What did it mean for a people to possess customs?
Traditions, perhaps.
That was the answer most would offer first, because people preferred names they already understood. Something passed from parent to child, from master to disciple, from ruler to court, repeated until repetition acquired enough age to call itself legitimate.
A gesture survived.
A phrase remained.
A ceremony continued long after the first hands that performed it had returned to dust.
Then perhaps tradition was a chain.
That answer had always been popular among the young.
It possessed a pleasant simplicity. A chain was forged by someone else, fastened around another person's wrists, and inherited without consent. A son received obligations arranged before his birth. A daughter learned how deeply she ought to bow before she had lived long enough to wonder why anyone deserved the motion. One generation decided what was proper; the next discovered itself punished for failing to remember the decision.
