FOR AN ANCIENT CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 115, 4 November 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOR AN ANCIENT CRIME.

.Seven hundred years ago some shepherds of the valley of Roncal, in Navarre, were murdered by shepherds of the valley of Rareton, in Beam, the crime taking place on the high pasture lands of Arias, in the Pyrenees. It would have been difficult to bring the murderers individually to justice, and the Spaniards were preparing to make war upon the valley from which the French Jnurdercrs had come, when the French villages proposed that peace be maintained at the price of a yearly tax or tribute to endure for all time, and this proposition was accepted. The payment of this blood tax—originally three white mares, but later three cows of a particular breed and color—has been made ever since the custom (it is nothing more) having survived even the great wars in which both France and Spain have engaged, and the storm of the French Revolution. As usual, the other day the representative men of the two valleys met on the frontier, at a certain stone, remote from any town, and went through the ceremony of presenting and receiving the cattle. The order of procedure which is elaborate and impressive, is fixed by a document bearing the date 1375, though the tax was paid a hundred years prior to that time. The records of each yearly meeting any payment are duly attested and deposited in the archives of the Roncalais.