Game Preserving.-Hence it comes about that even at this day a landowner can take in farms to make a deer park, and that the whole population of Highland counties can be driven from the lands occupied by their forefathers to become day labourers in cottages by the sea, and prohibited even in that condition from using as food the fish and wild birds and animals which abound in the lands occupied by the new men, a cruelty covered up by a huge waste of money by absentee proprietors, called improvements.

This matter of the use and preservation of game is a very difficult subject, one on which it is very easy to write unfairly. There would not appear to be any possible ground on which objection could be made to the owner of improved lands hunting and preserving the wild animals on the manufactured soil, though even here he is keeping alive a great source of irritation if he refuses to allow the labourer to trap a rabbit or a pheasant which is eating the lettuces in his garden, or to knock on the head the fox which carries off his chicken,1 Every villager is from long instinct and association an inveterate poacher; that is, he claims the right to kill the wild animal on the common land or on the land he tills. The position in this respect remains the same as when Wat Tyler and his followers in 1381 "petunt a rege ut omnes warennæ tam in aquis quam in parco et boscis communes fierunt omnibus, ita ut libere posset, tam pauper quam dives, ubicunque in regno in aquis et stagnis, piscariis et boscis et forestis feras capere, in campis lepores fugare, et sic hæc et hujusmodi alia multa sine contradictione exercere." 2

When the question is the preservation and propagation of tame pheasants for profit, the question is, like the balance between the forests and the assarts in mediæval cultivation, how far the amount of food destroyed by the pheasants is offset by their own value to the community. So far as the instinct of hunting the wild animal is concerned, a Leghorn chicken would give better results than a heavily fed pheasant, without possibly so much chance of the proprietor being shot by his friends from the town who imagine that they are having sport. But with a fairly long experience of farming and country life, I cannot agree with a great sporting

authority that pheasants eat mangolds more than is necessary to get rid of the insects which infest them, or that the building of cottages drives away partridges. It is a matter for the exercise of common sense and mutual forbearance and local knowledge. Making the game preserver liable for the damages proved to be done by his tame birds would probably meet the case.

But such sport stands on a very different footing from the claim to deprive the whole community of the use of vast districts of unimproved land, that it may be let for the profit of absentee individuals for the sport of wealthy aliens. Such unimproved land ought to revert without compensation to the local community.

On very similar grounds I question the right of any individual to preserve injurious vermin such as foxes to the destruction of the industry of poultry breeding, or to exterminate beneficial birds such as owls to protect tame pheasants. If this be treason, make the most of it.

In conclusion, after considering the foundations of society, the moral standard attained, the conditions for leadership, the gradations of rank, the guarantees of kinship and marriage, the military order, the gradual approach of commerce with strangers, the framework of custom and law, the relations of all classes to the land and the uses of the land for the benefit of the community and its gradual absorption in individual owners, I would refer once more to the national ideal which has grown up in these islands in past times, the combination of the utmost breadth of individual freedom with a devoted duty to the society. It is so high an ideal, demanding so great and constant self-restraint and selfsacrifice, that it is hardly surprising that there should be a perpetual conflict of interest in action, or that men should be impatient of the evils which they see around them conflicting with the ideals, evils which they think could be abolished by violent methods. As the people from these islands spread over the world and reproduce in new parts their form of society and its ideals, the evil reappears with the good. We have infected the whole civilised world with our ideal of the social framework, we are fighting now in this

present year 1918 to preserve it from a lower form of social design, and it rests with us to uphold it at any cost of blood and treasure for future generations. If we fail, the whole world is the loser.

There is nothing to be gained at such a time by dwelling on the ills and the faults which attend all high endeavour. It is better to remember that in times of stress unity of purpose and patience with imperfect conditions is a gain to good, that there is a soul of goodness in things evil would men but patiently distil it out. The danger in all such crises comes from individuals controlling groups, who cannot see the difficulties, though they see the defects, and so imagine that their dream and their interpretation will point to perfection.

The men who, when the crisis is over, will be remembered with love and gratitude by the community are those who, like our King, have the great strength to keep silence, yea even from good words; sinking in the performance of the office the individual for the common good, and standing in the background of the society they serve.

