The Welsh ploughed for their oats in March and April, and for wheat in summer and winter, yoking to their ploughs seldom fewer than four oxen; and he mentions as a peculiarity that the driver walked backward in front of the oxen, as we found was the custom in Scotland.[218] «Love of war.» «Genealogies.» Another marked peculiarity of the Welsh was their hereditary liking and universal training for warlike enterprise. They were soldiers as well as herdsmen; even husbandmen eagerly rushed to arms from the plough.[219] Long settlement and the law of division of labour had not yet brought about the separation of the military from the agricultural population of Wales even so late as the twelfth century. And here we come upon traces of their old tribal economy. For the facts that they had not yet attained to settled villages and townships, that they had not yet passed from the pastoral to the agricultural stage, that they were still craving after warfare and wild enterprise--all [p189] these are traces of tribal habits still remaining. And a still clearer mark of the same thing was the stress they laid upon their genealogy. Even the common people (he says) keep their genealogies, and can not only readily recount the names of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but even refer back to the _sixth_ or _seventh_ generation, or beyond them, in this manner: _Rhys_, son of _Gruffydh_, son of _Rhys_, son of _Theodor_, son of _Eineon_, son of _Owen_, son of _Howel_, son of _Cadelh_, son of _Roderic Mawr_, and so on.[220] «Survivals of the tribal system.» Thus in the twelfth century there were in Wales distinct survivals of a tribal economy. Instead of a system like the Saxons, of village communities and townships, the Welsh system was evidently a tribal system in the later stages of gradual disintegration, tenaciously preserving within it arrangements and customs pointing back to a period when its rules had been in full force. But the Welsh codes must be further examined before the significance of the Domesday entries can be fully appreciated. III. THE WELSH LAND SYSTEM ACCORDING TO THE WELSH LAWS. «Laws of Howel in the tenth century.» The Welsh version of the ancient laws of Wales contains three several codes: The Venedotian of North Wales, the Dimetian and Gwentian of South Wales. They profess to date substantially from _Howel dda_, who codified the local customs about the middle of the tenth century. They contain, however, later [p190] additions, and the MSS. are not earlier than the end of the thirteenth century. There is a Latin version of the Dimetian code in MS. of the early part of the thirteenth century, which is especially valuable as giving the received Latin equivalent of the Welsh terms used in the laws. And there are also, apart from these codes, triads of doubtful date, but professing to preserve traditional customs and laws of the Welsh nation before the time of the Saxon conquest of Britain.[221]