Galanas
{{Short description|Former concept in Welsh law}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Italic title}}Galanas in Welsh law was a payment made by a killer and his family to the family of his or her victim.{{Cite web |title=Definition of GALANAS |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/galanas |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=www.merriam-webster.com |language=en}} It is similar to éraic in Ireland and the Anglo-Saxon weregild.{{Cite book |last=Jenkins |first=Dafydd |title=The Law of Hywel Dda: law texts from Medieval Wales |date=1986 |publisher=Gomer press |others=Pays de Galles |isbn=978-0-86383-277-2 |series=The Welsh classics |location=Llandysul, GB}}
Definition
The details of galanas were laid out in the Laws of Hywel Dda, codified during the mid tenth century reign of King Hywel Dda, but dating back to earlier oral traditions passed down through bards and jurists.{{Cite book |last=Davies |first=John |title=Hanes Cymru: a history of Wales in Welsh |date=1992 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-14-012570-2 |location=London}}{{Cite web |title=The Laws of Howel the Good/Translation - Wikisource, the free online library |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Laws_of_Howel_the_Good/Translation |access-date=2025-04-16 |website=en.wikisource.org |language=en}} The earliest surviving written documenst of the laws are Peniarth MS. 28 and Peniarth MS. 29 (known as the Black Book of Chirk) written c. 1200.{{Cite web |title=Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/13 - Wikisource, the free online library |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Welsh_Medieval_Law.djvu/13 |access-date=2025-04-16 |website=en.wikisource.org |language=en}}
The compensation payment required depended on the status of the victim, but could also be affected by the circumstances of the killing, for example a killing from ambush or by poison meant the payment of double galanas. The payment was due from relatives as distant as the fifth cousins of the killer, with each degree of relationship paying double the rate of the next, for example first cousins of the killer paid double the sum payable by second cousins. Women paid half the rate of payment by men. The first third of the galanas falls on the homicide, his father and mother and brothers and sisters. The remainder is shared between the kindred, with two thirds falling on the father's kindred and one third on the mother's kindred.
The same rules applied to the receipt of galanas. In the existing texts, dating from the 13th century, one third of the sum paid was due to the Lord as the enforcing authority, but this is considered to be an innovation.
Galanas is mentioned 512 times in the known collected manuscripts of Welsh language prose written between 1300 and 1425.{{Cite web |title=Wordlist galanas... {{!}} Welsh Prose 1300-1425 |url=https://www.rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk/en/wordlist.php?ms=&prefix=galanas&occur=full |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=www.rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk}} It has been suggested that Edward I of England attempted to abolish galanas through the Statute of Rhuddlan following his 1284 conquest of the Welsh principality. This statute laid out the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of Wales from 1284 until 1536. It introduced English common law to Wales, but also permitted the continuance of Welsh legal practices within the Principality. The galanas tradition is thought to have survived well into the fifteenth century in the Welsh Marches border regions.{{Cite web |last=Grant |first=Akexander |title=Murder will Out: Kingship, Kinship and Killing in Medieval Scotland |url=https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/67711/1/GRANT_03_MURDER_WILL_OUT_REF_3_FINAL_CORRECTION_25.11.2013.pdf}}R. R. Davies, ‘The survival of the bloodfeud in medieval Wales’, History 54 (1969), 338–57, at p. 339.