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the neglect of these most necessary precautions were not in some cases the cause of the conditions of overstocking in the Highlands which gave a handle for the savage evictions of the clansmen by absentee chiefs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are regulations laid down, and there is a regularly appointed shepherd and an account kept of everything, and the whole profits are divided, says the Report of the Royal Commission on the Highlands, 1883. Speaking of the club farms, there is some evidence of the overstocking of the common pasture in the poorer parts of the islands.

Where, however, the community had not enough stock, whether cattle or sheep, for the range, the lord or chief could agist stock from others, provided he had the right to a fold, by which he could make manure. 12

The Irish laws, as might be expected, are full of references to cattle in every relation, but the laws are more concerned with fencing against stock, and with the injuries to cattle from various causes, than with any restrictions of the use of the range. In Ireland the chief class had grazing rights over the common pasture, corresponding to the amount of stock which they possessed, paying to the community a rent of one animal in seven for these grazing rights.13

"In the East Riding of Yorkshire," says Canon Taylor in Domesday Studies, "every village had its 'outgang,' where the cattle of those who possessed rights of grazing were collected in the morning, ready to be driven out into the moor under charge of the neatherd. We have still in my own parish of Settrington the public cowherd who takes the villagers' cows into the lanes, and who is paid rateably by the owners." This appears to be the waste and stinted pasture combined. What, except motor cars, is to prevent a revival of this custom, by which the cows, which the villagers would be encouraged to keep, could keep eaten down the wide wastes of grass on our highway, now mown at the expense of the local authority?

The Range for Swine.-Of equal importance to the pasture for cattle was the value of the woods, grass, nuts, mast, and roots for swine. The trees, in Domesday, are valued by the

number of swine which they will provide for; pannage, the payment for the grazing of swine, figures in every kingly account, in every account of a monastery or lay estate.

The king's pannage was possibly of even greater financial importance to him than his rights of pasturage for cattle or of hunting in the waste.

In 1257 the park of the forest of Windsor was agisted, inter alia, for 156 pigs, the king taking every third pig, or 2s., as pannage.14 In his perpetual progresses with a huge train, in his campaigns with his armies, the "bacons," the carcasses of the swine, could be carried with him, while he is dependent for cattle and deer on the country he happens to be in or invades.

When Henry, in 1171, goes over to Ireland, various towns and counties (Carlisle, for instance, and Stafford) provide him with hogs by the hundred. But in that Isle of Saints and cows the Saxon expects to find, and does find, the cattle to be had for the catching and killing, with which he fed his army. Very early in the invasion, in 1170, before Henry's arrival, Raymond Le Gros and his men at Waterford, after a raid in the country round, in which they had taken a great spoil of cows, were attacked by the Irish at a fort which they had raised at Dundonell, south of Waterford. They drove the cows inside and at the critical moment drove them out in front of themselves with yells and blows on the Irish, charging and routing the enemy.

The damage done by swine to the pasturage and their gross feeding resulted in regulations in all the customary laws to prohibit their entrance into the forest when not required, and to compensate for the damage done by them in meadows and fields. The Irish custom is stated to be 15 that pits rooted by swine in another man's meadow should be filled by the owner of the swine with corn. This archaic mode of compensation is altered by the later commentary to the rule that other land should be given until the land is restored. It would look as if the old rule had really been in force, as it is found in the Statutes of William the Lion. 16 By William's Forest Laws (c. 5) it was declared, "Ane approven use and consuetude 'to forbid swine to enter the

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forest " publicklie in paroch kirkes," the forester taking one of them for the first three times, and all for the fourth time, for the king's use, if he could catch them.

In the same way the Welsh lord and the freeman might preserve his wood from the end of September to the middle of January, and kill one in ten of swine found there.17

The king and the men of power were always on the outlook to claim an exclusive right, as against the poorer man, of this valuable perquisite, on the ground of the damage done by the swine. Knud of Denmark, for instance, the son of Svend Estridson, claimed the exclusive right of pannage in oak woods and of fishing in all fiords as a royal perquisite.

But if the mast was plentiful, the value of the pannage put the shoe on the other foot. Then the forester 18 may summon the burgesses and land wartmen to bring their swine to the forest "to the effect that the king may have his pannage for them."

Meadows were always interdicted to swine.19 The breeding sows must always have been kept on the stinted pastures or in pens.

