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This evidence will be sufficient to prove that the arithmetical clustering of the homesteads was real, and that, as in Wales, so in Ireland, under the tribal system the homesteads were scattered over the country, and not grouped together in villages and towns.[297]

Passing to the methods of agriculture, it is obvious, that, even in a pastoral state, the growth of corn cannot be wholly neglected. We have seen that in Wales there was agriculture, and that, so far as it extended, the ploughing was conducted on an open-field system, and by joint-ploughing.

It was precisely so also in Ireland, and it had been from time immemorial.

Open fields.

It is stated in the 'Book of the Dun Cow' (Lebor na Huidre), compiled in the seventh century by the Abbot of Clanmacnois, known to us in an Irish MS. of the year 1100, that 'there was not a ditch, nor fence, nor stone wall round land till came the period of the sons of Aed Slane [in the seventh century], but only smooth fields.' Add to this the passage pointed out by Sir H. S. Maine[298] in the 'Liber Hymnorum' (a MS. probably of the eleventh century), viz.— [p226]

'Very numerous were the inhabitants of Ireland at this time [the time of the sons of Aed Slane in the seventh century], and their number was so great that they only received in the partition 3 lots of 9 ridges [immaire] of land, namely 9 ridges of bog land, 9 of forest, and 9 of arable land.'

The run-rig or Rundale system in Ireland and Scotland.

Taking those two passages together, and noting that the word for 'ridges' (immaire) is the same word (imire, or iomair[299]) now used in Gaelic for a ridge of land, and that the recently remaining system of strips and balks in Ireland and Scotland is still known as the 'run-rig' system, it becomes clear that whatever there was of arable land in any particular year lay in open fields divided into ridges or strips.

There are, further, some passages in the Brehon Laws which show that at least among the lower grades of tribesmen there was joint-ploughing. And this arose not simply from 'joint-tenancy' of undivided land by co-heirs,[300] but from the fact that the tribesmen of lower rank only possessed portions of the requisites of a plough,[301] just as was the case with Welsh tribesmen and the Saxon holders of yard-lands.