NOTES. The depredation by game and vermin on the labourer's garden or allotment may seem to city dwellers a small thing, but I believe that it is of all causes of discontent and disunion by far the most important. It brings home to the labourer his absolute dependence on the will of the landowner, as he dare not complain for fear of being turned out of his cottage. But how to give him a fixed interest is the most prickly difficulty of all, calling up the awful spectre of rural housing, a perennial problem on which the Elizabethan legislation might be read with advantage. It is wasteful and expensive for the landowner to put up cottages or to enlarge them without the certainty of an immediate and permanent tenant, in view of the restrictions, sensible possibly for slums in towns, which are imposed on such building by State regulation. If attempted by the State, rural housing would undoubtedly be the worst and most expensive jobbery ever undertaken even by a Government department. No labourer ought to have any remedy either from the State or from local authority in such a case unless he pays rates and taxes like other men. Rights and liabilities must go together in a healthy society. 2 Knighton, R.S., 92, vol. ii. p. 137

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

FOLKMOOTS

It stands to reason that, as no building of the time would hold the suitors where all freemen were expected to attend, all ancient popular courts were held in the open air, either on a mound, on a low hill, under a sacred tree, in a sacred fort, in a stone circle, or at a marked tree or stone on the borders of several territories, so that intertribal matters could be discussed with convenience to both sides. Some great open space was roped in by stake cords to keep out the crowd, the chief men and the litigants consulting within. The account of the Norwegian Gula Thing in Egil's Saga, p. 110 (edit. W. C. Green, Elliot Stock, 1893) is that "where the court sate was a level plot, with hazel poles planted in a ring, and outside were twisted ropes all round. This was called the precincts.' Within the ring sate twelve judges of the Frith-folk, twelve of the Sognfolk, twelve of the Horda-folk. These three twelves were to judge all the suits." In the Landnamaboc (Origines Islandica, iv. 4) it is stated of the Thorsness Settlement that men hallowed a hill, on which no man or animal must be killed, on which courts and moots were held. In spite of the prohibition of killing, the moots often ended in disputes and battles. Land was set apart for the maintenance of the All moot, with a common for wood and a heath pasture for keeping of horses (Libellus Islandorum, iii. 1, Origines Islandica). These moots had a lawman, judge or deemster (as he is still called in the Isle of Man), and benches of godes of twelve (as the Keys in the Isle of Man). In the Egil's Saga, ch. lxvii., the place for the wager of battle was marked by stones lying round in a ring. In the account of the combat in chap. lxviii. at the Gula Thing a sacrificial bull is brought in and slain by the victor. The very detailed account in the Nial's Saga of the Court and its precincts bears the same character. I would suggest that Stonehenge was such a place of public meeting, being as a corollary a temple for worship, a place of execution, a trading fair, a place for collecting, branding,

and sacrificing cattle, and a trap into which to drive deer when hunting. Whether such a theory for the origin of stone circles is correct or not, it is more sensible than putting them down to the Druids, who undoubtedly used them, or imagining sun worship in cloudy countries.

Such places of assembly are found all over the British Islands. Besides centres for national meeting, such as the Moot Hill of Scone, the Lia Fail at Tara, the Tynwald Hill of Man, and so forth, numerous moot hills, circles of stones and trees as centres of meeting for tribal settlements exist all over the islands. Such a place of meeting may be marked by the three shire stones north of Batheaston on the borders of Somerset, Gloucester, and Wilts. Any reader who is interested in the subject may be referred to Gomme's Primitive Folk Moots, where he will find numbers of examples mentioned, authorities quoted, and references given.

As examples of trees note the oak at Kincora cut down by Malachi II., and the elm at Gisors cut down by Phillip Augustus.

To leave woods on the boundaries between two territories would appear to have been usual; it would not be safe or convenient to cultivate within reach of a possibly hostile community, and fuel and timber would be required when the conferences were held between two states.

In the original text of the Senchus Mor, i. 134, three kinds of woods are mentioned: (1) the sacred wood of the fort, the sacred wood of the tribe which encircled the king's dun fort, like the sacred wood spoken of by Tacitus and the wood round the palace of Ambiorix mentioned by Cæsar (D.B.G., vi. 30), a wood reserved to the chief for which honour price is paid to him for a tree cut; (2) the wood common to the family or sept; and (3) the wood distant on the boundaries. The Thingwald, the wood in which questions of interterritorial regulation were discussed, appears to survive in Tingwall in Shetland, Dingwall in Ross-shire, Tinwald in Dumfries, Tynwald Hill, St John's, Isle of Man, etc. By the date of the commentary on p. 164 of the Senchus Mor, the three woods seem to have disappeared, and the injuries are classified by the part of the tree, trunk or large or small branch. (See also La Loi Salique, cxxix. art. 27-30, edit. Hessels, col. 154-162.) Most likely the text is of pagan date.

Le T.A.C.N., ch. 33, would appear to intimate that the borders of the territory were to be left wooded. No timber is to be cut el trepas de la marche without the consent of the duke

66

or his justice.