ON LAND TENURE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 175 
boundary they were called butts. A corner of the shot, or 
field, which could not be cut up into an exact acre or half- 
acre strip was formed sometimes into a strip tapering or 
pointed at one end, and this was called a gore, or “ gored acre.” 
A few small odds and ends of land remained unused, which 
from very early times bore the names of “no man’s land,” or 
“any one’s land,” or “Jack’s land.” On the sides of hills, 
forming terraces, the strips were called lynches, or linces, a 
name properly belonging to the banks, or unploughed, 
grassy, natural terrace walls that held up and separated the 
terraces, but which came in time to be given to the terraces 
themselves. Remains of these are to be seen from the rail- 
road at Luton in Bedfordshire, and between Cambridge and 
Hitchin, and also on many of the steep sides of the Sussex 
Downs and the Chiltern Hills. 
The three field system of culture was almost universal, 
that is, the open lands were kept in three divisions, in each 
of which, as we have seen is the case in Palestine, the 
same culture was required to be carried on by all at the 
same time. This rotation of crops was known as 1, Tilth 
erain, or Winter corn; 2, Etch grain, or Spring, or Lent 
corn; and 3, Fallow. ‘That is, in each of the three fields 
wheat or rye was sown one year in autumn, the tilth grain, 
and the land was then pastured over till the spring of the 
next year. This second year of etch (eddish, edish, “stubble ”) 
erain, called also Breach-corn (from the breach, or breaking of 
the stubble?), barley, oats, or beans were sown in spring. The 
third year, fallow, no crop was sown till the autumn. 
The land in these open fields in villenage was mainly held 
by the villein tenants in quantities of acre and half-acre strips 
known as hides, wistas, virgates, and bovates. Normally the 
hide, called also a curucate (plough land), and in Sussex “a 
ereat wista,” contained 120 acres;* the wista, or half-hide, 
60 acres; the virgate, or yard-land, called in Kent a yoke and 
north of the Tees a husband-land, 30 acres; and the bovate, 
called also an oa-gang or half-virgate, 15 acres. This last land 
measure, the bovate, was so called because it was held to be 
the amount of land which contributed one ox to the fuli 
plough-team of eight oxen needed for a hide, or carucate, 
which, consisting of 120 acres, contained just 8 bovates. The 
villein tenants mostly held a virgate, or half-virgate, and 
* There was also a solanda, or double hide, containing 240 acres, 
probably the same as the slung, or solin, of Kent, signifying “ plough- 
land,” from sul, “a plough.” 
