CHAPTER XV.

RUN-RIG AND COMMON FIELD.

It is a familiar fact that the early open field system of agriculture of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, known as run-rig or rundale, differed in some important features from the common field system of England.

The mere fact suggests a series of questions with regard to the relationships between common field and run-rig; whether, for instance, the more complex common field system was evolved from the more simple and primitive run-rig system; or supposing the two not connected, whether a boundary can be defined on one side of which the early agriculture was of the English type and on the other of the Celtic type; and again, if so, which parts of England lie on the Celtic side of the boundary, and which, if any, of Wales and Scotland lie on the English side.

Obviously before considering such questions it is necessary to have a clear grasp of the nature of run-rig, and of the differences between it and the English system.

In the year 1695 the Scotch Parliament passed an Act allowing anyone “coterminous heritor” owning a share in a “commonty” to have his portion separate from the rest, and to enclose it; and a series of cases established a defined system of computing the share of the “commonty” to which the lord of the manor as such was entitled in lieu of manorial rights. This caused the process of the separation of intermixed properties in open fields to proceed without the intervention of special Acts of Parliament, except for Royal burghs. Also while in England under Enclosure Acts or agreements to enclose the three processes of (_a_) the separation of intermixed and intercommonable properties, (_b_) the separation of intermixed and intercommonable holdings, and (_c_) the hedging or fencing of the separated properties, were accomplished by one continuous series of actions on the part of those concerned, in Scotland it was otherwise. The separation of properties where necessary was first accomplished, and for long afterwards the system of run-rig was followed by groups of tenants on the same estate. After run-rig had been abandoned, the separate holdings remained open and unenclosed, and the process of building dykes or planting hedges was carried out at a later date, and by slow degrees.

The abandonment of run-rig was general, according to the reports to the Board of Agriculture, in the lowlands of Scotland about the year 1730. In the county of Perth up to the year 1744 “the land was always occupied in run-rigg, either by the different tenants on the same farm, and sometimes by coterminous heritors. The houses were in clusters for the mutual protection of the inhabitants.” (James Robertson, D.D., “Agriculture of the Southern District of Perth,” 1794, pp. 22, 23.) In the northern and Highland counties the transition was naturally later. Sir John Sinclair (“General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties and Islands of Scotland”) describes the cultivated land of the Islands as being open almost everywhere, except in the case of the “mains” or manor farms, the glebe lands, and the farms of a few principal tacksmen. Of Caithness he says, “The greater part of the arable land in this county is occupied by small farmers who possess it in _run-rig_, or in _rig and rennal_, as it is here termed, similar to the common fields of England, a system peculiarly hostile to improvement” (p. 207). But in the Orkneys “Much of the land that formerly lay in the state known in Scotland under the name of run-rig land has been divided, but much still remains in the same situation” (p. 227); and the process of enclosing had begun even in the Shetlands (p. 252).

Turning westwards, we find that in the inner Hebrides 1850 was the date at which the run-rig system finally died out, in a manner and under conditions which will demand further attention. But it survived in the Outer Hebrides to a considerably later date. A very full and interesting description by Mr. Alexander Carmichael is given in Skene’s “Celtic Scotland,” Vol. III. chapter x.

“Old systems are tenacious. They linger long among a rural people and in remote places. Of these is the land system of run-rig (Mor Barann) which characterises more or less the land system of the Western Isles. The outer Hebrides are called the Long Island. They are a series of islands 119 miles in length, and varying from half-a-mile to twenty miles in breadth. This kite-like chain of forty inhabited and upwards of a hundred and fifty uninhabited islands contains a population of 40,000. Much of this land is held by extensive tacksmen on leases (Fir Baile), and there being no intermediate tenantry, the rest of the land is occupied by small tenants at will without leases. These number 4,500, the majority of whom fish as well as farm.

