Provence „ = 6030 „ „ = 377 „ „ = 47 „
(See
Chapter
XVIII.)
The Quintal was 100 of these pounds, but long hundredweights were
common. Its quarter was the Rub (Ar. _rouba_, four). These weights are
nearly obsolete, as the possession of any weights not of the Republican
system would be illegal. The measures of length and capacity are often
slightly altered so as to be in metric units: the pán becomes a
quarter-metre; groceries are often ticketed by the hectogramme, as this
is known to coincide very closely with the old Southern quarter-pound.
We now pass to the Northern or Paris system, mostly taken from the
South, and bearing evident traces of this origin.
2. THE NORTHERN SYSTEM
_Measures of Length_
The Roman foot survived in North France as the quarter of the Aune or
ell, a measure = 46·77 inches. (Cf. the passetto or double braccio of
Tuscany, of 4 palmi = 45·96 inches.) As a cloth-measure the Aune was
divided, like our cloth-yard and ell, into eighths and sixteenths.
But there was also the pied de roi, the royal foot, one-sixth of the
Toise, which = 76·73 inches = 1·949 metre.
The royal foot, = 12·789 inches, was divided into inches (pouces) of 12
lines, each of 12 points. Its standard was traditionally referred to
Charlemagne, either to the length of his foot, or to a standard brought
to him by the envoys of Harūn-al-Rashid. It coincides with half a
Hashími cubit, 25·56/2 = 12·78 inches. This tradition must be dismissed;
new measures are not introduced as standards in that way. It was simply
one-sixth of the toise, which was a Cano from civilised South France,
but its standard was so ill-kept as to be of doubtful exactitude. All
that is known of its standard is that, about 1668, an iron rod was fixed
in a wall of the Grand Chatelet in Paris and that the length of this rod
was that of half the breadth of the eastern gateway of the
Louvre-palace, which gateway was, according to the plans, 12 feet in
breadth. This standard was, however, considered to be 5/12 inch short of
the customary toise.
The Louvre standard, taking it at = 1·965 metre (which I find it by
actual measurement), corresponds closely to the Cano of Beaucaire. This
town on the southern Rhone, opposite Tarascon, had a great annual fair,
and may thus have given its linear standard to trade in the same way
that Marseilles passed the Cargo of its Egyptian corn-trade on to Paris
as the Setier, and that Troyes passed the marc used at its great annual
fair on to Paris as the standard of the French troy pound.[50]
Footnote 50:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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