Who upon a faire greene balke May at pleasure sit and walk?"1 A man's farm was simply a certain number of these pieces of land, usually scattered in different parts of the arable land of the village. He had no contiguous fields, but a piece here and a piece there, all over the manor, just as one finds the lands of the peasants scattered about in French or German villages to-day. The Husbandman in the Dialogue says, "our grounde lieth in the common feilds, intermingled one with a nother," and the Doctor, "Every tenaunte had his landes, not all in one gobbet in everye feilde, but interlaced with his neighbours landes, so as heare should be three acres, and then his neighboure as manye; and over that, he other three or four; and so after the like rate be the most parte of the copie holdes that I doe knowe in this countrie." As the 1 The Passionate Shepheard, Pastor 3, 1604. Ibid. W. S., Discourse of the Common Weal, 1549, Lamond's ed., p. 56. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE I. Part of the open fields and scattered acres of the village of Nörtershausen, near Coblentz, Germany, photographed in the summer of 1894, showing (1) the concentration of farmhouses and barns in the village, (2) the absence of inclosures, (3) the cultivation in long, narrow strips in open "fields," and (4) the exclusion of cattle from the arable land. More land, similar in appearance, belonging to the same village, lies beyond and to the right. This arrangement is still characteristic of much of the agriculture of the Continent, as it formerly was of that of England. Each farmer in this village has several of these pieces, in different parts of the field visible in the foreground, or in that beyond. The woods to the left belong to the villagers in common. The grain in the immediate foreground is growing on a strip in the open fields of the adjacent village of Oppenhausen. III. This open arable land was not divided up into farms in the modern sense, that is groups of fields, each field of some acres in extent, and each surrounded by a fence, hedge, or wall. On the contrary, the whole of the land surrounding a village was plowed into some hundreds or even thousands of "acres," an acre as a piece of land being approximately four rods wide and forty rods long. In some cases the division was into half acres, or even into roods, all these strips being of the same length, but of one half or one quarter the width, respectively, of a full acre. It is on an open field thus divided, that Piers Plowman says: "I have an half acre to erye1· bi the heighe way, These acre or half-acre strips were cultivated each for itself, and were separated from one another either by the mere reversal of the direction of the furrow in plowing, by narrow strips of unplowed turf, called "balks," or when the strips were on the side of a hill, by grassy banks known as "linches."The narrow balks or grassy strips separating the grain-covered acres were a conspicuous feature, and appear frequently in literature. They were the resting places where, "Between the acres of the rye, These pretty country folks would lye.”❜ Nicholas Breton makes his disconsolate lover say, Skeat's ed. Early English Text Society. Shakspeare, As You Like It, Act V, sc. 3. Toyes of an Idle Head, 1582, Chertsey Worthies Library. Who upon a faire greene balke May at pleasure sit and walk?"1 A man's farm was simply a certain number of these pieces of land, usually scattered in different parts of the arable land of the village. He had no contiguous fields, but a piece here and a piece there, all over the manor, just as one finds the lands of the peasants scattered about in French or German villages to-day. The Husbandman in the Dialogue says, "our grounde lieth in the common feilds, intermingled one with a nother," and the Doctor, "Every tenaunte had his landes, not all in one gobbet in everye feilde, but interlaced with his neighbours landes, so as heare should be three acres, and then his neighboure as manye; and over that, he other three or four; and so after the like rate be the most parte of the copie holdes that I doe knowe in this countrie." 1 The Passionate Shepheard, Pastor 3, 1604. Ibid. 1 W. S., Discourse of the Common Weal, 1549, Lamond's ed., p. 56. Ibid., p. 124. As the DESCRIPTION OF PLATE I. Part of the open fields and scattered acres of the village of Nörtershausen, near Coblentz, Germany, photographed in the summer of 1894, showing (1) the concentration of farmhouses and barns in the village, (2) the absence of inclosures, (3) the cultivation in long, narrow strips in open "fields," and (4) the exclusion of cattle from the arable land. More land, similar in appearance, belonging to the same village, lies beyond and to the right. This arrangement is still characteristic of much of the agriculture of the Continent, as it formerly was of that of England. Each farmer in this village has several of these pieces, in different parts of the field visible in the foreground, or in that beyond. The woods to the left belong to the villagers in common. The grain in the immediate foreground is growing on a strip in the open fields of the adjacent village of Oppenhausen. |