Note 184 — Chapter IV · LANDED POSSESSION. THE EÐEL, HÍD OR ALOD.

It is to be remarked that the eight and twelve acres of meadow are distinguished here from the feld-land or arable: and in strictness they ought not to be calculated into the hide; but perhaps it was intended to plough them up: or Oswald may even have begun to follow a system in which arable and meadow should both be included in the hide, which is equivalent, in other words, to the attempt to replace the wasteful method of unenclosed pastures by a more civilized arrangement of the land. He speaks indeed, on more than one occasion, of granting gedál-land, and land tó gedále, which can hardly mean anything but new enclosures.