The Buireth

Throughout Daleth, one can find very small villages that are not even worth the word village: they are called buireths. These buireths consists of about 3 farms with additional agricultural buildings. They will have a bread-house (where the bread for the small community is baked), a well, and gardens. Some have their own water- or wind mill.
The most striking difference between the buireth and the village is that the buireth is outside of any gong. Thus, additional laws for the buireth have been made. Those laws also include laws especially for the continuance of the buireth.

The farms in a buireth are owned by a family. By law, the family in a buireth is a subject that can not split - hence, after the head of family has died, the farm and the surrounding lands are not divided between the children but rather given to the family, who has to decide who stays in the farm and who should leave the place. What is in the farm is not allowed to leave, cattle, stock, money, it all stays in the farm. This way, a farm has a good fortune to continue it's work, and this also helps the other farms in the buireth in there existence.
If a family grows too large to be housed in the farm, members of the family should leave the place. What they are allowed to take along with them is written detailed in the laws. Many of these leaving members go to the towns and end up in the army or in the temples. This is the way of the buireths to contribute to the national gong.

In hard times, the buireth functions as an autonomous unit. The families living in the farms help each other when in need. By law, they are obliged to do so. Because they don't pay gong to a town, they have no right to ask help from a town. However, some buireths near a town have made special arrangements with the town council which involve paying gong and getting help. This does not apply to the buireths that are too far away from any gong.

Buireths that do have an inn are usually mapped. Other buireths are unknown on many maps, but there are many buireths in the land and most farms will offer a bed for a traveller in need. Officially, these guests should be registered and a fee should be paid to the farm so the farm can pay the nearest inn for the loss of income from that customer. But on the other hand, it is not easy to check the buireth and their guests, whether these guests are friends or paying strangers. Most buireth keep their fee low, otherwise the guests will complain about it in the nearest inn - and usually these inns will not have received the full amount of money from the buireth, so they will take measures.

Most buireth are a bit out of the law, there is no control from any official institute, except for the army that comes to the buireth when suspecting that something is wrong. But normally, those who are just beside the law can act as they want to. This is not always accepted in the buireth - either the buireth acts as a criminal unit, or the illegal acts are condemned by the buireth.

The society of the buireth is very strong. In towns, the family members of a buireth that had to leave the place, have taken the name of the buireth as their family name. Thus recognisable as belonging to the same buireth, even after some generations, these immigrants will help each other sooner than any other person - the trust in the buireth is a strong bond.
There is a risk of isolation in these groups, an isolation that might lead to criminal affairs and illegal deeds. A leader of such an immigrant buireth-family that has the wrong ideas might force the other members to join in his illegal activities. But on the other hand side, this bond between immigrants might lead to a strong will to make a fortune in a legal way. Many immigrants in the towns have build flourishing companies with the help of their buireth-family and are a safety-net for the members who have to leave the buireth. They might also sell the harvest produce from the buireth and form a kind of office for buireth-related administration-affairs in the towns.

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