before, with the greatest majesty and gravity
immaginable, none of this comical crew being seen so
much as to smile all the time, when as spectators are
almost bursten with laughing. This is the true origin
of the proverb, for this custome of gavelage is a
certain tribute that every house pays to the ... when
he is pleased to call for it, and he gives not above
one day warning, and may call for it when he
pleases."[140]

Rhyming tenures have been frequently noted but never understood. They
occur in many parts of the country. The tithingman of Combe Keynes, in
Dorsetshire, is obliged to do suit at Winforth Court, and after
repeating the following incoherent lines, pays threepence and goes
away without saying another word:--

"With my white rod
And I am a fourth post
That three pence makes three
God bless the King, and the lord of the franchise
Our weights and our measures are lawful and true
Good morrow Mr. Steward I have no more to say to you."[141]

It is hardly necessary to quote more examples. They are not unknown to
the historian, but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily
assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a
rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their
genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is
due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been
misunderstood, and has then become gradually altered.

All these rhyming tenures, indeed, find their place among the
traditional examples of legal formulae. They are the local offshoots
preserved because of their legal significance, preserved by those
interested from their legal side. Because they are not preserved in
the formal codes they need not be neglected, and they must not be
misunderstood. They are not to be put on one side by the historian as
freaks of local landowners. They are real descendants by traditional
lines from the times when laws were not written, but kept alive in the
memory by means of such assistance as rhyme could supply, and from the
tribesmen who thus treasured the law they obeyed.[143]

That this branch of recorded law is not only early but tribal is
undoubted, but perhaps it will be well to refer to tribal rhyming
formulae of an independent kind in order to show by parallel evidence
the tribal characteristics. In 1884 Mr. Posnett drew attention to this
importan