Note 302 — Chapter VII · THE TRIBAL SYSTEM (continued).

The following appeared in the Athenæum, March 3, 1883, under the signature of Mr. G. L. Gomme:—'The 312 acres in possession of the Corporation of Kells (co. Meath) are divided into six fields, and thus used. The fields are broken up in rotation one at a time, and tilled during four years. Before the field is broken the members of the Corporation repair to it with a surveyor, and it is marked out into equal lots, according to the existing number of resident members of the body. Each resident freeman gets one lot, each portreeve and burgess two lots, and the deputy sovereign five lots. A portion of the field, generally five or six acres, is set apart for letting, and the rent obtained for it is applied to pay the tithes and taxes of the entire. The members hold their lots in severalty for four years and cultivate them as they please, and at the expiration of the fourth year the field is laid down with grass and a new one is broken, when a similar process of partition takes place. The other five fields are in the interim in pasture, and the right of depasturing them is enjoyed by the members of the Corporation in the same proportion as they hold the arable land; that is to say, the deputy sovereign grasses five heads of cattle (called "bolls") for every two grazed by the portreeves and burgesses, and for every one grazed by the freemen; with this modification, however, that the widow of a burgess enjoys a right of grazing to the same extent as a freeman, and the widow of a freeman to half that extent. The widows do not obtain any portions of the field in tillage. I should note that the first charter of incorporation to Kells dates from Richard I.'