The name is absent

be effected ; while the machinery of government
and efficient means of protection were secured.

At these great religious rites, accompanied as they
ever were by the solemn Ding, placitum, or court,
thrice in the year the markmen assembled unbid-
den : and here they transacted the ordinary and rou-
tine business required. On emergencies however,
which did not brook delay, the leaders could issue
their peremptory summons to a bidden Ding, and
in this were then decided the measures necessary
for the maintenance and well-being of the commu-
nity, and the mutual guarantee of life and honour.
To the Ga then probably belonged, as an unsevered
possession, the lands necessary for the site and
maintenance of a temple, the supply of beasts for
sacrifice, and the endowment of a priest or priests :
perhaps also for the erection of a stockade or for-
tress, and some shelter for the assembled freemen
in the Ding. Moreover, if land existed which from
any cause had not been included within the limits
of some Mark, we may believe that it became the
public property of the Ga, i. e., of all the Marks in
their corporate capacity : this at least may be in-
ferred from the rights exercised at a comparatively
later period over waste lands, by the constituted
authorities, the Duke, Count or King.

Accident must more or less have determined the
seat of the Ga-Jurisdiction : perhaps here and there
some powerful leading Mark, already in the pos-
session of a holy site, may have drawn the neigh-
bouring settlers into its territory : but as the pos-
session and guardianship of the seat of government

could not but lead to the vindication of certain
privileges and material advantages to its holders,
it is not unreasonable to believe that where the
Marks coalesced on equal terms, the temple-lands
would be placed without the peculiar territorial
possession of eàch, as they often were in Greece,
upon the eσχατ(α or boundary-land. On the sum-
mit of a range of hills, whose valleys sufficed for
the cultivation of the markmen, on the watershed
from which the fertilizing streams descended, at
the point where the boundaries of two or three com-
munities touched one another, was the proper place
for the common periodical assemblages of the free
men : and such sites, marked even to this day by
a few venerable oaks, may be observed in various
parts ofEngland¹.

The description which has been given might seem
at first more properly to relate to an abstract poli-
tical unity than to a real and territorial one: no
doubt the most important quality of the Ga or Scir
was its power of uniting distinct populations for
public purposes : in this respect it resembled the
shire, while the sheriff’s court was still of some im-
portance ; or even yet, where the judges coming
on their circuit, under a commission, hold a shire-
moot or court in each shire for gaol-delivery. Yet
the Shire is a territorial division² as well as an abs-
tract and merely legal formulary, although all the

¹ There are instances which show that the custom, afterwards kept
up, of “ Trysting Trees,” was an ancient one. Prohably some great
trees marked the site of the Severaljurisdictions : I find mentioned the
scirac, the hundredes treow and the mearcbeam.

² The Gau itself had a mark or boundary. Deut. Rechtsalt. p. 496.

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