“The country is divided into townlands of various extent. The arable land (Fearann Grainsich) occupied by the small tenants of these townlands is worked in three ways--as crofts wholly, as crofts and run-rig combined, and as run-rig wholly. In Lewis and Harris the arable land is wholly divided into crofts: in Uist and Barra the arable land is divided in part into crofts, and in part worked in run-rig; while in the townlands of Hosta, Coolas Paipil, and the island of Heisgeir in North Uist, the arable land is worked exclusively upon the run-rig system of share and share alike. The grazing land of the tenants of each townland throughout the Long Island is held in common (in Lewis called Comhpairt).

“The soil varies from pure sand to pure moss. Along the Atlantic there is a wide plain of sandy soil called _Machair_. This merges into a mixture of sand and moss (Breacthalamh, or mottled soil), which again merges into pure moss (Mointeach) towards the Minch. As the soil is dry and sandy, if the summer is dry the crop is light. On the other hand, if the summer is moist the crop is heavy and good. In order that all may have an equal chance, the _Machair_ belonging to them is equally divided among the tenants of the township. Obviously the man who is restricted to his croft has fewer advantages than the man who, together with his croft, has his share of the _Machair_, and still fewer advantages than the man who has, rig for rig with his neighbours, the run of the various soils of his townland, which gives name to the system. Consequently a wet or dry season affects the tenant of the croft system more than the tenant of the combined system, and the tenant of the combined system more than the tenant of the run-rig system.

“The townland of Hosta is occupied by four, Ceolas Paipil by six, and the island of Heisgeir by twelve tenants. Towards the end of autumn, when harvest is over, and the fruits of the year have been gathered in, the constable calls a meeting of the tenants of the townland for Nabachd (neighbourliness). They meet, and having decided upon the portion of land to be put under green crop next year, they divide it into shares according to the number of tenants in the place, and the number of shares in the soil they respectively possess. Thereupon they cast lots, and the share which falls to a tenant he retains for three years. A third of the land under cultivation is thus divided every year. Accordingly the whole cultivated land of the townland undergoes revision every three years. Should a man get a bad share he is allowed to choose his share in the next division. The tenants divide the land into shares of uniform size. For this purpose they use a rod several yards long, and they observe as much accuracy in measuring their land as a draper in measuring his cloth. In marking the boundary between shares, a turf (Torc) is dug up and turned over the line of demarcation. The _torc_ is then cut along the middle, and half is taken by the tenant on one side, and half by the tenant on the other side, in ploughing the subsequent furrow; similar care being afterwards exercised in cutting the corn along the furrow. The tenant’s portion of the run-rig is called Cianag, and his proportion of the grazing ground for every pound he pays Coir-sgoraidh.

“There are no fences round the fields. The crop being thus exposed to injury from the cattle grazing along the side, the people have a protecting rig on the margin of the crop. This rig is divided transversely into shares, in order to subject all tenants to equal risks.... Occasionally, and for limited bits of ground, the people till, sow, and reap in common, and divide the produce into shares and draw lots. This is called _Comachadh_, promiscuous. The system was not uncommon in the past, though now nearly obsolete.

“In making their own land arrangements for the year, the tenants set apart a piece of land towards the support of the poor....

“In reclaiming moor-land the tenants divide the ground into narrow strips of five feet wide or thereby. These strips, called lazy-beds (Feannagan, from feann, to scarify), the tenants allot among themselves according to their shares or crofts. The people mutually encourage one another to plant as much of this ground as possible. In this manner much waste ground is reclaimed and enhanced in value, the ground hitherto the home of the stonechat, grouse, snipe and sundew, is made to yield luxuriant crops of potatoes, corn, hay and grass. Not unfrequently, however, these land reclamations are wrested without acknowledgment from those who made them.

