Banalités (French pronunciation: [banalite]; from ban) were essentially the dues that peasants owed their lords in France until the 18th century. These included the required use-for-payment of the lord's, or Seigneur's, mill to grind grain and his oven to bake bread. The rights of the Seigneur for such dues were called banal rights.
The peasants may also be subjected to the banalité de tor et ver, meaning that the lord only had the right to own a bull or a boar. The reproduction of the cattle was then subjected to royalties.
The object of this right was called banal, for example the four banal, taureau banal.
The Seigneur could also require a certain number of days each year of the peasant's forced labor. This practice of forced labor was called the corvée.
In New France the only banal right was the obligatory use of the seignorial mill.
Similar laws, especially pertaining to mills, were common in medieval Europe and continued after the medieval period in many places. Peasants and tenant farmers were bound to take their grain to the landowner's mill. In England feudal duty obliged many people to use bannal[1] mills and ovens. In Scotland thirlage[2] tied land to a particular mill, whose owner took a proportion of the grain as multure.[3].