THE CELTIC SYSTEM I9I 



Perhaps the most pertinent testimony on these points comes 

 neither from Scotland nor from Wales, but from their more purely 

 Celtic neighbor, Ireland. This evidence, too, is of a more recent 

 date than that hitherto cited. It is embodied in the report of the 

 so-called Devon Commission, made to parHament in the middle 

 of the nineteenth century.^ From this report came (apparently 

 at second hand) the plan which Seebohm used to illustrate the 

 intermixed strips of the tenants of an Irish townland.^ The plan 

 itself, which is herewith once more reproduced, is instructive, 

 but the accompanying explanation, which Seebohm omits, is still 

 more so. It runs as follows: — 



" Fig. i shows the condition to which subdivision of holdings 

 has brought a neglected townland in Donegal, containing 205 

 statute acres. The whole was occupied in one farm two genera- 

 tions ago ; it then became divided into two farms, and those two 

 have been since subdivided into twenty-nine holdings, scattered 

 into 422 different lots. The average arable quantity of each hold- 

 ing is four acres, held in fourteen different parts of the townland; 

 the average quantity of pasture per farm is three acres, held in 

 lots in common. The largest portion of arable held by any one 

 man is under eight acres; the smallest quantity of arable in any 

 one farm is about two roods. The pasture being held in common 

 cannot be improved. . . . They had been in the habit of sub- 

 dividing their lands, not into two, when a division was contem- 

 plated, but into as many times two as there were quahties of 

 land in the gross quantity to be divided. They would not hear 

 of an equivalent of two bad acres being set against one good one, 

 in order to maintain union and compactness. Every quaUty 

 must be cut in two, whatever its size, or whatever its position. 

 Each must have his half perches, although they be ever so distant 

 from his half acres. And this tendency is attributable to the 

 conviction of these poor ignorant people, that each morsel of their 

 neglected land is at present in the most productive state to which 

 it can be brought." ^ 



1 Evidence . . . [on] the State of the Law and Practice in respect to the Occupa- 

 tion of Land in Ireland, 4 vols. {Pari. Papers, 1845, vols, xix-xxii). 

 ^ English Village Community, p. 228. 

 * Pari. Papers, 1845, xix, app., p. 59. 



