It is clear that on the Welsh side of the Wye Welsh instead of Saxon customs prevailed, and that these were some of them.[213] So much we learn from these irregular additions of newly conquered Welsh ground to the area of the Domesday Survey.
The meaning of the peculiarities thus indicated will become apparent when the Welsh system has been examined upon its own independent evidence.
II. THE WELSH LAND SYSTEM IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.
There is no reason why, in trying to learn the nature of the Welsh land system, the method followed throughout, of proceeding backwards from the known to the unknown, should not be followed.
Open-field system in Wales.
It has already been shown that such arable fields as there are in Wales, like the Saxon arable fields, were open fields. They were shown to be divided by turf balks, two furrows wide,[214] into strips called erws—representing a day's work in ploughing. The Welsh laws were also found to supply the simplest and clearest solution given anywhere of the reason of the scattering of the strips in the holdings, as well as of the relations of the grades of holdings to the number of oxen contributed by the holders to the common plough team of eight oxen.
In fact, the Welsh codes clearly prove that, as regards arable husbandry, the open field system was the system prevalent throughout all the three districts of Wales. [p187]
The Welsh mainly pastoral.
But partly from the mountainous nature of the country, and partly from the peculiar stage of economic development through which the Welsh were passing, long after the Norman Conquest they were still a pastoral people. Cattle rather than corn claimed the first consideration, and ruled their habits; and hence the Welsh land system, even in later times, was very different from that of the Saxons.
In fact, the two land systems, though both using an open-field husbandry, were in their main features radically distinct. In those parts of Wales which were unconquered, and therefore uncivilised, till the conquest of Edward I., we look in vain in the early surveys for the manor or estate with the village community in villenage upon it.