Another seigneurial obligation was that of giving to the seigneur certain days of corvee, or forced labor, in each year.  In France this was a grievous burden; peasants were taken from their own lands at inconvenient seasons and forced to work for weeks on the seigneur’s domain.  But there was nothing of this sort in Canada.  The amount of corvee was limited to six days at the most in any year, of which only two days could be asked for at seed-time and two days at harvest.  The seigneur, for his part, did not usually exact even this amount, because the neighborhood custom required that he should furnish both food and tools to those whom he called upon to work for him.

Besides, there were various details of a minor sort incidental to the seigneurial system.  If the habitant caught fish in the river, one fish in every eleven belonged to the seigneur.  But seldom was any attention paid to this stipulation.  The seigneur was entitled to take firewood and building materials from the lands of his habitants if he desired, but he rarely availed himself of this right.  On the morning of every May Day the habitants were under strict injunction to plant a Maypole before the seigneur’s house, and this they never failed to do, because the seigneur in return was expected to dispense hospitality to all who came.  Bright and early in the morning the whole community appeared and greeted the seigneur with a salvo of blank musketry.  With them they carried a tall fir-tree, pulled bare to within a few feet of the top where a tuft of green remained.  Having planted this Maypole in the ground, they joined in dancing and a feu de joie in the seigneur’s honor, and then adjourned for cakes and wine at his table.  There is no doubt that such good things disappeared with celerity before appetites whetted by an hour’s exercise in the clear spring air.  After drinking to the seigneur’s health and to the health of all his kin, the merry company returned to their homes, leaving behind them the pole as a souvenir of their homage.  That the seigneur was more than a mere landlord such an occasion testified.

The seigneurs of New France had the right to hold courts for the settlement of disputes among their tenantry, but they rarely availed themselves of this privilege because, owing to the sparseness of the population in most of the seigneuries, the fines and fees did not produce enough income to make such a procedure worth while.  In a few populous districts there were seigneurial courts with regular judges who held sessions once or twice each week.  In some others the seigneur himself sat in judgment behind the living-room table in his own home and meted out justice after his own fashion.  The Custom of Paris was the common law of the land, and all were supposed to know its provisions, though few save the royal judges had any such knowledge.  When the seigneur himself heard the suitors, his decision was not always in keeping with the law but it usually satisfied the