Moot Hill - Links With The Land

Links With The Land

It is interesting to note the significance of direct links with the land shown by the standing on 'home' soil at the Scone moot, the use of soil from each parish in the building of the Tynwald Hill and the discovery of soil from several distant locations at the centre of Silbury Hill. This practice may link with beliefs that lay behind the ceremonies at the petrosomatoglyph footprints on Dunadd and at other sites.

In the 15th-century the Tinwald Mote near Dumfries was still the legal head of the barony, where sasine (possession) was given by the ceremony of handing the grantee, before witnesses, a handful of earth and stone from the head messuage called the Mote near the church of Tynwald. In mediaeval law the barony required a principal residence at which the legal process could be formally transacted, which explains why many such motes as that at Ellon were retained, here by the earls of Buchan, when little else remained of their possessions in the district. The mote still carried the dignity of the earldom.

The sasine is the legal act of register of land ownership, pronounced sayseen. Interestingly, in the context of the significance of the physical aspect of soil and stone, the act of conferring sasine was originally (for example in 1615) effected by the handing over of a bowl full of earth from the land and / or a stone of the house by the proprietor or seller to his heir or the buyer, who was then said to be seized of the land or house. Likewise the land rent payable was symbolised by the passing of a bowl of grass and the tithe as a bowl full of grain. The act of homage for holding a fief also involved the act of investiture. enacted by the delivering of a turf or a handful of earth to the individual to whom the land was being granted.