PERE er EAN JE 
REEL, (rt Ea Neg NC 
G ho Ea oh 
CHAPTER VIL 
THE TRIBAL SYSTEM (continued). 
I. THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 
cuse. VIL. THE Welsh evidence brings us back to a period 
parallel with the Saxon era marking the date of King 
Ine’s laws. The Welsh land system was then clearly 
distinguished from the Saxon by the absence of the 
manor with its village community in serfdom, and by 
the presence instead of it of the scattered homesteads 
(tyddyns) of the tribesmen and taeogs, grouped to- 
gether for the purpose of the payment to the chief of 
the food-rents, or their money equivalents. 
Further light may possibly be obtained from obser- 
vation of the tribal system in a still earlier economic 
stage, though at a much later date, in Ireland. 
Irish land Now, first—without going out of our depth as we 
i might easily do in the Irish evidence—it may readily 
ee JS shown, sufficiently for the present purpose, that 
the system of land divisions, or rather of the group- 
ing of homesteads into artificial clusters with arith- 
metical precision, was prevalent in Ireland outside 
the Pale as late as the times of Queen Elizabeth and