“The sheep, cattle and horses of the townland graze together, the species being separate. A tenant can only keep stock conformably to his share in the soil. He is however at liberty to regulate the proportions of the different kinds, provided that his total stock does not exceed his total grazing rights. He can keep a greater number of one species and a corresponding smaller number of another. Or he can keep a greater number of the young, and a corresponding less number of the old of the same species, or the reverse. About Whitsuntide, when the young braird appears, the people remove their sheep and cattle to the grazing ground behind the arable land. This is called clearing the townland. The tenants bring forward their stock (Leibhidh) and a souming (Sumachadh) is made. The _Leibhidh_ is the tenant’s stock, the _Sumachadh_ the number he is entitled to graze in common with his neighbours. Should the tenant have a croft, he is probably able to graze some extra stock thereon, though this is demurred to by his neighbours. Each ‘penny’ of arable lands has grazing rights of so many soums. Neither, however, is the extent of land in the penny, nor the number of animals in the soum uniformly the same.”

A soum consists of a cow and her progeny; in some places the cow and her calf only: in some a cow, her calf, her one-year-old progeny (called a _stirk_) and her two-year-old _quey_; in other places again, the cow, calf, stirk, quey and a three-year-old heifer. At four years old the heifer becomes a cow, and so originates a fresh soum.

In making souming calculations, it is assumed that one cow is equal to two queys or to four stirks or to eight calves, or to one heifer and one stirk. Also one cow is equal to eight sheep, or to twelve hoggs (one-year-old sheep) or to sixteen lambs or to sixteen geese. One mature horse is equal to two cows; also to eight foals, or to four one-year-old colts or fillies, or to two two-year-olds, or to one three-year-old and one colt or filly. The cow is entitled to her calf; and if one tenant has two cows without calves they are entitled to take one stirk instead.

Those tenants who are found at the souming to have overstock must either buy grazing from a tenant who has understock or may be allowed by the community to let the overstock remain on the grass till he can dispose of it. In that case payment must be made, according to a recognised code, into a common fund which is used to buy bulls or tups or for some other common purpose. The souming is amended at Lammas, and again at Hallowtide.

In Lewis and Harris similar arrangements with regard to stock obtain among the _crofters_, the amount of stock allowed to each crofter being regulated according to the rent paid.

During the early summer the herds are put at night into enclosures, according to the species, and two tenants, chosen in rotation, keep watch to prevent them from straying over the open fields. If they escape, the watchmen are fined and have to make any damage good, but the fines, and the amount assessed for damages, both go into the common fund.

Early in June, the tillage being finished, the people go to the hill grazing with their flocks. The scene is vividly described by Mr. Carmichael, the general excitement, the men shouting directions, the women knitting and chatting, the children scampering about. Sheep lead the procession, cattle come next, the younger ones preceding the older, the horses follow. Implements and materials are carried to repair the summer huts. When the grazing ground is reached the huts are repaired, fires lit, and food cooked. The people bring forward their stock into an enclosure, and the constable and another man stand at the gate of the enclosure and count each man’s stock separately to see that he has brought only his proper souming. Then the cattle are turned out to graze, and the “Shealing Feast” is celebrated by the singing of hymns and the eating of cheese. The summer huts are of a beehive shape, and are sometimes constructed of stone, and sometimes of turf and frail materials.[85]

[85] The ruins of beehive huts all over Dartmoor, and of enclosures like Grimspound, are conceivably evidence of similar customs in Devonshire. Now, however, the care of the cattle pastured on Dartmoor by the occupiers of adjacent farms, is a distinct occupation. Those who follow it are called “Moor-men.”

Each tenant under the run-rig system is responsible for his own rent only. Formerly the rent was paid partly in money, partly in meal, partly in butter and cheese, and partly in cattle.

The common functionaries, the shepherd, cattleherd and marchkeeper, are paid by their co-tenants for their services in seaweed, land and grazing. The business of the marchkeeper is to watch the open marches of the townland and prevent trespass. He may also have the duty of watching the shore to see when the seaweed is cast upon it. Then he erects a pole with a bunch of seaweed at the end, and the people come down to the shore to collect the weed for manure. No tenant is permitted to take seaweed till his neighbours arrive, unless the custom prevails of collecting the weed in common, dividing it into shares and casting lots.

