Our Legal Heritage | Page 5

of war or pestilence, and usually before the winter made food

scarce, at Halloween time. Humans were sometimes eaten.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire, and fruits
and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They drank
water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful. There were eggs
of different colors in nests and many rabbits to eat. The goddess Easter
was celebrated at this time.
After this hunting and gathering era, there was farming and
domestication of animals such as horses, pigs, sheep, goats, chicken,
and cattle. Of these, the pig was the most important meat supply, being
killed and salted for winter use. Next in importance were the cattle.
Sheep were kept primarily for their wool. Flocks and herds were taken
to pastures. The male cattle, with wood yokes, pulled ploughs in the
fields of barley and wheat. The female goat and cow provided milk,
butter, and cheese. The chickens provided eggs. The hoe, spade, and
grinding stone were used. Cloth was woven for clothes. Pottery was
made from clay and used for food preparation and consumption. During
the period of "lent" [from the word "lencten", which means spring], it
was forbidden to eat any meat or fish. This was the season in which
many animals were born and grew a lot. The people also made boats.
Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were built so that the sun's
position with respect to the stones would indicate the day of longest
sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between these days there was
an optimum time to harvest the crops before fall, when plants dried up
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; the twelve days of
Yuletide when candles were lit and houses decorated with evergreen;
Plough Monday for resumption of work after Yuletide; May Day when
greenery was gathered from the woods and people danced around a
May pole; Whitsun when Morris dancers leapt through their villages
with bells, hobby-horses, and waving scarves; Lammas when the first
bread was celebrated; and Harvest Home when the effigy of a goddess

was carried with reapers singing and piping behind.
There were settlements on high ground and near rivers. Each settlement
had a meadow, for the mowing of hay, and a mill, with wooden huts,
covered with branches or thatch, of families clustered nearby. Grain
was stored in pits in the earth. Each hut had a garden for fruit and
vegetables. A goat or cow might be tied out of reach of the garden.
There was a fence or hedge surrounding and protecting the garden area
and dwelling. Outside the fence were an acre or two of fields of wheat
and barley, and sometimes oats and rye. Wheat and rye were sown in
the fall, and oats and barley in the spring. They were all harvested in
the summer. These fields were usually enclosed with a hedge to keep
animals from eating the crop. Flax was grown and made into linen
cloth. Beyond the fields were pastures for cattle and sheep grazing.
There was often an area for beehives.
Crops were produced with the open field system. In this system, 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. Each free man 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 year, they
reverted to common ownership for grazing.
The plough used was heavy and made first of wood and later of iron. It
had a mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade
and threw it into a ridge. 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. With iron axes, forests were cleared to provide more arable
land.
The use of this open field system instead of compact enclosures worked
by individuals was necessary in primitive communities which were

farming only for their own