Rw PROPOSITIONS HAVE ATTRACTED SO much agreement among place-name scholars as that large numbers offield-names are "commonplace and uninteresting." Among these rejected multitudes of names are certainly those relating to size and shape. The purpose of this article is to attempt to show that this opinion is mistaken. The fact that many of the names "lack distinction" (as one authority states)seems to the writer to be no reason for regarding their collection and study (in the words of another) as

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... "a waste of time." By field-name is meant the name of any piece of land forming part of the agricultural economy of the area in which it is found. In England, the term is applied not only to the names of modern enclosed fields but also to the much larger open tracts of arable land ("great fields") that were the main units of mediaeval agriculture in many parts of the country. The divisions of the great fields, known as "furlongs," were also named and have a place in the genealogy of modem field-names. The smallest unit in an open arable field was the "strip" or "selion." Variously known also as "acres" and "lands," the strips of an individual tenant were normally dispersed through the two, three, or more great fields of a parish. Whatever the motives for this scattered distribution (e.g., the fair sharing among all tenants of both good and infertile land, or the averaging of travelling distance to the day's labours), this arrangernent has proved an unmixed blessing to the field-name student. The recital of the location of the parcels of land held by an individual (e.g., in the schedules known as "terriers") requires the naming of many, if not all, of the constituent furlongs of each of the great fields, to the obvious advantage of the researcher. The foregoing remarks will possibly clarify a discussion of a sample enumeration offield-names designating size: