Our Legal Heritage : 600-1776 King Aethelbert - King George IIIReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage : 600-1776 King Aethelbert - King George III
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were rebuilt so that the
sun's position with respect to the stones would indicate the day
of longest sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between
these days there was an optimum time to harvest the crops before
fall, when plants dried up and leaves fell from the trees. The
winter solstice, when the days began to get longer was cause for
celebration. In the next season, there was an optimum time to
plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground as new growth.
So farming gave rise to the concept of a year. Certain changes of
the year were celebrated, such as Easter, named for the Goddess of
the Dawn, which occurred in the east (after lent); May Day
celebrating the revival of life; Lammas around July, when the
wheat crop was ready for harvesting; and on October 31 the Celtic
eve of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead came back to visit
homes and demand food or else cast an evil spell on the refusing
homes; and at which masked and costumed inhabitants representing
the souls of the dead paraded to the outskirts of the settlements
to lead the ghosts away from their homes; and at which animals and
humans, who might be deemed to be possessed by spirits, were
sacrificed or killed perhaps as examples, in huge bonfires
[bonefires] as those assembled looked out for spirits and evil
beings.
There was an agricultural revolution from the two-field to the
three-field system, in which there were three large fields for the
heavy and fertile land. Each field was divided into long and
narrow strips. Each strip represented a day's work with the
plough. One field had wheat, or perhaps rye, another had barley,
oats, beans, or peas, and the third was fallow. These were rotated
yearly. There was a newly invented plough that was heavy and made
of wood and later had an attached iron blade. The plough had a
mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade and
threw it into a ridge alongside the furrow dug by the plough
blade. This plough was too heavy for two oxen and was pulled by a
team of about eight to ten oxen. Each ox was owned by a different
man as was the plough, because no one peasant could afford the
complete set. Each freeman was allotted certain strips in each
field to bear crops. His strips were far from each other, which
insured some very fertile and some only fair soil, and some land
near his village dwelling and some far away. These strips he
cultivated, sowed with seed, and harvested for himself and his
family. After the harvest, they reverted to common ownership for
grazing by pigs, sheep, and geese. As soon as haymaking was over,
the meadows became common grazingland for horses, cows, and oxen.
Not just any inhabitant, but usually only those who owned a piece
of land in the parish were entitled to graze their animals on the
common land, and each owner had this right of pasture for a
definite number of animals. The faster horse replaced the ox as
the primary work animal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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