The fixture to the land of the aillt or taeog was not the special mark so much of a semi-servile condition as of his _want of recognised kindred_, and under the local custom of South Wales it seems that he too, like the alltud, could sometimes arrive at the recognition of kindred, without indeed becoming a Cymric tribesman, at the end of four generations of residence under the chieftain of the land; and even to further recognition of it, involving a still better position as to rights, at the ninth generation. The ninth man in South Wales seems according to local custom in some districts to have, at last, climbed the highest rung of the ladder, and to have attained the right to claim the status of a Cymric tribesman. This curious rise under Cymric custom, by steps of four generations, up the ladder towards the recognition of tribal rights, seems to have a suggestive correspondence with the reverse process under manorial usage of proving the serfdom of a _nativus_ by showing that the great-grandfather was a _nativus_ on the lord’s land, the manorial rule being that settlement on servile land for four generations made the posterity of an original settler into _nativi_.[58] [Sidenote: Want of kindred the key to their position.] Once more let us try to realise what this meant, and what was the position of these Cymric non-tribesmen in regard to their settlement on land. If under the guidance of the Codes we turn to the extents and surveys, we find them living, in some cases, not mixed up with the tribesmen, but in separate groups, or trefs, or trefgordds. There may be here and there exceptional alltuds or strangers of a higher class growing up, by the gradual process of intermarriage for four generations with tribeswomen, into the status of tribesmen. But the mass of the stranger class were aillts and taeogs living in separate _taeog trefs_, though, according to the surveys, sharing, often in common, certain rights of grazing over certain districts with gwelys of tribesmen. Now these groups of taeogs and aillts were, according to the Codes, as we have seen, of two classes, and we recognise the same two classes when we find in the surveys not only groups of taeogs in taeog-trefs but also gwelys of non-tribesmen. The normal group of the taeog-tref differed from the free tref in the fact that in it no family rights were recognised. All the members of it shared in its rights and payments equally _per capita_, and not _per stirpes_. They were all liable as a body, few or many, for the whole amount of the dues to the chieftains. During their fathers’ lifetime sons shared _pari passu_ and equally with their parents, and other members of the group, in the pasture and common ploughing, except youngest sons, who remained with their fathers. In the gwelys, on the other hand, as in the gwelys of tribesmen, there was recognition of family or blood relationships, and a patriarchal element.