AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 85, 20 October 1928, Page 20

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

FULL PENALTY DEMANDED. There is at least one country in the Tvorld where the old Mosaic law is followed literally, writes Keith Henderson in "Overseas." \.3Por in Abyssinia, ■when a person is found guilty of murcler or even of manslaughter, he is handed over to the relatives of the deceased to be disposed of in exactly the same manner as his victim had been slain. In Addis Ababa, the capital, ai special stretch of ground is set aside for these informal executions, and there one may see a wretched assassin held down firmly while the dead man's son or, it may be, his widow,, stabs, shoots, or strangles, as the case demands. There is no public sympathy for murderers in. those parts. When the prisoner has been tried, convicted and condemned, the rest is a. family matter, and nobody else's business. "Blood-money" may be accepted by the relatives, but it is quite usual for this payment to be refused and the full penalty demanded. In this connection an amusing story is told. The Emperor Menelik (a direct descendant, be it noted, of the great King Solomon) had before him a poor woodcutter who, whilst working high up in a tree, had overbalanced and fallen on a peasant who was sleeping below, killing him outright. The brothers'of the dead man refused to accept the blood-money which the innocent life-taker had perforce to offer to sayj his own skin. "A life for a life," they demanded, and Mcnclik had no choice but to deliver the poo:1 fellow over to the inexorable avengers. Ho pointed out, however, that in order to I'Ulfii the letter of the law it would bo necessary for the brothers to be taken to the highest branches of the fatal ■free and from there to jump or be thrown down upon the prisoner as often •■is necessary until they succeeded in killing him. The tree was high enough to induce them to change their minds. Another example of the intimacy, so to speak-, between accuser and accused 5s afforded'by the custom of chaining a debtor to his creditor until the little matter'between them has been . arranged. ■ It is no uncommon thing in Addis Ababa to see two men, or even a man and a woman, linked together by a yard-long chain and wandering unconcernedly among the crowd. Night and day they remain so shackled until the ■debtor's relatives are able to ransom him. It is open to doubt whether certain people of to-day would be quite so cogei: to lend money on note of hand alone if the collection of his debts involved sleeping, eating and walking ■with a cable-]prl~tH of defaulters firmly in tow.