La virgate , yardland o yarda de tierra ( latín : virgāta [ terrae ]) era una unidad de tierra inglesa . Principalmente una medida de evaluación fiscal más que de área , la virgata generalmente (pero no siempre) se calculaba como 1 ⁄4 de piel y teóricamente (pero rara vez exactamente) igual a 30 acres . Era equivalente a dos de las pandillas de bueyes de Danelaw .
Nombre
El nombre deriva del inglés antiguo gyrd landes ("yarda de tierra"), [1] del antiguo significado de "yarda" como vara de medir empleada para calcular acres (cf. vara ). La palabra no tiene relación etimológica con el patio de tierra alrededor de una vivienda. [2] "Virgate" es un retrónimo mucho más tardío , ya que la forma latinizada del yardland virgāta después de la llegada del yardland hizo que el nombre original fuera ambiguo. [3]
Historia
The virgate was reckoned as the amount of land that a team of two oxen could plough in a single annual season. It was equivalent to a quarter of a hide, so was nominally thirty acres.[4] In some parts of England, it was divided into four nooks (Middle English: noke; Medieval Latin: noca).[5] Nooks were occasionally further divided into a farundel (Middle English: ferthendel; Old English: fēorþan dǣl, "fourth deal, fourth share").[6]
The Danelaw equivalent of a virgate was two oxgangs or ‘bovates’.[7] These were considered to represent the amount of land that could be worked in a single annual season by a single ox and therefore equated to half a virgate. As such, the oxgang represented a parallel division of the carucate.
References
^Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yardland, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.
^Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "yard, n.2". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1921.
^Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "virgate, n.". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1917.
^D. Hey ed., Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), 476.
^"Noca - nook (measure of land)" R. W. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-list (Oxford University Press, London: for British Academy 1965), 312.
^Bosworth, Joseph; T. Northcote Toller (1882). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 281.
^Stephen Friar, Batsford Companion to Local History (Batsford, London 1991), 270.