Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/449

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of the latter were half those of the former. The taeogs had special trevs set apart for them called taeogtrevydd, seven of which constituted a [bond] maenor. They paid two dawnbwyds or food-gifts yearly to the king, and were subject to sundry other services. A taeog became a free man if a church were built with the king's consent on his taeogtrev, or if the king raised him to be one of his twenty-four officers, or if he became a tonsured clerk. See mab aillt.


taeogtrev, a trev of taeogs, as distinguished from a trev ryd or free trev. It comprised three rhandirs only, one of which was pasturage for the other two. Seven taeogtrevs made a bond maenor. The word taeogtrev does not seem to be found in the Book of Gwynedd, of which the Black Book of Chirk is the exemplar. In the Latin Harleian MS. 1796, however, of the first part of the thirteenth century, a text which seems to reflect the laws and customs of Gwynedd,[1] rusticana uilla is equated with taiauctret for taiauctref.[2]


teithi, qualities or properties ; the properties which pertain to anything in the sense in which the law requires that thing to be understood. For instance, when the law mentions a cat whose legal worth is four legal pence, it is to be understood that the cat is to be perfect of claw, perfect of sight, &c., which are its teithi.


trev, the Welsh equivalent of the Old English -ton and -ham, the Danish -by, represented in the Latin Peniarth MS. 28 as commonly in the Latin of medieval times, by the word -villa. The trev according to the present text consisted of rhandirs of 312 erws each ; the Peniarth MS. 28 adds that the twelve erws of this number were for buildings.[3] The free trev contained four rhandirs, and the taeogtrev contained three. In both cases one rhandir was to be pasturage for the rest, which last were to be inhabited. Each of the two inhabited rhandirs of a taeogtrev was to contain three taeogs. It appears that the number of houses (tei) in a trev varied, but in the passage where a thief is to escape punishment, if able to show that he has traversed three trevs in a day, with nine houses in every trev, without obtaining relief,[4] it looks as though a trev of nine houses was normal. It is also incidentally suggested in the present text that the houses were built close together, for the owner of a house which was burnt through negligence was to pay for the first two houses

  1. Anc. Laws II. 893-907. See especially p. 894 concerning the kings in Wales who ' debent accipere terram illorum a rege Aberfrau'.
  2. Ibid. II. 901.
  3. Ibid. 11.784.
  4. Vide W 65 b 7-14 on p. 64 supra.