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Similarly the Anglo-Saxon betrothal was not so much a payment of the bride's price to her kinsmen, although as a matter of fact, they might make a profit out of the transaction, as a covenant stipulating for the bride's honorable treatment as wife and widow. Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 278-281, 386. The Arrha crept into Roman and Byzantine law during the sixth century.
She passed into the possession of her husband by acquisition, and when he fixed the wedding day he gave her parents coins of small money as arrha, and the day after the wedding she received from him a present, the morgengabe.
Pope, who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them all subscribe; for," says he," the author shall not begin to print until I have a thousand guineas for him." If this were the extent of what Swift anticipated from the work, he fell miserably below the result. But, perhaps, he spoke only of a cautionary arrha or earnest.
The ring, indeed, probably was not in origin, as some have supposed, a mark of servitude, but rather a form of bride-price, or arrha, that is to say, earnest money on the contract of marriage and so the symbol of it.
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