When required by the proprietor or the people, the constable convenes a meeting of the inhabitants. At such meetings the questions in dispute are settled, after full discussion, by votes; lots are drawn if the votes are equal.

“The closer the run-rig system is followed, the more are the unwritten customs and regulations observed. The more intelligent tenants regret a departure from them....

“The houses of the tenants form a cluster. In parts of Lewis the houses are in a straight line called _Straid_, street, occasionally from one to three miles in length. They are placed in a suitable part of the townland, and those of the tenants on the run-rig system are warm, good and comfortable. These tenants carry on their farming operations simultaneously, and not without friendly and wholesome rivalry, the enterprise of one stimulating the zeal of another....

“Not the least pleasing feature in this semi-family system is the assistance rendered by their neighbours to a tenant whose work has fallen behind through accident, sickness, death, or other unavoidable cause....

“Their mode of dividing the land and of equalising the stock may seem primitive and complex to modern views, but they are not so to the people themselves, who apply them amicably, accurately and skilfully. The division of the land is made with care and justice. This is the interest of all, no one knowing which place may fall to himself, for his neighbour’s share may become his own three years hence.

“Whatever may be the imperfections, according to modern notions, of this very old semi-family system of run-rig husbandry, those tenants who have least departed from it are the most comfortable in North Uist, and, accordingly, in the Outer Hebrides.”

Mr. Carmichael informs me that the whole of this description held good at least up to May, 1904.

The brief descriptions and other references to the run-rig system of the agricultural writers whom Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young enlisted in the service of the Board of Agriculture at the end of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth century, are sufficient to show that in all essential features it was fundamentally identical in different parts of Scotland. Sir John Sinclair’s own description is meagre and unsympathetic: “Were there twenty tenants and as many fields, each tenant would think himself unjustly treated unless he had a proportionate share in each. This causes treble labour, and as they are perpetually crossing each other, they must be in a state of constant quarrelling and bad neighbourhood. In order to prevent any of the soil being carried to the adjoining ridge, each individual makes his own ridge as high as possible, which renders the furrow quite bare, so that it produces no crop, while the accumulated soil in the middle of the ridge is never stirred deeper than the plough. The proprietors begin to see the inconveniences of this system, and in general intend to remedy it, by dividing the land into regular farms.”[86]

[86] “General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties and Highlands of Scotland,” p. 205.

This is obviously a description of run-rig in a state of decrepitude; the communal spirit has died out of it, and apparently the practice of periodic redivision of the land has fallen into desuetude. In another passage[87] we find a variation of the method of guarding the crops which again, when compared with Mr. Carmichael’s description of the “promiscuous rig,” appears to show the decay of the system. “The tenants have a miserable sort of fence, made of turf, which separates their arable land from the adjoining waste; but it requires constant repairs, and when the corn is taken off the ground, is entirely neglected, and the country becomes one immense common, over which immense numbers of cattle are straggling in search of food, greatly to the injury of the soil.”

[87] _Ibid._, p. 207. This passage and the next occur in the description of Caithness, but they appear to be intended to apply to the whole district.

William Marshall, the rival as an agricultural writer and bitter critic of Arthur Young, supplied the “General View of the Agriculture of the Central Highlands of Scotland.” He supplies us with one significant hint, if we need it, with regard to the fundamental basis of run-rig: “Not the larger farms only, but each subdivision, though ever so minute, _whether ‘plow-gait,’ ‘half-plow,’ or ‘horse-gang,’_ has its pittance of hill and vale, and its share of each description of land, as arable, meadow, green pasture and muir” (p. 29). By the way, even smaller farms than the “horse-gang,” _i.e._, one quarter of the arable land which could be ploughed by a four-horse plough, together with the corresponding proportion of meadow, pasture and moor, were to be found on the Royal burghs where intermixed ownership was exempt from the operation of the Act of 1695. On these the smallest farms consisted of a “horse’s foot” of land, _i.e._, one sixteenth part of a “plow-gait.”

