The Ell was a length of 3 Rhineland feet, divided into 37 inches,
approximately of English standard.
The Acre was a North German acker of 160 rods, each 6 Rhineland feet
square.
The Pound was the Amsterdam standard of Troy = 7609 grains, multiplied
and divided sexdecimally.
The old wine-boll = 17·8 gallons was the half-Cargo of Marseilles,
divided into 16 pints of 41 Scots ounces.
The larger Stirling Jug was a North German ‘kanne’ of 104·2 cubic inches
= 55 Scots ounces or 3 Imperial pints. It was the standard of
corn-measure; the corn-firlots were multiples of it.
The common corn-firlot was a Rhineland cubic foot = 1000 Troy ounces or
18 Stirling Jugs. It was the North German Himt.
Another firlot was 19 lesser pints = 48-3/4 lb. Scots.
The Edinburgh Firlot of 21-1/4 Stirling Jugs or 2214 cubic inches was
the North German Anker, become a corn-measure.
The Firlot of 31 Stirling Jugs was a wheat-firlot enlarged to hold about
the same weight of oats.
2. IRELAND
There are in Ireland many primitive Celtic measures worthy of study, if
merely as showing the ways of thought of the people; but apart from
these, the system of weights and measures, established for many
centuries, has been the English system introduced in early Plantagenet
times.
Some of these measures, relics of that time, long overlaid in England,
are of interest; for instance, the gallon of 217 c.i. is one-eighth of
the early wine-bushel = 1 cubic foot.
The Irish road and field measures, multiples of the seven-yard rod, have
been noticed.
3. WALES
The general unit is the Cibyn (kibbin) = 4 gallons or 32 lb. of wheat,
the English half-bushel or tuffet. It is divided into 4 quarts, and 16
cibyns make a Peg = 8 bushels or 1 quarter.
Measures on the English stone system are also used:
The Ffiol = 1 stone, 14 lb.
„ Peck = 3 „
„ Hobbet = 12 „ about 2-1/2 bushels.
There is a Hobbet in England, but this is about a bushel.
The 5-span Ell survived in Wales for a long time as the Hirlath.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
MEASURES AND WEIGHTS OF SOME BRITISH
DOMINIONS
1. THE CHANNEL ISLANDS
These measures are the connecting links between those of old France,
through Normandy, and those of England, especially in land-measures.
Normandy had a system of measures kept in fair unity by the English
dukes of Normandy.
‘Thanks to their firm administration the English system was generally
marked by a scientific regularity which, notwithstanding its
complication, is in remarkable contrast with the barbarous French
system.’[33]
Footnote 33:
_Etudes sur la condition de la classe agricole en Normandie au moyen
age_ (Leopold V. Delisle, 1851).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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