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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
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