Dr. James Robertson defines run-rig as “Two or three or perhaps four men yoking their horses together in one plough, and having their ridges alternately in the same field, with a bank of unploughed land between them, by way of march.”[88]

[88] “Agriculture of the Southern Districts of Perth” (1794).

James McDonald, writing in 1811 a later report on the Agriculture of the Hebrides, published in 1811, gives an account of the beginning of the disappearance of run-rig in those islands. “Mr. Maclean of Coll insisted upon some of his tenants dividing among them the land which they formerly held in common, or run-rig, and which they were accustomed for ages to divide annually by lot, for the purposes of cultivation. They obeyed with great reluctance, and each tenant had his own farm to himself. Three or four years’ experience has convinced them now that their landlord acted wisely.... The same thing happened on various other estates, and especially in Mull, Tyree and Skye” (p. 133). But the general disappearance of run-rig in these islands took place about the middle of the nineteenth century, and was the consequence of the temporary prosperity produced by the rise of the kelp industry. This led to extreme subdivision of holdings by sub-letting, the body of small crofters so created relying in the main upon the kelp industry for a livelihood, and using their crofts as a subsidiary means of subsistence (Skene, “Celtic Scotland,” Vol. III., ch. x.).

It is clear that the two essential features of run-rig are (1) that it is based upon co-aration, several farmers yoking their horses to one plough, and tilling the land in partnership; just as the English common-field system was also based upon co-aration, with the difference that in England, in general, at the time that co-aration was practised, the plough was generally drawn by eight oxen instead of by four horses.

(2) That run-rig has a special distinctive feature in the periodical division and re-division of the land, and that in the Hebrides, at least, this feature survived after co-aration had become obsolete.[89] In this respect the Scotch agricultural community resembles that of Great Russia, where also the periodical re-division of the open fields, so as to make the shares proportional to the working power of each family, persists after co-aration has disappeared.

[89] Mr. A. N. Palmer, in his important work, “A History of Ancient Tenures of Land in the Marches of N. Wales,” expresses the opinion that co-aration and the shifting of land disappeared simultaneously in North Wales, and had come to an end by the reign of Henry VI. (p. 36, note).

That throughout the British Isles, and indeed throughout Northern Europe, the earliest tillage of the soil by ploughs was accomplished by the method of co-aration, scarcely admits of doubt; nor is it easy to doubt that before the possibility of improving the crop by manure was discovered, there was no permanent occupation by one of the partners in the ploughing, of any particular set of strips so ploughed.

But it is also obvious that whereas we know that in some places, as in the Hebrides and in Russia, the idea of common occupation of the land persisted, after co-aration had ceased, and displayed itself in the form of periodic or occasional re-division of the arable land, it is equally possible for the permanent occupation of certain strips of land to be definitely allotted to some individuals, while the practice of co-aration is still persistent among other individuals of the same community. In the latter case when individual cultivation begins, the peasant who drives his own plough team, drives it over the same set of strips of land as had previously been ploughed by the common plough; he feels more than ever that they are his own, and that he must guard them against encroachment; though, perhaps, he is not averse, when occasion offers, to widen his strips at the expense of his neighbours. The consequence is that by the time individual cultivation has entirely superseded co-operative ploughing in any particular village, freeholds and copyholds are definitely arranged as we know them in the English common fields. Particularly is this likely to be the case if a long interval of time elapses between the first beginning of individual ploughing and the last disappearance of combined ploughing.

