" RUNDALE."
[TO TES EDITOR OF THE " SPZOTAT011.1
SIR,—Will you allow me to correct the definition of " Rundale," given in the note to "N. G. B.'s " letter on the Donegal murders ? 4i Rundale " is where individual fields are held by a number of -different persons in strips, ridges, or "running dales," without divisions between them.
The practice arises from an d co-exists with the custom of bolding land in common. When a pasture grazed in common is ,:to be tilled, the co-partners in the field divide it into strips, which they hold in severalty. This system of holding in common and .rundale appears to have survived from the time when "village -communities " existed in Ireland, and has been noted, I think, by -Sir Henry Maine as a survival of an ancient tenure.
"Farms composed of scattered pieces of land, allotted accord- ing to the quality of the ground in different parts of the pro- perty," are very different ; and where the farms are small, this may not be an inconvenient plan, as a man may have several small detached fields all within a few minutes' walk of his house. He thus has within his farm all he requires,—water, turf, arable, pasture, meadow ; and he could not have all these if the farms were laid out in regular, symmetrical figures. Those who hold in "Rundale " are fully alive to the inconveniences of the system, but there are difficulties in the way of getting rid of it which I
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