MacNeill — Ancient Irish Law : Law of Status or Franchise. 287 



78. He has a fourth (share of) a plough ; an ox, a plough-share, a goad, a 

 halter ; so that he is competent to be a partner ; a share in a kiln, in a mill, 

 in a barn ; a cooking pot.^ 



79. The size of his house : it is larger than a house of rentcharge. For 

 the size of the latter is seventeen feet. It is of wickerwork to the lintel. 

 From this to the roof-tree, a dit between every two weavings (?). Two doorways 

 in it. A door for one of them, a hurdle for the other, and this (the hurdle) 



721 acres, supported only about seven cows, a cow to 100 acres. When the writer says, 

 " That is a cow's land," supporting seven cows and rented annually for one cow, he must 

 mean a single cwmcd. The cumal as a measure of value was equal to three cows. 



According to the text Fodla Tire (properly Di Thir Ghumaile IV 278 z), the purchase 

 value of a cumal of the best arable land was 24 milch-cows, of medium arable land 

 20 milch-cows, of inferior arable land 16 milch-cows. Of grazing land, the purchase 

 value, according to quality, is given at twelve or eight dry cows. This does not comprise 

 woodland or mountain land (IV 278, 8, 9). These are basic values, augmented, as the 

 text says, by the proximity of woodland, a silver-mine, a mill-site, a byroad, a main 

 road, the sea, a stream, mountain grazing, river fishing, a cattle-pond, a road for 

 cattle ; each of these conveniences made an addition, varying from a heifer to a cumal, to 

 the capital value. 



The low value attached to land, in comparison with cattle, confirms the evidence of 

 Bretha Cumaithchesa, Goibniiis Uisci, etc., that the seventh and eighth centuries were a 

 time of very great agricultural development, when much of the fertile land began to be 

 partitioned among holders and fenced off for the first time. Except men of learning, arts, 

 or crafts, every freeman in C.G., including the higher nobility, from the rank of fer 

 midboth upward, is owner or part-owner of a plough and a water-mill. There was plenty of 

 good land awaiting division and enclosure. The values quoted above refer only to 

 enclosed land. The definite measures of length and breadth, everywhere in evidence, 

 point to systematic laying out and fencing. The method was of ancient Celtic tradition. 

 The land was ench)sed in rectangular strips, the length being twice the breadth. The 

 long side of the area is called taeh, " side," the short side is called airchenn, "fore-end." 

 From the Celtic original of this term, *areqennos, was derived the Gaulish arepennis, and 

 thence the French arpeiit. According to Columella, arepennis was the name given by the 

 Gauls to a semijutjerum of 150 feet (in length and breadth). A later writer (see Holder, 

 Altcelt. Sprachschatz, s.v.) says that the arepennis measured CXX by CX[X] feet, and 

 that two arepennes made a (Romaxi) jugerum (240 x 120 feet). The name itself, however, 

 is a sufficient indication that the arepennis, like the jugermn, was based on a rectangular 

 plan, in which the side was twice the length of the " fore-end." The Irish forrach of 

 144 feet corresponds closely to the lateral 150 feet of the arepennis, which may have been 

 made to conform later or locally to the Roman jugermn. According to another writer 

 (Holder, s.v.) the arepennis contained 12 perticae. The Irish longitudinal /oj-rac/i con- 

 tained 12 fertaig. Fertach is thus a loan word from the Latin pertica (> English 2>erch). The 

 first /er midboth in C.G. "does not reach [i.e. own as much as] a fertach." 



- The (jcaire had thus only one-fourth of the extent of tilled land that one plough 

 normally ploughed in the season. To each plough there were four oxen, but these were 

 probably yoked two at a time. Already in the Bronze Age the Ligurians ploughed with 

 two oxen (Dechelette, Manuel II, fig. 1). Small landholders tilled, ground their grain, 

 and stored it, in partnership. Gommus, genitive coiminse, in the text, must mean 

 "partnership." It is the noun corresponding to the verb con-midinr in the sense of 

 "to equal." 



