Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
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 system
in which one field was fallow 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. It had been
observed that legumes such as peas and beans restored the soil. 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 grazing land 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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