The Common English Ell, the tailor’s yard, ‘taylors yerde, virga cissoris,’ was probably the French aune = 46·6 inches, introduced under the Plantagenets from their French dominions and cut down to fit our ell system. This ell appears to have been carried abroad by trade. Both the 3-span Covado and the 5-span Vara of Portugal are identical with our ells, their spans being longer than the ordinary Portuguese spans and called _palmos avantejados_, long spans. The four-foot Ell of Jersey and Guernsey was probably the French ell increased from 4 Roman feet to 4 English feet. Of the foot-ells of Italy and Germany, several were exactly half our ell, while quite foreign to the native standards. Both our Ell and our Yard were divided into 4 quarters and 16 nails. The Elizabethan standards, still extant, are so divided. Of the English span-ells the Yard alone remains. The 5-span Ell, maintained by the statute authority which prescribed the breadth of cloth, lived only as a royal measure and, like the royal pound, was gradually superseded by the more popular measure. The ell was obsolete nearly a century before the royal pound silently disappeared. It seems, however, to have survived in Wales for a long time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVII FOREIGN LINEAR MEASURES Only a sketch of these can be given, for in some countries so various are the local standards that each petty state, each district sometimes, would require a long study. I. THE TEUTONIC COUNTRIES _Sweden_ The Roman foot = 11·67 inches. This is, or was, also used in Oldenburg and in some parts of Holland. _Denmark and Norway_ The Rhineland foot = 12·356 inches, divided into 12 Tomme (thumbs), 12 feet = 1 rode (rod). _North Germany_ The principal types are: 1. The Rhineland foot, in Prussia, &c. 2. The Hanoverian foot = 11·5 inches more or less, used in Hanover, Pomerania, part of Holland and Belgium, Bavaria, Mecklenburg, and Geneva. 3. The Hanseatic foot, 11·32 inches more or less, used in Lubeck, Bremen (11·39), Hamburg (11·276), Dantzig, also in Hesse, Saxe-Coburg, and Poland. The length of 11·32 inches points to the probability of the Hanseatic foot being a reduced Rhineland foot, 11/12 of 12·356 inches = 11·3264 inches. There are several instances of the popular objection to a long foot and of the artifice which reduces it to a more convenient length by taking 11 inches of the government standard, and making from them a foot of 12 short inches.