It may be assumed that when the services were thus described contrary to the usual routine of the Domesday surveyors, it was because there was something unusual about them; and that in the majority of instances where Saxon customs prevailed, no description was deemed needful. Compare the Domesday survey of Dorsetshire--a portion of the 'West Wales'--where the manors in the royal demesne are grouped so that each group renders a 'firma unius noctis,' or a 'firma dimidiæ noctis.' [271] _Laws of Ine_, No. 67. Thorpe, p. 63. [272] _Id._ No. 70. Thorpe, p. 63. [273] _Id._ p. 504. [274] For much curious information respecting the Welsh system of tenures, see Taylor's _History of Gavel-kind_. London, 1663. [p214] CHAPTER VII. _THE TRIBAL SYSTEM_ (_continued_). I. THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. The Welsh evidence brings us back to a period parallel with the Saxon era marking the date of King Ine's laws. The Welsh land system was then clearly distinguished from the Saxon by the absence of the manor with its village community in serfdom, and by the presence instead of it of the scattered homesteads (_tyddyns_) of the tribesmen and taeogs, grouped together for the purpose of the payment to the chief of the food-rents, or their money equivalents. Further light may possibly be obtained from observation of the tribal system in a still earlier economic stage, though at a much later date, in Ireland. «Irish land divisions closely resemble the Welsh.» Now, first--without going out of our depth as we might easily do in the Irish evidence--it may readily be shown, sufficiently for the present purpose, that the system of land divisions, or rather of the grouping of homesteads into artificial clusters with arithmetical precision, was prevalent in Ireland outside the Pale as late as the times of Queen Elizabeth and [p215] James I., when an effort was made to substitute English for Irish customs and laws. There are extant several surveys of parts of Ireland of that date in which are to be recognised arrangements of homesteads almost precisely similar to those of the Welsh Codes. And further, the names of the tenants being given, we can see that they were _blood relations_ like the Welsh tribesmen, with a carefully preserved genealogy guarding the fact of their relationship and consequent position in the tribe. The best way to realise this fact may be to turn to actual examples. According to an inquisition[275] made of the county of _Fermanagh_ in 1 James I. (1603), the county was found to be divided into seven equal baronies, the description of one of which may be taken as a sample. «Clusters of _taths_ or _tyddyns_.»