The Yard has survived, from its convenience as either of 4 spans or of 3 feet.
The Scots Ell = 37·058 inches corresponded to the English yard; it was 3 feet Scots, i.e. of Rhineland standard, = 12·353 inches.
The Common English Ell, the tailor’s yard, ‘taylors yerde, virga cissoris,’ was probably the French aune = 46·6 inches, introduced under the Plantagenets from their French dominions and cut down to fit our ell system. This ell appears to have been carried abroad by trade. Both the 3-span Covado and the 5-span Vara of Portugal are identical with our ells, their spans being longer than the ordinary Portuguese spans and called palmos avantejados, long spans.
The four-foot Ell of Jersey and Guernsey was probably the French ell increased from 4 Roman feet to 4 English feet.
Of the foot-ells of Italy and Germany, several were exactly half our ell, while quite foreign to the native standards.
Both our Ell and our Yard were divided into 4 quarters and 16 nails. The Elizabethan standards, still extant, are so divided.
Of the English span-ells the Yard alone remains. The 5-span Ell, maintained by the statute authority which prescribed the breadth of cloth, lived only as a royal measure and, like the royal pound, was gradually superseded by the more popular measure. The ell was obsolete nearly a century before the royal pound silently disappeared. It seems, however, to have survived in Wales for a long time.
CHAPTER XVII
FOREIGN LINEAR MEASURES
Only a sketch of these can be given, for in some countries so various are the local standards that each petty state, each district sometimes, would require a long study.