If on the other hand the practice of periodic re-allotment of the land persists up to the time when co-aration ceases, it will obviously be natural for the peasants when they dissolve their plough-partnership, to allot their land to one another with some regard for convenience as well as equity. They will naturally--as Sir John Sinclair noticed they did--allot to each household a share in each particular sort of soil which had previously been cultivated in common, but each man’s share in each field is likely to be allotted to him in one piece, or at least in a few, and not in a number of strips intermixed with those of his neighbours. Then when at a later period hedging and ditching begin, each man has his land in a form convenient for enclosure; and by enclosing it he forms a series of irregular fields, roughly square, or when oblong, with the length not many times exceeding the width. No throwing of the parish into the melting pot, either by a private Act of Parliament or by a voluntary submission to a Commission, was necessary in order to effect enclosure.

On the one hand, then, it is obvious that the great inequality of the holdings held by servile and semi-servile tenures from the time of Domesday onwards, was favourable to the creation of the conditions necessary to make piecemeal enclosure difficult. The _socmanni_ or _francigenae_, who held a whole carucate or ploughland apiece, presumably also had, as a rule, a whole ploughteam, and were able to plough for themselves, while their neighbours, who held yardlands and half-yardlands, _i.e._, one-quarter or one-eighth of a ploughland, could only have their lands ploughed by the common village ploughs. As soon as the _socmanni_ and _francigenae_ began to permanently improve the soil, as for instance by marling, the beneficial results of which were believed in the eighteenth century to last for at least twelve years, they would naturally become a practically insuperable obstacle not only to any re-division of the land, but also to any minor variation in the exact position of the ridges which comprised the different holdings. Once one such holding was definitely located, the fixing of all other holdings which were intermixed with it would follow: every increase of certainty would be an encouragement to any given tenant to improve his land, and every expenditure of effort by a tenant on permanent improvement would be an additional motive to him to resist any changes in the position of his ridges.

On the other hand, in the case of land first brought into cultivation at a later date, when servile tenures had become obsolete, by “tenants at will” of the lord of the manor, the assured continued occupation of a defined set of ridges in land so reclaimed would not arise, even if the original tenants practised co-aration; and if the original cultivators worked independently, of course no intermixture of holdings would ever arise on such holdings.

Hence the very close connection between copyholds, _i.e._, the commuted servile tenures, and common fields, which was observed as long as common fields were numerous.

To sum up, it is clear that on _a priori_ grounds there are certain defined conditions in which alone we can expect to find the peculiarly English type of open-field arable, the type which most obstinately resists dissolution, persisting until destroyed by (_a_) the absorption of all properties into the hands of a single owner, or (_b_) a general valuation and redistribution of properties and holdings. These are that the land must originally have been tilled by the method of co-aration, and that co-aration must have persisted until after some at least of the holdings had become a definite set of strips of land, the position of which was not shifted from year to year. These conditions, as Seebohm shows, are the characteristics of the typical English village community. But they are not to be found in open arable fields of the Celtic type of run-rig; and they are not to be expected in lands first brought into cultivation after the disappearance of serfdom.

We may therefore expect to find enclosure of arable land proceeding easily, without the necessity for special Acts of Parliament, and at a comparatively early stage of social evolution, on the one hand in Devon and Cornwall, the counties bordering on Wales, and in Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire; and on the other hand in districts like the Weald of Surrey, Kent and Sussex.

That this inference agrees with the facts will be shown in detail.

Traces of run-rig, however, both in the form of characteristic terms, and of records of local custom, are not confined entirely to the counties within or near the borders of Wales or West Wales. The Act (1770 c. 59) for Matton in Lincolnshire has for its object to enclose certain commons and “forty-five acres or thereabouts of antient Toftheads and small Inclosures called the Town Rig.” To the Act for Barton in Westmoreland (1819 c. 83), which encloses “certain open common fields or town fields,” which mentions “the dales or parcels of land in the said common fields or town fields,” there is a parallel in the Act (1814 c. 284), for Gateshead in Durham to enclose “certain common or town fields, and other commonable lands and grounds.” These phrases are all reminiscent of the fact that lands held, or which had previously been held, in run-rig in Scotland, or in rundale in Ireland, are known as town lands.[90]

[90] “The Town Fields” indifferently with “The Common Fields” is the name by which the ancient arable area of Wrexham is called in old deeds, and the same name is applied to the ancient common fields in many places in North Wales. (See A. N. Palmer, “History of Ancient Tenures of Land in the Marches of North Wales,” pp. 1, 2.)

