Definition
A hen or domestic fowl. Geline is a Law French term, derived from the Latin *gallina*, used in medieval English legal records to denote a hen as a unit of rent, tribute, or feudal obligation. In manorial and feudal tenure documents, small livestock — including hens — were commonly rendered as part of customary service or rent owed by a tenant to a lord.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval plea rolls, year books, or manorial records will encounter geline and similar livestock terms in the context of feudal tenure obligations, particularly *rent service* and *customary tenure*. Hens and other poultry appear frequently as components of *agricultural rent* in kind — a practice distinct from money rent — and were recorded with the same legal weight as any other tenement obligation.
The term appears in Year Book sources (Yearb. M. 11 Hen. VI. 4) and is essentially confined to the medieval period. It will not appear in post-feudal property records, and modern researchers unfamiliar with Law French livestock vocabulary may fail to recognize geline as a legally operative term rather than incidental descriptive language. When encountered, it signals a record touching on manorial custom, villeinage, or copyhold tenure, and should prompt cross-reference to the broader tenure structure of the document.
Because Law French terms for livestock were drawn from Latin roots that diverged in spelling and form across manuscripts, variant spellings (such as *galine* or *galline*) should be anticipated in archival searches.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole treatment among standard legal reference works, offering a compact but sufficient entry: Law French, from Latin *gallina*, meaning a hen or fowl, with citation to the Year Books of Henry VI. The entry is representative of how Burrill handles medieval Law French vocabulary — brief, etymologically anchored, and reliant on Year Book authority.
No treatment appears in later standard dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier's), reflecting the term's obsolescence following the decline of feudal tenure and the formal abolition of copyhold in England. The absence of the term from American legal dictionaries is expected, as the feudal tenure system from which geline derives its legal significance was never transplanted to the colonies in operative form.
Jurisdictional Note
Geline is exclusively a term of English feudal and manorial law. It has no operative meaning in American law and no equivalent use in civil law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to English legal history and the interpretation of medieval primary sources.