Both words suggest a wider than merely German origin. 'Balk' is as thoroughly a Welsh word[586] as it is English and German. 'Rain' can hardly be other than the Welsh 'Rhan' (a division), or 'Rhyn' and 'grwn' (a ridge), with which the name of the open-field system in Ireland and Scotland—'run-rig'—is no doubt connected. The English word lince or linch, with the Anglo-Saxon 'hlinc' and 'hlince,' is perhaps allied to the Anglo-Saxon 'Hlynian,' or 'Hlinian,' to lean, making its participle 'hlynigende;' and this, and the old High German 'hlinen,' are surely connected with the Latin and Italian 'inclinare' and the French 'enclin.' As we have seen, the Roman 'Agrimensores' called these slopes or terraces 'supercilia.'
Next let us ask, whence came the English acre strip itself?
The acre strip a day's work.
It represented, as we have seen, a day's work at ploughing. Hence the German Morgen and Tagwerk, in the Alps Tagwan and Tagwen; and hence also, as early as the eighth century, the Latin 'jurnalis' and [p383] 'diurnalis.' [587] In early Roman times Varro describes the jugerum [or jugum]—the Roman acre—as 'quod juncti boves uno die exarare possint.' [588]
The division of arable open fields into day-works was therefore ancient. It was also widely spread, and by no means confined to the three-field system. It was common to the co-aration of both free tribesmen and 'taeogs' in Wales; and the Fellahin of Palestine to this moment divide their open fields into day-works for the purpose of easy division among them, according to their ploughs or shares in a plough.[589]
In the Irish open-field system, as we have seen, the land was very early divided into equal 'ridges,' for in the passage quoted, referring to the pressure of population in the seventh century, the complaint was, not that the people received smaller ridges than in former times, but fewer of them. These ridges, however, may or may not have been 'day-works.'
But perhaps, outside of the three-field system, a still more widely spread practice was that of dividing the furlongs or larger divisions into as many strips as there were sharers, without reference to the size of the strips. This practice seems to be the one adopted in many parts of Germany, in Russia, and in the East, and it is in common use in the western districts of Scotland to this day whenever a piece of land is held by a number of crofters as joint holders.[590] [p384]
It is doubtful whether the division into acre strips representing day-works, and divided from their neighbours by 'raine' or balks, was one of the features of the original German system of ploughing. It is chiefly, if not entirely, in the districts within or near to the Roman 'limes,' or colonised after the conquest of the Roman provinces, that it appears to have been prevalent.[591]
With regard to the word 'acre,' it is probably of very ancient origin.
The German 'acker' has the wider sense of ploughed land in general, but sometimes in East Friesland,[592] and also in South Germany and German Switzerland it has still the restricted meaning of the acre strip laid out for ploughing.[593]