Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 9 



main crops were wheat and beans ; but barley was also sown in the " bean"- 

 field and less frequently oats. But there was a much smaller number of 

 villages having only two fields, which were cropped one year and fallowed the 

 next. These villages, therefore, in any one year had only one "corn" field 

 and the fallow field. Evidence of the three-field system is found certainly as 

 far north as Aberdeenshire ;' but it is not clear that it was so prevalent in the 

 east of Scotland as in England. Besides, the kinds of crop grown in the 

 north were not the same as in the south. Wheat and beans dropped out 

 towards the north, and barley or bere, oats, and peas took their place. Judging 

 from the Aberdeenshire example, bere was the first crop after the fallow, and 

 oats and peas the next. 



It is not clear which crops, if any, were peculiar to the two-field villages 

 either in England or Scotland. 2 



From the foregoing it is possible to make some suggestions as to when the 

 English adopted the three-field system and also as to when they took over 

 such crops as wheat, beans and peas from the Bomans. It scarcely needs 

 pointing out that the English village with its three fields is a development 

 from the village of Tacitus. Take away from the later villages the lordship 

 and the somewhat unequal areas occupied by villagers, both of which were a 

 concomitant of feudalism, and we get back to a village which held an area of 

 land equal to the requirements of its people, among whom it was reallotted 

 periodically in about equal portions. Take away the denser population of the 

 Middle Ages, and we restore the possibility of choosing new land every year 

 and some being still left over. But why the third field ? Had the English in 

 Germany been as confined as to space as they were afterwards in England, 

 and had they still grown only such crops as millet and oats or barley, they 

 would have required two fields : one in which their crop of the year was grow- 

 ing and another which was being tilled and cleaned for the next year's crop. 

 But wheat when it was introduced could not be worked in with those other 

 crops. It had to be sown in autumn; its cultivation was different; and, since 

 all stubbles were grazed, it must be separated from the field in which the 

 other " summer corns," as they were called, were grown. Hence, if wheat and 

 one or more of the other crops were grown, a third field was necessary. 



Seebohm was able to trace the three-field system back to the seventh 

 century, to the Laws of King Ine, " re-published by King Alfred as ' The 

 Dooms of Ine ' who came to the throne a.d. 688." 3 Can we take the 



1 See Keith's Agriculture of Aberdeenshire. 



2 The above description of the early agricultural systems is gathered from old agricultural books 

 and from such writers as Seebohm, Maine, Goniiue, Mailland, and Yinogradoff. 



3 English Village Community, p. 109. 



R.I.A. PROC, VOL. XXXI. B S 



