wedge. To give ground in the heat of action, provided you return to the
charge, is military skill, not fear or cowardice. In the most fierce and
obstinate engagement, even when the fortune of the day is doubtful, they
make it a point to carry off their slain. To abandon their shield is a
flagitious crime. The person guilty of it is interdicted from religious
rites and excluded from the assembly of the state. Many who survived
their honour on the day of battle have closed a life of ignominy by a
halter.”

Teutonic Customs

The kings of this rude but warlike folk were elected by the suffrages of
the nobility, and their leaders in battle, as was inevitable with such
a people, were chosen by reason of their personal prowess. The legal
functions were exercised by the priesthood, and punishments were thus
held to be sanctioned by the gods. Among this barbaric people the female
sex was held as absolutely sacred, the functions of wife and mother
being accounted among the highest possible to humanity, and we observe
in ancient accounts of the race that typically Teutonic conception of
the woman as seer or prophetess which so strongly colours early Germanic
literature. Women, indeed, in later times, when Christianity had
nominally conquered Paganism, remained as the sole conservators of the
ancient Teutonic magico-religious lore, and in the curtained recesses of
dark-timbered halls whiled away the white hours of winter by the painful
spelling out of runic characters and the practice of arts which they
were destined to convey from the priests of Odin and Thor to the witches
of medieval days.

Costume of the Early Teuton