Much more striking, however, is the local custom at Stamford, described in the following passage by Arthur Young: “Lord Exeter has property on the Lincoln side of Stamford, that seems held by some tenure of ancient custom among the farmers, resembling the _rundale_ of Ireland. The tenants divide and plough up the commons, and then lay them down to become common again; and shift the open fields from hand to hand in such a manner, that no man has the same land two years together; which has made such confusion that were it not for ancient surveys it would now be impossible to ascertain the property” (“General View of the Agriculture of Lincolnshire,” p. 27). William Marshall’s comment is perhaps worth adding: “In regard to commons, a similar custom has prevailed, and indeed still prevails, in Devonshire and Cornwall; and with respect to _common fields_, the same practice under the name of ‘Run-rig’ formerly was common in the Highlands of Scotland, and, perhaps in more remote times, in Scotland in general.”

Lastly, it is to be noticed that there is no mention in any description of run-rig of the arable fields being used as a common pasture after harvest, or during a fallow year. We shall find later the same absence of this custom characteristic of English Common Field, from open arable fields in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, Wales and Devonshire; _i.e._, from the Celtic part of England and Wales. This may, of course, be a mere coincidence, and the true explanation may in each be that the stubble was not needed for pasture. But in any case the absence of rights of pasture over arable fields removes a great obstacle to piecemeal enclosure.

EVERY YEAR LANDS.

In the chapter on Norfolk agriculture it is shown that the distinction between Infield and Outfield, which was characteristic of the agriculture of the Lothians, was also characteristic of the agriculture of Norfolk; and that a great part of the uninclosed intermixed arable land was not subject to rights of common, and was made to bear a crop every year, such land being known as Every Year lands, Whole Year lands, or Infields.

Here again we were obliged to look to Scotland for further light upon the customs of an English county, but in this case we cannot attribute the resemblance between the customs of Norfolk and the east of Scotland to a common Celtic influence. The hypothesis would be a difficult one, and a different explanation presents itself.

Seebohm points out that the ancient characteristic agriculture of Westphalia, East Friesland, Oldenburg, North Hanover, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Brunswick, Saxony and East Prussia, a vast area comprising all districts from which the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain are believed by any historians to have come, is that known among German scholars as “Einfeldwirthschaft,” the “one field system.” Crops, usually of rye and buckwheat, are continually grown year after year, in the strips in the open fields, the fertility being maintained by marling and the application of peat manure.[91]

[91] “The English Village Community,” p. 372.

It is therefore natural to attribute the whole year or every year lands of Norfolk, and the infields of Scotland, alike, to the influence of Saxon, Anglian or Danish conquest and settlement. If it is asked why the same agricultural feature was not more widely produced, the obvious answer is that when people of different races are mixed together in the occupation of the same villages, it is by no means certain that the agricultural customs which will afterwards prevail will be those of the conquerors, or of the race which is in the majority. The customs of the first occupiers had been modified by the environment, and had to some extent modified the environment, till something like harmony was created. After a conquest by another race, if any of the conquered race remain, the _easiest_ course is to continue the existing mode of husbandry. It is more likely that the customs of the conquered race should remain as the basis of the future practice, though altered to some extent in form and more in spirit, than that the previous customs of the conquerors, which they had followed in other circumstances on a different soil and amidst other surroundings, should be imposed on the conquered people.

The following are the Acts for places outside Norfolk which specify the existence of Whole Year lands, Every Year lands, or Infields.

1740, c. 19. Gunnerton, _Northumberland_. This Act is to enclose 1300 acres of Ingrounds, and 1000 acres of Outgrounds.

1752, c. 27. Enclosing Wytham on the Hill, Infield, _Lincolnshire_.

