Simpler form of open-field husbandry under the tribal system.
But it must not be forgotten that side by side with this manorial open-field system we found an earlier and simpler form of open-field husbandry carried on by the free tribesmen and taeogs of Wales. This simpler system described in the Welsh laws and the 'triads' seemed to be in its main features practically identical with that described also in the Germania of Tacitus. It was an annual ploughing up of fresh grass-land, leaving it to go back again into grass after the year's ploughing. It was, in fact, the agriculture of a pastoral people, with a large range of pasture land for their cattle, a small portion of which annually selected for tillage sufficed for their corn crops. This is clearly the meaning of Tacitus, 'Arva per annos mutant et superest ager.' It is clearly the meaning of the Welsh 'triads,' according to which the tribesman's right extended to his 'tyddyn,' with its corn and cattle yard, and to co-aration of the waste.
Three-field system produced by a three-course rotation of crops.
Nor can there be much mystery in the relation of these two forms of open-field husbandry to each other. In both, the arable land is divided in the ploughing into furlongs and strips. There is co-operation of ploughing in both, the contribution of oxen to the common team of eight in both, the allotment of the strips to the owners of the oxen in rotation, [p370] producing the same scattering of the strips in both. The methods are the same. The difference lies in the application of the methods to two different stages of economic growth. The simple form is adapted to the early nomadic stage of tribal life, and survives even after partial settlement, so long as grassland is sufficiently abundant to allow of fresh ground being broken by the plough each year. The more complex and organised form implies fixed settlement on the same territory, the necessity for a settled agriculture within a definite limit, and the consequent ploughing of the same land over and over again for generations. The three-field system seems to be simply the adaptation of the early open-field husbandry to a permanent three-course rotation of crops.
The yard-land the mark of serfdom.
But there is a further distinguishing feature of the English three-field system which implies the introduction of yet another factor in the complex result, viz. the yard-land. And this indivisible bundle of strips, to which there was always a single succession, was evidently the holding not of a free tribesman whose heirs would inherit and divide the inheritance, but of a serf, to whom an outfit of oxen had been allotted. In fact, the complex and more organised system would naturally grow out of the simpler form under the two conditions of settlement and serfdom.
Now, turning from England to the Continent, we have in the same way various forms of the open-field system to deal with, and in comparing them with the English system their geographical distribution becomes very important.
German authorities on the German system.
Happily, very close attention has recently been given to this subject by German students, and we are [p371] able to rely with confidence on the facts collected by Dr. Landau,[554] by Dr. Hanssen,[555] and lastly by Dr. August Meitzen in his Ausbreitung der Deutschen in Deutschland,[556] and in his still more recent and interesting review of the collected works of Dr. Hanssen.[557]
Whilst we learn from these writers that much remains to be done before the last word can be said upon so intricate a subject, some general points seem at least to be clearly made out.