No Man's Child - Chapter 20

'Him?' said the landlord in an answering whisper, cocking an eye without turning his head. 'I don't rightly know. He is one of the wandering folk – Rangers we call them. He seldom talks: not but what he can tell a rare tale when he has the mind. He disappears for a month, or a year, and then he pops up again.

FOTR: At the Sign of the Prancing Pony

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I walk down the stairs, my fingers busy in my hair, twining its lengths into a braid. The sun rises dimly behind a screen of low clouds, but my feet know the way. In my mind I organize the day. The afternoon, it is clear, will be dedicated to thorny questions of how to convince the Council to yet again build more granaries and to forebear from eating all our harvest, for Halbarad has gone a-ranging upon the northern border of the Angle and shall not attend, and we come swiftly upon the year's harvest. Ah, perhaps I worry needlessly, but I have no way of knowing when they see reason easily and when the jostling among them for position will deafen their ears. And then yet another family bereft of home and seeking the solace of the Angle has come among us, and I have also to find shelter for them.
( Continued here )

Factoid about the Middle Ages - the hallmote

Gies, Frances and Joseph Gies. Life in a Medieval Village. New York: Harper & Row, 1990, p. 172-3.

Twice or more each year the villagers gathered for the hallmote: hall, meaning manor house, and mote, meeting. … The hallmote was the lord's manorial court, presided over by his steward, and transacting primarily the lord's business… Yet the principle actors in the hallmote were villagers, who in effect served as prosecutor, legal authority, witnesses, and judge. Much of the court's business had nothing to do with the lord, but was concerned with interaction among the villagers. Finally, the hallmote's proceedings were ruled not by the lord's will but by the ancient and powerful body of tradition known as the custom of the manor… The hallmote, furthermore, was legislative as well as a judicial body, promulgating the bylaws that governed field, meadow, pasture, and woods…