Semi-nomadic habits stopped by the Roman rule.
So, also, the frailty of the slightly constructed homesteads of the Welsh of the thirteenth century, which seemed to Giraldus Cambrensis as built only to last for a year, may be a survival of a state of tribal life when the tribes were nomadic, and driven to move from place to place by the pressure of warlike neighbours, or the necessity of seeking new pastures for their flocks and herds. But the nomadic stage of Welsh tribal life had probably come to an end during the period of Roman rule.
The grades in tribal society.
Putting together the Irish and Welsh evidence in [p237] a variety of smaller points, a clearer conception may perhaps be gained than before of the character and relations to each other of the three or four orders into which tribal life seems to have separated people—the chiefs, the tribesmen, the taeogs, and under all these, and classed among chattels, the slaves.
The chief evidently corresponds less with the later lord of a manor than with the modern king. He is the head and chosen chief of the tribesmen. His office is not hereditary. His successor, his tanist or edling, is chosen in his lifetime, and is not necessarily his son.[309] The chieftains of Ireland are spoken of in mediæval records and laws as reguli—little kings. When Wales (or such part of it as had not been before conquered and made manorial) was conquered by Edward I. the chieftainship did not fall into the hands of manorial lords, but was vested directly in the Prince of Wales.[310]
The tribesmen.
The tribesmen are men of the tribal blood, i.e. of equal blood with the chief. They, therefore, do not at all resemble serfs. They are more like manorial lords of lordships split up and divided by inheritance, than serfs. They are not truly allodial holders, for they hold tribal land; but they have no manorial lord over them. Their chief is their elected chief, not their manorial lord. When Irish chieftains claim to be owners of the tribal land in the English sense, and set up manorial claims over the tribesmen, they are disallowed by Sir John Davies. When Wales is [p238] conquered, the tunc pound is paid by the free tribesmen direct to the Prince of Wales, the substituted chieftain of the tribe, and the tribesmen remain freeholders, with no mesne lord between him and them.[311] So it would have been also in Ireland if the plans of Sir John Davies had been permanently carried out.[312]
The taeogs.
The taeogs are not generally the serfs of the free tribesmen, but, if serfs at all, of the chief. They are more like Roman coloni than mediæval serfs. But they are easily changed into serfs. In Ireland the mensal land on which they live is allowed by Sir John Davies to be (by a rough analogy) called the chief's demesne land. In Wales they are called in Latin documents villani; but they become after the Conquest the villani, not of manorial lords, but of the Prince of Wales, and they still live in separate trevs from the tribesmen.[313]
The slaves.