Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/39

 9< s. v. JAN. is, woo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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stede." If the bay or "goulfe" had been of uncertain area, or even if the cubic contents of bays had varied materially, it would have been impossible to sell or appraise hay or corn in this manner. But if the bay had an ascertained area, such as 240 square ft., it would only have been necessary in such cases to take the height. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are so many instances, both in literature and unpublished documents, of the estimation or valuation of buildings by the bay, that one can hardly doubt the wide prevalence of a standard arid well-understood size of bay during those periods.

A solicitor interested in antiquarian matters tells me that bequests of bays are common in old wills.

It appears from the 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales ' that houses were esti- mated by the " fork," in Anglo-Saxon called gafol. Thus in the Dimetian Code we are told that " the worth of a winter-house, for every fork which supports the ridge-beam, [is] twenty pence." * And again, in the ' Leges Wallice' the following statements occur in the section " De fractione dornus et com- bustione":

"I. Precium hyemalis domus est xxti denarii de unaquaque furca quo sustiuet laquear, et de laqueari xla denarii.

" II. Si denudetur, tertia pars totius precii red- datur.

" III. Domus estiualis, xii. denarii, "f

Estimation by the "fork" or ga/ol is equi- valent to estimation by the bay, for the surveyor would not count both ends, so that in counting " forks " he would really be count- ing bays. Thus a house of six bays would contain seven ''forks," and the surveyor would leave out the first, just as in framing a scale or foot-rule a man would begin with zero.

It appears that the Anglo-Saxon gafol, fork, or "crutch," as it is sometimes called in Yorkshire, and gafol, tribute, are identical. It further appears that the word gavelkind implies a division of the house and its appur- tenances among the heirs by the "gavel," which was equivalent to division by the bay. It implies the actual or physical partition of houses and land. " Gavelage " is the pay- ment or estimation of tribute by the " gavel."

If \ve compare the Frisian house, as de- scribed by Saxo Grammaticus, and its twelve bays, containing 4,800 square ft., to the Eng-


 * Op. cit., p. 579.

t Ibid., ii. 802. A shieling is a summer house or temporary summer hut, usually of one hay. Does a Scotsman ever call a shilling a shiding?

lish house of twenty bays, we shall see that, whilst the pound was the highest unit of value in both cases, the Frisian bay, or seg- ment of a house, represents twenty pence and not a shilling. If the Frisian pundemeta of land had been equivalent to the English hide of 120 acres, the Frisian bay of 400 square ft. would have corresponded to ten acres, that is, to the "ounce of land." The relation- ship of the house-room to the holding in arable land would have remained unaffected. The quantity of house-room attached to the pundemeta would have been the same as the quantity attached to the hide, and so on through the various divisions of these two land measures. In other words, the arith- metical relationship of acres to house-room would have been the same.

The substitution of the shilling for the ounce appears to me to point to a change in architecture. There were two main kinds of houses the winter house and the summer house the winter house being the ordinary village house, and the summer house being the more slightly built summer residence on the hills, where the cattle went to pasture in summer. The winter house, like the summer house, was supported by forks or "gavels," each pair of forks supporting a room con- taining 240 square ft. But the winter house had an aisle. If we take the English bay of 16 ft. by 15, and put an aisle measuring 16 ft. by 10 on the long side, we shall have made an excellent oxhouse for four oxen. The heads of the oxen would, of course, be turned inwards, and they would be fed from the main floor. Or if we take the French bay of 20 ft. by 12, and put an aisle measuring 20 ft. by 8 on the long side, we shall get a similar oxhouse for five oxen. In both cases we shall have added 160 square ft. to one of the sides, and thus made up the total area of 400 square ft.

It is true that the aisle or lateral cattle- stall annexed to a house or other building continued to be built down to a late period.* But it is also true that the introduction of separate cattle-stalls and other outbuildings began at an early date. As the monetary units followed the divisions of houses and land, the shilling took the place of the ounce of twenty pence when the ounce had ceased to represent the typical bay. The quantity of house-room remained unaffected, at all events for fiscal purposes. This is, of course, only a conjecture, but at present I can think of nothing so likely to be right.

House,' p. 75.
 * Seethe section in my ' Evolution of the English