one instance, where a man fell, and in falling discharged his rifle with fatal effect into another dancer, the unintentional murderer would have had his throat cut there and then had not his friends hurriedly dragged him out and carried him off to his home, fighting as they went. In this way blood-feuds are sometimes started, which will divide a village into two factions, and not end till some of the bravest have fallen victims to it. ”

“ But in local blood-vengeance, arising, let us suppose, out of failure to pay wergeld, or when the murderer’s clan defended him at home or did not expel him and feud followed, was there no distinction between murder and just revenge? Glotz, as we should expect, holds that there was no distinction between murder and revenge. [161] ‘Coupable ou non coupable, il est responsable. Qui a versé du sang doit du sang.’ It is thus, certainly, with modern Montenegrins, Albanians and others. But are the creators of Mycenaean civilisation to be compared with these? ”

“ From far and near the tribesmen swarmed in, and men met face to face whose habitual encounter would have sent both dodging to cover, rifle to the shoulder. Blood-feuds were laid aside. Families that for months had lived in terror of their neighbors across the village street—quitting their domiciles stealthily by the back way when they had occasion to go out, while the sudden rifle-shot of the concealed marksman added steadily to the tale of vendetta-victims on both sides—mingled now with the throng, albeit cautiously. ”

“ We have not known much about law in this region, Lieutenant King, and men have learned to wreak their own vengeance. I cannot picture to you what the bitterness of a mountain feud means." She pressed her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the memory, yet went steadily on, her soft voice trembling with emotion. "I—I have seen so much of it; from my very babyhood I have lived amid scenes of violence—burned homes, women and children suffering and destitute; men shot down from ambush; and outrages unspeakable. War is terrible, but a mountain feud turns human beings into fiends. ”

“ The insistence of experts and enthusiasts on the law-abiding character of the sagas has naturally met with some surprise from readers of these endless private wars, and burnings, and "heath-slayings," these feuds where blood flows like water, to be compensated by fines as regular as a water-rate, these methodical assassinations, in which it is not in the least discreditable to heroes to mob heroes as brave as themselves to death by numbers, in which nobody dreams of measuring swords, or avoiding vantage of any kind. ”

“ In that guilty time, when obscene wings flapped about so many gilded roofs, when the sword dangled by a hair over so many noble heads, when foes cut throats by a whisper, when any day might expose a man to denunciation for imaginary crimes by one of the slaves whom he regarded as his natural enemies, any sudden movement, any unexpected event, was enough to drive the blood from the blanching cheek. But when such a cry—so wild, so startling—rang over the tumultuous sounds of an imperial banquet, they knew not whether the very earth was not about to open beneath their feet. ”

“ The scowl of the opposing parties, the blanched cheeks, the knit brows, and the grinding teeth, not pretermitting the deadly gleams that shoot from their kindled eyes, are ornaments which a plain battle between factions cannot boast, but which, notwithstanding, are very suitable to the fierce and gloomy silence of that premeditated vengeance which burns with such intensity in the heart, and scorches up the vitals into such a thirst for blood. ”

“ Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction, for that alone I thank thee; and now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle by thee; when thou liest down at night, my knife is at thy throat. The noon-day sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood! thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes! ”

“ From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or devours the goods.
Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not simply against blood and flesh. ”

“ Every now and then, it seems, when they have got in their harvest, they assemble to have a fight. Several are wounded, and sometimes a few are killed; in which case, if the numbers of the slain are not equal, the feud continues; and so it goes on from generation to generation, like a faction fight in Ireland, or the feudal wars of the barons of the middle ages,—a style of things which appears to belong to the nature of the human race, and not to any particular country, age, or faith. ”

“ Ruffling, and facing each other with their necks outstretched, “blood in their eyes,” and realizing to the full extent the danger of the situation, they prepare to fight it out to death. A quick stab, and the victim, trembling violently, a stream of red blood trickling down its leg, drops at the first encounter, and the fight is over. ”

“ I’m only too glad of an excuse to save a life when I can. Every drop of blood shed in this war North and South has been as if it were wrung out of my heart. A strange fate decreed that the bloodiest war in human history should be fought under my direction. And I—to whom the sight of blood is a sickening horror—I have been compelled to look on in silent anguish because I could not stop it! ”

“ All about, in the air, one hears the continual noise of work, the sound of hammering, sawing, grating, the ringing of the anvil, the voices of women who quarrel and scold. Now and then rises, all in a moment, without warning, a sudden brawl between two of the working men, at once knives are drawn and in a moment the thing is over, but it leaves a little pool of blood in the middle of the street, and a woman binds up a bleeding arm. ”

“ May the roar of Faction, thirsting for evil, never in this place be heard, nor the dust that drinks the dark blood of fellow-citizens bring to the State, from passion for revenge, the doom of retaliation. ”

“ All prey upon each other, and every individual in whatever rank is by nature, as well as by habit and inclination, an assassin. None will hesitate to mutilate or barbarously put to death any member of another clan whom he may find at advantage, either sleeping or at a distance from succour—the appetite for plunder, and the thirst for blood, inherent in the breast, being quite sufficient to dictate every act of atrocity, and to impel every dastardly outrage, that a savage can devise or commit. ”

“ They are not vices or crimes peculiar to the Kentuckian or the Corsican or the Sicilian or the Albanian or the Arab, but natural results of clan government, which in turn is a result of isolation, of physical environment, of geographical position unfavorable to free intercourse and commerce with the world at large.
The most hideous feature of the feud is the shooting down of unarmed or unwarned men. Assassination, in our modern eyes, is the last and lowest infamy of a coward. Such it truly is, when committed in the civilized society of our day. ”

“ As if by magic, the savages appeared at every point, yelling like demons of death, and slaughtering all they met. The men in the fields were killed with their own hoes and hatchets. Those in the houses were murdered on their own hearth-stones. So unlooked-for and terrible was the assault that in that day of blood three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children fell victims to their merciless foes. ”

“ But stop, my bold adventurous countrymen, stain not your weapons with the blood of Britons. Attend to reason's voice, humanity puts in her claim, and sues to be again admitted to her wonted seat, the bosom of the brave. Revenge is far beneath the noble mind. Many, perhaps, compelled to rank among the vile assassins, do, from their inmost souls, detest the barbarous action. The winged death, shot from your arms, may chance to pierce some breast that bleeds already for your injured country. ”

“ Women changed to furies and bacchanalians, roaring and shouting in their murderous desires; men, like blood- thirsty tigers, preparing to spring upon their prey, and give it the death-stroke; swinging pikes and guns, which gleamed horribly in the glare of the torches; arms and fists bearing threatening daggers and knives! All this was pressing on upon the palace—all these clinched fists would soon be engaged in hammering upon the walls which separated the king and queen from the people—the executioner from his victim! ”

“ The well-drilled foe came creeping up to the barricade on their knees, and protected by bronze bucklers, while others, in the rear, flung lances and arrows over their heads at the besieged. A few of the heathen fell, and the sight of their blood had a wonderful effect on their comrades. Rage surged up in the breasts of the most timid, and fear vanished before the passion for revenge; cowardice turned to martial ardor, and philosophers and artists thirsted for blood. ”

“ His sword and poniard were at once rent away, and he was dragged over the blood-stained floor towards the large arched fireplace. In the lust of blood, the feudal, or political, or religious rancour which animated those at whose mercy he was now so completely cast, they struggled with each other for who should give him a blow or a buffet, and contended vehemently for the office of binding him to the iron beam that swung over the blazing fire. ”