Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/28

4 has been carried farther than in India, or in the adjoining territories of the Turkish Empire.

Traces of the older rule exist in the fact of the Law Courts treating all lands and houses as held in $24/24$. One man may own the whole, or $23/24$, or $11/24$, or $5/24$, and the remainder may be owned by another, or a dozen others, as the case maybe; but each has the right of separate sale. Each has also the power to sell his share of the land, apart from the trees and their crops, the springs, and water-rights. Mission societies and other European purchasers have to be careful that all these things are separately bargained for and inserted in the deeds of sale. I know some who have been subjected to much inconvenience and loss, owing to neglect or ignorance of this. An old Druze castle has been partly purchased, but another owner is in exile and cannot be got at. Thus the living rooms above are one owner's, the stables and schools below with their flat roofs which form our courtyard are another's, and the old towers or chapels are another's again.

I called on one family of fifty persons—Greek Christians—fathers, sons, brothers, with wives and children, occupying separate apartments in a very large house, but keeping a common purse, and receiving us in a common room. In this case, the right of property was vested, I believe, in the head of the family.

A man cannot leave his real estate to whom he likes by will, but the $24/24$ must be divided among sons and daughters in the proportion of two parts to a son against one to a daughter. This is sometimes evaded by an owner selling to a favourite son during his lifetime. The risks of this are obvious, and sometimes befall the seller.

In most villages there are some "common" lands, groves, orchards, pastures, and some corporate properties, houses, or fields, the income from the produce or letting of which goes to the community holding them. Over common lands that are cultivated the villagers have a right of pasturage