1761, c. 32. Enclosing Norham Infields. Norham was nominally in _Durham_, but it is on the Scottish border.

1807, c. 18. Herringswell, _Suffolk_. “Divers old inclosed meadow and pasture grounds, and old inclosed whole year or every year arable lands, open or common fields, half year or shack lands, common meadows, heaths, warrens, fens, commons, and waste grounds.”

1811, c. ccxix. Great Waddingfield c. Chilton and Great Coniard, _Suffolk_, “divers open fields called Whole Year lands and Half Year lands.”

1813, c. 29. Icklingham, _Suffolk_. “Open and Common fields, Infields or Every Year lands, Common Meadows, Heaths, Commons and Wastes.”

1819, c. 18. Yelling, _Huntingdon_, “Whole year lands.”

Further, Arthur Young (“Agriculture of Suffolk,” appendix, p. 217) tells us that the parish of Burnham, near Euston, in Suffolk, contained in 1764--

Infield arable, inclosed 381 acres, Outfield arable 2626 ″ Meadow and Pasture 559 ″ Heath or Sheep-walk 1735 ″ ──── Total 5302 ────

And William Marshall (“General View of the Agriculture of the Central Highlands of Scotland,” 1794, p. 38) remarks: “The every year lands as they are called, of _Gloucester_, may be said to be clean compared with those of Breadalbane.” Now, William Marshall knew the agriculture of Gloucestershire well; and he was an extremely accurate observer, and more interested in the local variations of common field cultivation than other agricultural writers of his time; his authority may therefore be considered good enough to establish the existence of lands known as every year lands in Gloucestershire.

It is also to be noticed that Acts of Enclosure for Gloucester and Oxford frequently specify, not “open and common fields” but “an open and common field,” perhaps of between two and three thousand acres; and further, as we have previously noted, the Board of Agriculture reporter for Oxfordshire says: “In divers uninclosed parishes the same rotation prevails over the whole of the open fields; but in others, the more homeward or bettermost land is oftener cropped, or sometimes cropped every year.” Of Gloucestershire, William Marshall says: “In the neighbourhood of Gloucester are some extensive Common fields which have been cropped, year after year, during a century, or perhaps centuries, without the intervening of a whole year’s fallow. Hence they are called Every Year’s land. Cheltenham, Deerhurst, and some few other townships, have also their Every Year’s lands.” On these lands no regular succession of crops is observed, except that “a brown and a white crop--pulse and corn--are cultivated in alternacy” (“Rural Economy of Gloucestershire,” Vol. I., p. 65).

It may be suggested, further, that a four-year course, such as we have seen was customary in many places, might possibly have originated from the custom of cropping the land every year. The difficulties of maintaining the fertility of the land, and of keeping it clean, under perennial crops, might very well have been found insuperable before the introduction of turnip culture, and the natural remedy, suggested by the two-or three-year course in neighbouring parishes, would be a periodic fallow. It is, however, so far as any evidence that can be supplied from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries goes, equally possible that the four-year course was a modification of the three-year course, or that the two-, three-and four-years systems are all equally ancient; and that the varying customs, not only of systems of tillage, but also of occupation of meadow land and regulation of common of pasture, as found in different parts of the country, have grown up in each district as the result of the inter-action of Keltic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse tradition.

If we take this view, which appears to me antecedently probable, we can see in the Midland or Mercian system a complete blend of Anglo-Saxon and Keltic custom, in which the specific features of both of the original strains are lost, and an intermediate, but perfectly distinct, type of village community resulted. The Wessex system, both in its feature of lot or rotation meadow, and in the customs of individual cultivation of land for common benefit, as in the sowing of clover by each occupier to be fed on by the village flock, compared with the Mercian system, shows a much closer affinity with Keltic run-rig; while the Norfolk customs are quite easily accounted for as the result of a fresh infusion of Teutonic tradition, re-introducing the original one-field system into villages where that system had previously been blended with Keltic custom.