- (1) Five free erws (or acre strips).
- (2) Co-tillage of the waste (cyvar gobaith).
- (3) Hunting.[224]
The homestead or tyddyn.
The free tribesman's homestead, or tyddyn, consisted of three things:—
- (1) His house (ty).
- (2) His cattle-yard (bu-arth).
- (3) His corn-yard (yd-arth).[225]
And the five free strips, afterwards apparently [p193] reduced to four, of each head of a house—free, possibly, in the sense of their having been freed from the common rights of others over them, as well as being free from charges or tribute—we may probably regard as contained in the tyddyn, or as lying in croft near the homesteads.
The holding that of a household or family.
The Gwentian, Dimetian, and Venedotian codes all represent the homestead or tyddyn and land of the free Welshman as a family holding. So long as the head of the family lived, all his descendants lived with him, apparently in the same homestead, unless new ones had already been built for them on the family land. In any case, they still formed part of the joint household of which he was the head.[226]
When a free tribesman, the head of a household, died, his holding was not broken up. It was held by his heirs for three generations as one joint holding; it was known as the holding of 'the heirs of So-and-so.' [227] But within the holding there was equality of division between his sons; the younger son, however, retaining the original tyddyn or homestead, and others having tyddyns found for them on the family land. All the sons had equal rights in the scattered strips and pasture belonging to the holding.[228]
Equality within the family
Thus, in the first generation there was equality between brothers; they were co-tenants in equal [p194] shares of the family holding of which they were co-heirs.