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Comments edit
Although the article "Moot Hill <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_hill> " is longer it is part of the Scottish project and in my opinion should not be considered to be the main article for this page ("Moot Hall") which is the more general article. Neither article deals adequately with the subject of 'moots' I am not a specialist at all, but someone maybe can pick up on this
"Moot" is an old Anglo-Saxon word and involves a case that needs decision by a meeting of interested parties. Hence a moot... Frequently they were on neutral ground and were used to discuss and resolve boundary disputes. The one I first came across is a moot mound just outside a city boundary (or was outside the city in those days - Southampton has expanded since) and is known to have been used in the 12C. There is a lovely example in Leicestershire of 6 parishes arranged radially, like the spokes of a wheel, around central a moot mound which does not belong to any of them – it was noted in the Domesday book which was complied after the Norman conquest in 1066. Many of them were courts, many of them were directly responsible to the king and once their decisions were taken only the king himself could overturn the decision of a moot. There are more than 2900 known moot mounds in the British Isles as well as moot buildings and moot crosses - (sorry, I don't know my source for these statements) and it has been suggested that there were many more as there may have been a moot location (mound, hall, cross, well) associated with every "hundred"
As a final point, the difference in understanding between US and UK English needs to be emphasised as the meanings are in essence entirely opposite between the two countries
Bonnyjars 10:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- Agree in part with what you say - see my comment at talk:moot hill - I challenge the latest version that begins "Moot hills in Scotland" (which is a recent edit). It seems likely to me (as an innocent bystander) that the custom began with simple moot mounds - low rings of earth that people could sit on in a circle. In England, development was towards moot halls whereas in Scotland it went to moot hills. In my view, the qualification "Scotland" should be removed from the intro and detailed sections on Scottish and English practice created - recognising that the Scottish section will be far more detailed. --John Maynard Friedman 12:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- In both articles, there is a link to the Wiktionary article that explains the difference between UK usage and US usage. --John Maynard Friedman 12:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Moot halls of the gods edit
Perhaps there should be some coverage of the use of the term with reference to the meetinghouse of the gods, the Pantheon on Olympus perhaps being a typical example though it is really more a moot hill. I bring this up because of an off-the-wall link in the article on Thaton, a town in Burma. --Haruo (talk) 16:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)