On this country Gotrik imposed a kind of tribute, which was not so much harsh as strange.

I will briefly relate its terms and the manner of it.

First, a building was arranged, two hundred and forty feet in length, and divided into twelve spaces; each of these stretching over an interval of twenty feet, and thus making together, when the whole room was exhausted, the aforesaid total.
Now at the upper end of this building sat the king's treasurer, and in a line with him at its further end was displayed a round shield.

When the Frisians came to pay tribute, they used to cast their coins one by one into the hollow of this shield; but only those coins which struck the ear of the distant toll-gatherer with a distinct clang were chosen by him, as he counted, to be reckoned among the royal tribute.

The result was that the collector only reckoned that money towards the treasury of which his distant ear caught the sound as it fell.