Where the allotment is permanent, and each person entitled, occupies, by means of a regular system of rotation, all theparcels successively one after another, to gather in the hay. These two classes are called respectively lot meadows androtation meadows. According to Mr Blamire, the same system was also applied to arable land, with this difference, that theusufructuary occupied the same lot during the three successive years of the triennial rotation of crops, and not merely forone year.
22. "When the English Puritans colonized New England, the courts of the infant settlement assigned lands for cultivation andpermanent possession, and apportioned from year to year the common meadow-ground for mowing." Palfrey, History ofNew England , Vol. I p. 343.
23. Tacitus, in fact, in the same passage, mentions villages, vici ; he could not, then, have been alluding to dwellings scatteredover the country. The entire passage is; Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit, vicos locant non innostrum morem, connexis et cohaerenti edificiis; suam quis que donum spatia circumdat . Germ . c.XVI24. Von Maurer quotes a curious text, which shews that in conquered Gaul Germans and Gallo-Romans formed an agrariancommunity, resulting from common possession of undivided land, in which the Gallo-Roman had a right of preference. Terram quam Burgondio venelem hebet, nullus extraneus Romano hospiti praeponatur, nec extraneo per quodlibetargumentum terrain liceat comparare . Lex Burg. tit. 84, c. 2.
25. The same is the practice in Russia; see Mackenzie Wallace, Russia, v. ii. The reader will recognize this custom asidentical with the practice in English parishes of "Beating the Boundaries," which phrase correctly expresses the form thecustom has assumed with us. For, instead of being themselves the victims, the children are armed with wands, with whichthey belabour the parish boundary marks.
26. See Mommsen, Roemische Geschickte , Vol.. I. p. 183.
27. Mone, Zeits für Gesch. des Oberrheins , Vol. I. p. 391, and Von Maurer, Gesch. der Dorfverfassung , and Gesch. derMarkenverfassung , passim.
28. The law of the Ripuarian Franks (sixth century) runs: c. 59, ?1: Si quis citeri aliquid vendiderit et emptor testamentum (i.e. instrumentum) veneditionis accipere voluit, in mallo hoc facere debet.
29. As the representative of the members, who formerly granted them their parcels, the mayor, on a transfer of property,received and re-granted the land, as represented by the branch and clod, ramo et cespite . See Vanderkindere, Notice surl'origine des magistrats communaux , p. 40, and the chapter in this volume on Common Lands in Belgium.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF THE IRISH CELTS.
The little knowledge we possess of the customs of the primitive Celts, seems to shew that the same institutions existedorigin ally among them as among other nations,joint property, and even community of wives, and cannibalism. (1) ProfessorSullivan, who has devoted his life to the study of the ancient Celtic laws, allows that in early times no one had a right ofusufruct in the soil, except by consent of the clan, and that a fresh distribution was made every year. At the much morerecent period, with which the Brehon Laws make us acquainted, the social organization of Ireland resembled that of India,and of modern Servia. The population was divided into clans or tribes (fine), the members of which claimed to be connectedby descent from a common ancestor. At the head of the clan was a chief, whom Irish traditions call a king. When the clanwas numerous, it was subdivided into groups, each united by closer ties of kinship, and also having a chief, called byAnglo-Irish jurists caput cognationis . These groups corresponded to the Roman gens , and the Greek ; and to the cognationes hominum of Germany, amongst whom, Caesar tells us, the soil was redistributed every year. (2) The juristic andpolitical unit in the social order was not, as at present, the isolated individual, but the family group called the sept . This wasprecisely similar to the Zadruga , the family community, which the Germans appropriately call Hauskommunion . The septalso resembled the family groups, the societies of compani or Frarescheux , the "coteries" and "fraternities," which in themiddle ages in France lived in one large building, cella , tilling the land in common and dividing its produce, living " au mêmepot " and " au même chanteau ."
