destroyed by that fire, which probably refers to the two houses one on each side. Trev-names meet us frequently in Wales, as names ending in -ton or -ham do in England. Trev in modern Welsh is used for town, the modern trev being to the medieval trev what the modern town is to old -ton.
trevtad, patrimony, represented in the Latin Peniarth MS. 28 by hereditas. It is the trev which descends to the sons through the father, the word trev in this case not bearing the rigid sense of an area of four rhandirs, &c., but rather that of a definite plot of habitable ground on which the sons might continue to live. This idea seems to be conveyed by the interesting use of the word in the triad of the free huntings,[1] where the pursuit of a roebuck, fox, and otter, is free to all in every gwlad or patria, the reason being that these three creatures have no trevtad, which word is represented in the early Latin text by certa mansio.[2] May it not therefore be that the exact meaning of trevtad is the certa mansio which is the son's due through his father after the latter's decease ?
trevgordd is represented in the Latin Peniarth MS. 28 and Vespasian E XI by the expression communis villa. In the latter our bugeil trefgord appears as pastor communis ville, id est, trefgord.[3] In a later text,[4] we find the following statement, ' Llyma fessur trefgordd cyfreithiawl : naw tei, ac un aradyr, ac un odyn, ac un gordd, ac un gath, ac un ceilyawc, ac un tarw, ac un bugeil.' (This is the complement of a legal trevgordd : nine houses, and one plough, and one kiln, and one churn, and one cat, and one cock, and one bull, and one shepherd.) This statement, however, is not found earlier than the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the present text the trevgordd is associated with cattle ; and in one passage in particular,[5] where reference is made to damaged corn bordering on a trevgordd (yn emyl trefgord), it would appear as though trevgordd were a special kind of trev in which cattle belonging to various individuals pastured in common, with a common herdsman and a common bull. We have also a reference to the bath of a trevgordd, and the smithy,[6] which last was to be nine paces from the trevgordd itself.[7]
- ↑ pp. 131, 133, 275 supra.
- ↑ Anc. Laws II, 774.
- ↑ Ibid. II. 771, 841.
- ↑ Ibid. II. 692, being Vaughan's transcript of an early fifteenth-century text. (See note to gorvodtrev, p. 340).
- ↑ V 34 b 19-24 (pp. 84, 230 supra).
- ↑ V 44 b 24. After gefeil, W and X insert trefgord. Anc. Laws I. 780.
- ↑ An interesting passage on the trevgordd will be found by Dr. Seebohm in his Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, 34-40. but in the
