Our Legal Heritage, 5th Ed. | Page 5

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and leaves fell from the trees. The winter solstice, when the days began
to get longer was cause for celebration. In the next season, there was an
optimum time to plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground as
new growth. So farming gave rise to the concept of a year. Certain
changes of the year were celebrated, such as Easter, named for the
Goddess of the Dawn, which occurred in the east (after lent); May Day

celebrating the revival of life; Lammas around July, when the wheat
crop was ready for harvesting; and on October 31 the Celtic eve of
Samhain, when the spirits of the dead came back to visit homes and
demand food or else cast an evil spell on the refusing homes; and at
which masked and costumed inhabitants representing the souls of the
dead paraded to the outskirts of the settlements to lead the ghosts away
from their homes; and at which animals and humans, who might be
deemed to be possessed by spirits, were sacrificed or killed perhaps as
examples, in huge bonfires [bonefires] as those assembled looked out
for spirits and evil beings.
There was an agricultural revolution from the two-field to the
three-field system, in which there were three large fields for the heavy
and fertile land. Each field was divided into long and narrow strips.
Each strip represented a day's work with the plough. One field had
wheat, or perhaps rye, another had barley, oats, beans, or peas, and the
third was fallow. These were rotated yearly. There was a newly
invented plough that was heavy and made of wood and later had an
attached iron blade. The plough had a mould-board which caught the
soil stirred by the plough blade and threw it into a ridge alongside the
furrow dug by the plough blade. This plough was too heavy for two
oxen and was pulled by a team of about eight to ten oxen. Each ox was
owned by a different man as was the plough, because no one peasant
could afford the complete set. Each freeman was allotted certain strips
in each field to bear crops. His strips were far from each other, which
insured some very fertile and some only fair soil, and some land near
his village dwelling and some far away. These strips he cultivated,
sowed with seed, and harvested for himself and his family. After the
harvest, they reverted to common ownership for grazing by pigs, sheep,
and geese. As soon as haymaking was over, the meadows became
common grazing land for horses, cows, and oxen. Not just any
inhabitant, but usually only those who owned a piece of land in the
parish were entitled to graze their animals on the common land, and
each owner had this right of pasture for a definite number of animals.
The faster horse replaced the ox as the primary work animal. Other
farm implements were: coulters, which gave free passage to the plough
by cutting weeds and turf, picks, spades and shovels, reaping hooks and

scythes, and sledge hammers and anvils. Strips of land for agriculture
were added from waste land as the community grew. Waste lands were
moors bristling with brushwood, or gorse, heather and wanton weeds,
reed-coated marshes, quaking peat-bogs, or woods grown haphazard on
sand or rock. With iron axes, forests could be cleared to provide more
arable land.
Some villages had a smith, a wheelwright, and a cooper. There were
villages which had one or two market days in each week. Cattle, sheep,
pigs, poultry, calves, and hare were sold there. London was a town on
the Thames River under the protection of the Celtic river god Lud:
Lud's town. It's huts were probably built over the water, as was Celtic
custom. It was a port for foreign trade. Near the town was Ludhill.
Each Celtic tribe in England made its own coinage. Silver and bronze
were first used, and then gold. The metal was put into a round form and
then placed between two engraved dies, which were hit.
Flint workers mined with deer antler picks and ox shoulder blade
shovels for flint to grind into axes, spearheads, and arrowheads. Mine
shafts were up to thirty feet deep and necessitated the use of chalk
lamps fueled by animal fat with wicks of moss. The flint was hauled up
in baskets.
Common men and women were now buried in tombs within memorial
burial mounds of earth with stone entrances and interior chambers. A
man's weapons and shield were buried with him and a woman's spindle
and weaving baton, and perhaps beads or pottery with her. At times,
mounds of earth would simply be covered over piles of corpses and
ashes in urns. In these mass graves, some corpses had spear holes or
sword