At these great religious rites, accompanied as they ever were by the solemn Ðing, _placitum_ or court, thrice in the year the markmen assembled unbidden: and here they transacted the ordinary and routine business required. On emergencies however, which did not brook delay, the leaders could issue their peremptory summons to a bidden Ðing, and in this were then decided the measures necessary for the maintenance and well-being of the community, and the mutual guarantee of life and honour. To the Gá then probably belonged, as an unsevered possession, the lands necessary for the site and maintenance of a temple, the supply of beasts for sacrifice, and the endowment of a priest or priests: perhaps also for the erection of a stockade or fortress, and some shelter for the assembled freemen in the Ðing. Moreover, if land existed which from any cause had not been included within the limits of some Mark, we may believe that it became the public property of the Gá, _i. e._, of all the Marks in their corporate capacity: this at least may be inferred from the rights exercised at a comparatively later period over waste lands, by the constituted authorities, the Duke, Count or King. Accident must more or less have determined the seat of the Gá-jurisdiction: perhaps here and there some powerful leading Mark, already in the possession of a holy site, may have drawn the neighbouring settlers into its territory: but as the possession and guardianship of the seat of government could not but lead to the vindication of certain privileges and material advantages to its holders, it is not unreasonable to believe that where the Marks coalesced on equal terms, the temple-lands would be placed without the peculiar territorial possession of each, as they often were in Greece, upon the ἐσχατιὰ or boundary-land. On the summit of a range of hills, whose valleys sufficed for the cultivation of the markmen, on the watershed from which the fertilizing streams descended, at the point where the boundaries of two or three communities touched one another, was the proper place for the common periodical assemblages of the free men: and such sites, marked even to this day by a few venerable oaks, may be observed in various parts of England[127]. ----- Footnote 127: There are instances which show that the custom, afterwards kept up, of “Trysting Trees,” was an ancient one. Probably some great trees marked the site of the several jurisdictions: I find mentioned the scírác, the hundredes treów and the mearcbeám. -----