Definition
In Anglo-Saxon legal usage, *meg* (also rendered *mægth* or *mægburh*) denotes a kinship group — the larger clan or kindred unit into which the Anglo-Saxon family was organized. The term carries two related but distinct senses:
1. *Meg* as individual: A kinsman or blood relative within the Anglo-Saxon social structure.
2. *Mægth / mægburh* as collective: The recognized kinship group to which an individual belonged by birth. Membership in the *mægth* was determined by blood, not by marriage. A wife retained membership in her own *mægth* after marriage and did not pass into her husband's.
The legal significance of the *mægth* was primarily in matters of collective responsibility, wergild, and the enforcement of blood-right. When a member of a *mægth* committed a wrong, the responsibility fell upon the kindred group as a whole. When a member was killed, the wergild — the legally fixed compensation for a person's death — was paid to that person's own *mægth*, not to a spouse's kindred.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A clipping of megabyte, megahertz, or megajoule — informal shorthand for units of digital storage, frequency, or energy.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded as an independent entry; the prefix *mega-* appears in scientific and metric contexts.
Editorial note: The modern common use of *meg* as a metric abbreviation has no relationship to the Anglo-Saxon legal term. Researchers encountering *meg* in legal-historical sources should not import any modern connotation; the term belongs entirely to the vocabulary of pre-Conquest English kinship law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal history, Anglo-Saxon social organization, or the prehistory of tort and criminal liability will encounter *meg*, *mægth*, and *mægburh* as foundational concepts. Several research traps apply:
Spelling variation is substantial. Historical sources render the term variously as *meg*, *mæg*, *mægth*, *mægburh*, *maegth*, and *maegburh* depending on the manuscript tradition and the editorial conventions of the edition being consulted. Corpus searches limited to one spelling will miss significant material.
The collective-responsibility dimension of the *mægth* is directly ancestral to later doctrines of group liability and the frankpledge system. Researchers tracing the development of vicarious liability or communal surety in English law should treat the *mægth* as the starting point, not an isolated curiosity.
The wife's retention of her own *mægth* membership — and its legal consequences for wergild and accountability — is a point frequently underemphasized in secondary literature that focuses on the husband's household. Primary and comparative sources, including Pollock and Maitland's *History of English Law*, treat this distinction with precision and should be consulted directly rather than through summary.
The *mægth* also has relevance for researchers examining the history of inheritance, property rights of women, and the structure of Anglo-Saxon blood-feud regulation. The kinship group was not merely social but legally operative in each of these domains.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary identifies *meg* as "a kinsman" with a citation to Pollock and Maitland (*History of English Law*, vol. 2, p. 241) and provides a concise but substantively accurate account of the *mægth*'s legal functions. Bouvier's entry correctly notes the wife's non-transfer into her husband's *mægth* and the allocation of wergild payments along *mægth* lines rather than marital lines.
Bouvier's treatment is a useful pointer but is necessarily compressed. The full analysis of the *mægth* in English legal history requires Pollock and Maitland directly, where the kinship structure is situated within the broader account of Anglo-Saxon personal law, blood-feud, and the transition to royal jurisdiction over wrongs. No other standard legal dictionary in the historical shelf gives *meg* or *mægth* meaningful treatment; Bouvier's stands alone here, which itself signals that the term is specialist vocabulary requiring primary and scholarly secondary sources rather than dictionary-level research.
Jurisdictional Note
The *mægth* is a pre-Conquest English legal concept with no direct modern jurisdictional counterpart. Its relevance is historical and comparative. Scholars working in Scottish or Welsh legal history will encounter analogous kinship-group structures under different terminology.