5 10 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



system further back ? Had the English come over from Germany with the 

 two-field system, there would have been more of it in later times, because 

 every change of system required a revolution from the previous — by no means 

 an easy matter, as was shown by the way the three-field system survived 

 till the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it finally gave way at the 

 introduction of two new crops, namely, the turnip and red clover. Moreover, 

 the same three-field system lives on in Germany to the present day, and 

 there, under similar difficulties as to the lack of records, it has been traced 

 back by Hanssen to the year 771. ' It is not improbable, therefore, that the 

 three-field systems in Germany and England have the same origin : that is 

 that it was adopted in Germany before the English left. It might be argued 

 of course, that, given the same crops in England and Germany as a result of 

 contact with the Romans, two peoples so closely allied would probably grow 

 them in the same fashion. But the likeness is too close for that explanation. 

 Nor will this argument explain such coincidences as the German calling the 

 two crops of the three-field system " wintergetreide " and " sommergetreide," 

 while the Englishman called them "winter-corn" and summer-corn"; some 

 Englishmen speaking of the first three ploughings of the fallow as " een 

 fallow," " twy fallow," and " try fallow "; 2 and the German calling the 

 fallow the " brach " while the Scot in Scotland and in the North of Ireland 

 speaks of the light stubble furrow drawn in autumn as the " brack-fur." 



In any case we have no more mention of millet in Britain in the Middle 

 Ages. We have oats and barley or bere, which may have come in from the 

 north of Europe, grown in the Germanic and Scandinavian parts of Scotland 

 and in England ; and we have wheat, beans, peas and flax, which were 

 brought west by the Romans, grown in England and some of them at least in 

 the east of Scotland. 



Before going on to consider the agriculture of the Celts, it will be well to 

 say how English agriculture branched off from the three-field system and 

 how it developed afterwards. 



The change had begun before the Norman conquest : how long it would 

 be impossible to say. It was due to the assumption of lordship by the 

 military leaders, who, in the first instance, forced the non-combatant 

 villagers to supply them and their thanes and other military attendants with 

 produce from the village fields and to work such land as they seized for 

 themselves. 



In the early days it is probable the lords and their thanes were still 

 members of the village community and shared the village land plot about 



1 See Von der Goltz's Gesehichte der deutschen Landwiitscliaft, 1902, p. 77. 



2 See Mortimer's Art of Husbundry, Bk. ii. ch. 3. 



