But under Roman usage the proportion taken was not always a _tenth_. The State rent was nominally a tithe. But it was in fact so extortionately gathered as sometimes in Sicily to _treble_ the tithe.[624] Hyginus also says that the 'vectigal,' or tax, was taken in some provinces in a certain part of the crop, in some a fifth, in others a seventh.[625] In Italy the dues from the _Agri Medietates_ perhaps surviving in the later _métayer_ system, amounted sometimes to _one-half_. At any rate, the proportion varied. Now the Saxon 'gafol-yrth' of the yard-land of thirty acres seems, according to the 'Rectitudines,' as we have seen, to have been the produce of three acres in the wheat-field, ploughed by the 'gebur' and sown with seed from his own barn. For it will be remembered that the first season after the yard-land was given there was to be no gafol, and in the gebur's outfit only seven out of the ten acres in the wheat-field [p403] were to be handed over to him already sown, leaving three unsown, _i.e._ probably _the three_ which otherwise he must have sown for the _gafol-yrth_ due to his lord. As ten acres of the yard-land were probably always in fallow, three acres of wheat was a heavier _gafol-yrth_ than a fairly gathered tithe would have been. It would therefore seem probable that as the 'gafol' in kind may be traced back to the Roman _tributum_, itself perhaps a survival of the tribal food-rents of the conquered provinces, so the 'gafol-yrth' may be traced back to the Roman _decumæ_, or other proportion of the crop due by way of land-tax or rent to the State. And this survival of the complex tribute or gafol, made up of its two separate elements, from Roman to Saxon times, becomes all the more striking when it is considered also that it was due from a normal holding with an outfit of a pair of oxen, both in the case of the Saxon _yard-land_ and of the Roman veteran's allotment. VIII. THE BOON-WORK AND WEEK-WORK OF THE SERF. «The Saxon 'boon-work' and the Roman 'sordida munera.'» Proceeding still further, besides the _gafol_ and _gafol-yrth_, and yet distinct from the _week-work_, was the liability of the serfs on the Saxon manor to certain _boon-work_ or services _ad preces_; sometimes in ploughing or reaping a certain number of acres of the lord's demesne land in return for grass land or other advantages, or without any special equivalent; sometimes in going errands or carrying goods to market or otherwise, generally known as _averagium_. 'He shall land-gafol pay, and shall _ridan_ and _averian_ [p404] and _lade lædan_' for his lord. So this boon-work in addition to 'gafol' is described in the 'Rectitudines.' The various kinds of manorial 'averagium' were, as we have seen, often called in mediæval Latin _angariæ_, a going on errands or postal service; _paraveredi_, or packhorse services; and _carroperæ_, or waggon services.