[Glorantha] Re: Rune Magic

[Donald R. Oddy]

In message <33d89280606160918q62095845ib164a6de17369c78 at mail.gmail.com> Fred writes:

>You're a peasant.  You have a particularly good year, and sell a calf
>(if you let it grow up in your herd, you'll need more pasturage, which
>you don't have).  You've got a few pence in your pocket.
>
>The currency is about to be re-minted.  If you want to avoid the tax,
>what do you do with the cash?

Well ignoring the question of who is going to buy a calf for cash,
lets say you get threepence for it. You pay your landlord a penny
towards your rent and another to the church towards your tithe 
which leaves you with a penny. That'll do for a new axe or a needle 
for your daughter's dowery. You're doing well because when your grain 
crop is harvested you get to keep most of it. That means you won't go 
hungry over the winter and you'll probably have some spare to barter 
with neighbours for the stuff they make better than you. If you're 
doing really well you can seal some in a pot and keep it for future 
years.

In practice most of the trading occurred at a single market after
the harvest was brought in and before livestock was slaughtered
for winter which was also when rents and tithes were due. So
there would be a lot of bartering of produce between peasants
so they could pay their rents which were usually denominated in 
produce. And tithes were literally one tenth of the peasants
production although substitutions must have happened - you can't
pay someone a tenth of a cow. My guess is that grain was often
used as the balancing measure since it can be split almost
infinitely.

Incidently English peasants didn't have pasturage - pasturage was 
part of the common land so it wasn't a constraining factor. That
was the amount of winter feed the peasant could harvest, typically
enough for a single milk cow.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/