-strip of untilled land, wherein all the
inhabitants of the village had common rights of pasturage and of cutting
firewood. All this land originally was the property not of any one
family or individual, but of the community. The study of the mark
carries us back to a time when there may have been private property in
weapons, utensils, or trinkets, but not in real estate.[3] Of the three
kinds of land the common mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords
in the days of feudalism, has generally remained public property to this
day. The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of
towns and cities in England and the United States most probably
originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby
the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the
new aggregate. In towns of modern date this origin of the common is of
course forgotten, and in accordance with the general law by which the
useful thing after discharging its functions survives for purposes of
ornament, it is introduced as a pleasure-ground. In old towns of New
England, however, the little park where boys play ball or children and
nurses "take the air" was once the common pasture of the town. Even
Boston Common did not entirely cease to be a grazing-field until 1830.
It was in the village-mark, or assemblage of homesteads, that private
property in real estate naturally began. In the Russian villages to-day
the homesteads are private property, while the cultivated land is owned
in common. This was the case with the _arable mark_ of our ancestors.
The arable mark belonged to the community, and was temporarily divided
into as many fields as there were households, though the division was
probably not into equal parts: more likely, as in Russia to-day, the
number of labourers in each household was taken into the account; and at
irregular intervals, as fluctuations in population seemed to require it,
a thorough-going redivision was effected. In carrying out such
divisions and redivisions, as well as in all matters relating to
village, ploughed field, or pasture, the mark-community was a law unto
itself. Though individual freedom was by no means considerable, the
legal existence of the individual being almost entirely merged in that
of his clan, the mark-community was a completely self-governing body.
The assembly of the mark-men, or members of the community, allotted land
for tillage, determined the law or declar