Note 16 — APPENDIX.
Reading edition
Footnote 16:
(return)
This “townland” is a curious use of a Saxon term to describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have been divided up into “townlands,” each townland consisting of four, or in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of the “sept.” The chief of the “sept” divided up each “townland” periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the system—against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore—known as “rimdale” or “rundeal,” from the Celtic, “ruindioll,” a “partition” or “man’s share.” This is quite unlike the Russian “mir” or collective village, and not more like the South Slav “zadruga” which makes each family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry George’s State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those systems.