A pendulum beating seconds at sea-level and at normal temperature measures 39·1393 inches at Greenwich (Act of Parliament, 1824). This length varies in different places from the variations of gravity due to the ellipticity of the earth and local causes of deviation.
The popular ‘hand’ was the ‘palm’ of ancient times, four digits or finger-breadths.
_Pes habet palmos iv, palmus habet digitos iv_ (Frontinus).
‘Foure graines of barlye make a finger; foure fingers a hande; foure handes a foote’ (Eden, 1566).
But the present Hand for horse-measurement is ‘the measure called a Handful used in measuring the height of horses, by 27 Hen. 8, Chap. 6, ordained to be 4 inches’ (Sam. Leake, 1701). This is part of an old popular duodecimal division of the foot into 3 hands of 4 inches, then of the inch into 3 barleycorns (lengthwise) each of 4 poppy-seeds, and of these again into 12 hairbreadths.
In Austria this horse-measure is the Faust or fist.
Another very widely spread limb-measure is that of the fist with the thumb projecting, roughly = 6 inches. It is the Shaftment of some parts of England, _scæft-mund_ (shaft-hand) in Old English, _bawd_ in Wales; the _somesso_ of Italy, the _kubdeh_ of Egypt, the _taim_ of Burma.
In the Laws of Æthelstan (1000) a measurement is given as 9 feet, 9 shaftments, and 9 barleycorns, i.e. 9 feet + 9 half-feet + 3 inches.
The yard, being 4 spans, was formerly one of the Ells, measures of 3, 4, 5 or more spans, related to the cubit of 2 spans. The Scots yard, of 37 inches, was always known as an Ell, and it was only gradually that our yard took the place, for cloth measure, of the Ell of 5 spans = 45 inches, which was long maintained by statute. The yard and the ell were usually distinguished as _virga_ and _ulna_ in statutes, but sometimes _ulna_ meant a yard.
Both yard and ell were divided into halves, quarters, and nails (sixteenths).
See Chap. XVI (The Ells), and Chap. XX (section on the Nail and the Clove).
The earliest table of English linear measures is probably that in Arnold’s ‘Customs of London,’ _c._ 1500.
The lengith of a barly corne iij tymes make an ynche and xij ynches make a fote and iij fote make a yerde and v quatirs of the yarde make an elle v fote make a pace cxxv pace make a furlong and viij furlong make an English myle.