brated, such as Easter, named for the Goddess of
the Dawn, which occurred in the east (after lent); May Day
celebrating the revival of life; Lammas around July, when the
wheat crop was ready for harvesting; and on October 31 the Celtic
eve of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead came back to visit
homes and demand food or else cast an evil spell on the refusing
homes; and at which masked and costumed inhabitants representing
the souls of the dead paraded to the outskirts of the settlements
to lead the ghosts away from their homes; and at which animals and
humans, who might be deemed to be possessed by spirits, were
sacrificed or killed perhaps as examples, in huge bonfires
[bonefires] as those assembled looked out for spirits and evil
beings.
There was an agricultural revolution from the two-field system in which
one field was fallow to the three-field system, in which there were
three large fields for the heavy and fertile land. Each field was
divided into long and narrow strips. Each strip represented a day's work
with the plough. One field had wheat, or perhaps rye, another had
barley, oats, beans, or peas, and the third was fallow. It had been
observed that legumes such as peas and beans restored the soil. These
were rotated yearly. There was a newly invented plough that was heavy
and made of wood and later had an attached iron blade. The plough had a
mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade and threw
it into a ridge alongside the furrow dug by the plough blade. This
plough was too heavy for two oxen and was pulled by a team of about
eight to ten oxen. Each ox was owned by a different man as was the
plough, because no one peasant could afford the complete set. Each
freeman was allotted certain strips in each field to bear crops. His
strips were far from each other, which insured some very fertile and
some only fair soil, and some land near his village dwelling and some
far away. These strips he cultivated, sowed with seed, and harvested for
himself and his family. After the harvest, they reverted to common
ownership for grazing by pigs, sheep, and geese. As soon as haymaking
was over, the meadows became common grazing land for horses, cows, and
oxen. Not just any inhabitant, but usually only those who owned a piece
of land in the parish were entitled to graze their animals on the common
land, and each owner had this right of pasture for a definite number of
animals. The faster horse replaced
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