14:6 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



In limiting the sig'nification of tlie word tun, to designate not the object 

 which encloses (its primitive mieaning), but the space enclosed, the Anglo- 

 Saxon agrees with the Scandinavian language, as is the case with so many 

 words and institutions of the early Anglo-Saxon period. The definition of 

 the Icelandic tun, as given by Vigfussen, is: "a hedged or fenced plot, en- 

 closure within which a house is built; then the farm-house with its build- 

 ings; the homestead." This is precisely the meaning which the word has 

 in the earliest Anglo-Saxon laws, those of Aethelbihrt of Kent; it will be re- 

 collected that the settlers of Kent were Jutes, that is Scandinavians, rather 

 than Saxons, like the rest of the migratory tribes. In these laws we read of 

 a king's tun (Ch. 5), an eorl's tun (Ch. 13), and a " mannes tun'''' (Ch. 17) in 

 all which cases tun is clearly the hedged enclosure, the homestead.^ From 

 the fenced enclosure of an individual homestead or field to that of a village, 

 as in the later laws, is an easy step; or rather the two uses are alike easy 

 transitions from the original signification of the enclosing fence or hedge. 



This further extension of the word, however, does not appear to have 

 been made by the Scandinavians of the continent any more than by the 

 Germans. None of the Teutonic nations of the continent appear to have 

 had any territorial subdivision of the hundred, of a substantial, individ- 

 ual, public character. With them the hundred was the unit of the consti- 

 tutional machinery; and any lesser subdivisions stood to the hundred very 

 much as our school districts or wards do to our towns or cities — as mere 

 shifting administrative districts, having no substantial powers, and not 

 forming a body i3olitic. Scholars are now agreed, as I have already said, that 

 the Dorfschaft was a division of a purely secondary character, for agricul- 

 tural and economical purposes. Nevertheless it corresponded closely in its 

 origin to the English township; and might, except for the early feudaliza- 

 tion of Germany, have attained an equal degree of independence. Dorf, 

 village, is the exact equivalent in meaning (not in etymology) of the English 

 tun, and the affix schaft is the English scip; so that "township" is in 

 meaning precisely the German Dorfschaft.'- 



From the territorial character of the English township, we pass to the 

 consideration of its political character, as "the unit of the constitutional 

 machinery." Direct evidence for this is not veiy abundant, but seems to 

 be entirely sufficient. I have already spoken of Chief Justice Fortescue's 

 mention of town (villa) as an integral part of the hundred, just as the hun- 

 dred was an integral part of the shire. It is important also to note the 

 well-known fact that the town [villata) was throughout the mediaeval 



1 This signification appears to have survived in Scotland; as, in Scotfs Redgauntlet, 

 Letter XI., where Darsie Latimer expresses a doubt whether he ought to go to Redgaunt- 

 et's " town " in disguise, the context showing that it is only his house that is meant. 



2 The German city of the middle ages was created not like the English borough, by giv- 

 ing higher powers to an already existing organism, but by cutting out a section of ter- 

 ritory- and bestowing upon it public functions of a municipal character. See articles by 

 V. Below, Historiche Zeitschrift, 1888. 



