EARLY HISTORY OF TWO AND THREE FIELDS 59 



The Addington account of nine hides is valuable in that it 

 further ampHfies our conception of " gemaene land." These hides 

 lay " on gemang oSran gedallande/' and their " yrbland " was 

 " gemaene." Nothing could more fittingly describe holdings in 

 open field than to say that they lay in the midst of other divided 

 land, with the arable (as well as the pastures and meadows) in 

 common. Gedalland, or divided land, was, then, the technical 

 Anglo-Saxon phrase for intermixed arable acres. Its use may 

 imply that the division of the arable had passed beyond a stage 

 of yearly allotment to one of permanent possession. It may, on 

 the other hand, imply nothing about permanence of possession, 

 but may refer only to the minute subdivision to which the arable 

 had been subjected. Whichever the case, it is a more specific 

 term than " gemaene land," a phrase applicable to common pas- 

 tures and common meadows as well as to arable. 



The implications of gedalland once clear, a brief reference to 

 it in the CHfford charter is self-explanatory. Here one-half of 

 two mansae was on an island, and the other half was " gedael- 

 land." But the term seldom occurs in the charters, being of 

 more importance in a well-known passage of the laws. The par- 

 cels of the " divided " land were, as Vinogradoff conjectures, 

 probably known as " sticca," sixty of which at Oxney were 

 equivalent to thirty acres. ^ 



The term contrasted with gedalland as indicative of ownership 

 in severalty was " syndrig land." In the Winterbourne charter 

 such were the five hides to the west of the village, and pains are 

 taken to contrast them with the five hides of " gemaene land " 

 to the east. The former must have been what would at a later 

 day have been called demesne, relative to which common rights 

 were non-existent. 



Latin equivalents of the Anglo-Saxon phrases are easy to inter- 

 pret. At Dumbleton two and a half mansae were " in communi 

 terra," and in another charter two mansae were " sorte communes 

 populari," common and in common lot. The phrase " aecer 

 under aecer " got itself translated as " segetibus mixtis " at Hare- 

 well. At " Ceorlatun " the circumlocution was longer, " iugera 



^ Cf. the above list, and his English Society, p. 279. 



