Common law ¹

1 All free-born are equal.
Therefore must they have equal rights, as good upon land as upon AHA, that is water and upon all that Wralda gives.

2 Each man may freely choose his wife and each daughter may offer her health-drink to whomever she loves.

3 He who takes a wife, so one gives him a house and wharf.⁵
If there is none, one must be built.

4 If he is gone to another town to seek a wife and if he will remain with her, so must one give him a house and warf there, at the pleasure of the home region.

5 Everyone must give a back part of his house as a wharf.
None may not, not have a front yard much less a roundeal.
Alone, he who has done a deed for the common need, so may him that be given.¹⁰
And his youngest son might inherit it.
After that, must the town take it back.

6 Each trorp (township) shall have a home-region for its behoof and the grave shall see that each dungs his field (deal) and keeps it well so that his successor may not suffer any harm.

7 Each thorp may have a market to buy and sell or to barter.
All other lands shall remain farms and woodlands.¹⁵
Though the trees thereof may not none not fell but by the common consent and the knowledge of the forester, for the woods are for the common need.
Therefore, may no one be master thereof.

8 As sales tax, the thorp may not take more than an eleventh of the value (of the goods) neither from natives nor from foreigners.
Also may the markets share not be sold before the other goods.

9 All sales revenues must be dealt out yearly, three days before the Yule, to be divided by a hundred parts.²⁰

10 The grave with his council shall thereof take twenty parts, the market judge, ten parts, and his helper, five parts, the folksmother, one part, and the yeo mother, four parts, the throp, ten parts, the poor, that is those who neither can nor make work, fifty parts.

11 He who comes to market may no naught nor ocker (practice usury), if some there come, then it is the duty of the maids to make them known through all the land so that they never shall be chosen to an office, for such have a greedy heart, to accumulate treasure, they would betray everyone, the folk, their mother, their kin and at last, themselves.²⁷⁵

12 If there is any so bad that he sells sick kine or rotten wares for good ones, so must the market judge bar him and the maids announce his name throughout all the land.