The Range for Sheep and Goats.-Sheep and goats as occupants of the common range were on a different footing from all the other animals. They were far more helpless both as regards speed and defence than other stock; possibly for this reason they were the only kind of animal on the range of which there was no wild species in the Islands; they had to be protected against dogs and wolves and hungry men, which could only be profitably done if they were herded in large bodies. In the wilder parts, such as the Peak of Derbyshire, wolves remained until a late date, doing much damage. In the Welsh laws the minimum of sheep which composed a "legal flock" for which proceedings could be taken in case of trespass was thirty animals and a ram, a small number to require a shepherd.20 By the Forest Laws of William the Lion, 21 the forester may take for his own use one of the sheep found trespassing in the forest.

Consequently they do not appear as a prominent part of rural economy until much later than the other animals. When they do make themselves felt in the later days, they

are found for the most part in the hands of the Cistercian monks, who started business about the time when the wolves were being exterminated. In England and South-Eastern Scotland sheep farming formed and remained one of the chief industries of these monasteries, which did not rent the flock, but kept the sheep in hand, employing their own shepherd and rearing sheep in close connection with arable cultivation. In the Boldon Buke the sheep with the pasture are in most cases stated to be "in the hand of the bishop.'

A further evidence that sheep belonged to that part of farming economics which centred round the arable land is that in the Irish laws women took possession in distress by sheep, and not by horses, as men did. The value of their manure, folded on the land for arable cultivation, was well known, so that it was frequently compulsory on the tenant of the great man to fold the sheep on his portion of the land.

Though sheep do not appear prominently in the Pleas of the Forest, or as being causes of conflict on the waste, the folding of sheep for manure becomes of great importance in the development of the lord's rights over it, as encouraging him to take to himself a very profitable source of revenue. The whole vill of Bright Waltham 22 advise as to the reeve to be appointed and men to take special positions in looking after the lord's sheep.

In a case in the Year Books, an answer to a plea of replevin was an avowal that to the defendant belonged the right of search of the common of the vill, and that the sheep taken do not belong to any of the commoners. To which the plaintiffs reply that they claim a fold and the right when they have not enough sheep of their own to take other people's sheep to make manure. 23 In another similar case the lord of the manor had in right of his manor the agistment of other persons' beasts, and had agisted 2000 sheep.2+

Goats, which shared in some of the disabilities of sheep, were worse considered for their injury to the pasture and timber of the waste even than swine. William the Lion's Forest Laws enact that "Gif a goat be found in the Forest thrice, it is lesome to the forester for ilk time to hang ane of them be the horns upon ane tree . . and for the fourth

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time to slay ane of them," a very necessary provision if the young timber was to be preserved.

But the chief difficulty of keeping sheep or goats on a range was then, and is now, the difficulty of protecting them from the depredations of dogs.

Dogs and Hawks.-Laws or customs declared for the preservation of animals, wild or tame, are of little value unless provision is made for control of the means by which they could be caught and killed. These means were dogs and hawks (and for fish, herons).

Men by themselves, even the most inveterate poaching clerics, would find it difficult, armed with the simple weapons of those days, to kill any great quantity of game. But with dogs and hawks great destruction could be done, and both dogs and hawks will go hunting on their own account. Hence when, in England, complaint is made that the legitimate control of the forests by the government is abused by the officials, the fight centres round dogs and hawks rather than round the really more important but less picturesque matter, the waste of timber.

In the third volume of the Brehon Laws there is an elaborate series of fines for injury to an animal by a hound,25 and for setting a dog on deer or other animals. Though at certain times, under the laws of William the Lion, cattle were allowed in the forest, an exception was made (c. 1) where the beasts were found by the keeper of the forest with "ane present keiper," having "fire ane horne or ane hound. gif they be found in the forest in the time of nicht lyand haveand ane horne or ane hound quhilk is called warset"; and chap. 13 contains provisions against harehounds (i.e. greyhounds) or mastiffs in the forest, the harehound to be seized and the mastiff's master to be put under pledges.

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The "lawing" of dogs-that is, cutting off three claws of the forefoot to prevent fast running-was the recognised means of controlling both the poaching dog and his poaching master. It was no more inhuman or cruel than cutting off the tail of a terrier pup. When an eminent writer is horrified at this mutilation, Mr Fisher (p. 228) sums up: "For the rest, we may consider that the eminent historian was recording

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