MR HARDY ON BOWLING. 65 



autumn. In the former season, engaged in weeding at sixpence or 

 oightpcnce per day, they were little encouraged, in a state of husbandry, 

 where nature still retained the sovereignty, and the farmer seized a crop 

 only where she would permit.* The superfluous hands were necessarily 

 driven to other means of subsistence. The females in winter plied the 

 distaff, prepared the hemp, flax, and wool ;t and in summer bleached 

 their long webs, in the bright sunshine, on the unstained grassy mead, 

 by the banks of a sparkling stream. The cottages in rural villages had 



* This was less for the purpose of checking the weeds than of procuring the 

 thistles (Cnicut arventis), as provender for the horses ; in hard years, and in the 

 wont of artificial grasses, accustomed in the summer season to little better. The 

 same thing happened in Forfarshire under the old regime. " In the field below, a 

 man appears to be very busy weeding corn ; but observe he pulls no weeds except 

 thistles, and these he lays on the side of the field, till their prickles are softened by 

 the sunbeams, afte^^va^ds ^they were carried home and distributed among the horses 

 for supper. (Edinburgh Magazine, Aug. 1818, vol. iii. p. 120.) The monks, as far 

 as we have information, were the earliest patrons of weeding on the borders. At 

 Clarilaw, in Roxburghsire, the gift of David I., the monks of Kelso had twenty-one 

 cottages, to each of which was attached three acres, minus a rood, and pasturage for 

 two cows. For these they rendered annually two bolls of meal, and iveeded the corn 

 on the Abbot's grange at Newton (et serclabunt totum bladum grangie de Neuton.) 

 The grange of Newton was cultivated with seven ploughs. (Rotal. Redit. Monast. 

 de Kalcow, written before 1316, apud Morton's Teviotdale, p. ICO. 167.) In 1346-7 

 there is an entry in one of those Account-Rolls of Holy Island, that in such an in- 

 teresting manner connect the manners of former times with the present. " To 

 two women weeding corn, [wheat] (mundantibus frument'), at Corpus Christi (about 

 the middle or end of June), — 4d." (Raine's North Durham, p. 89.) Rather curi- 

 ously the weeds seem to have been thistles. In 1416 among the farm utensils at 

 Fenham, occur " 4 weed hokys" [weed hooks.] (lb. p, 128.) Their tenants had 

 scandalously thistly com. 1344-5. " Gloves for 14 servants, when they gathered 

 the tithe corn, 2s. 8d." (p. 87.) 



t In Patten's Expedition of the Duke of Somerset, it is mentioned that the party 

 detached to receive the surrender of Dunglass Castle, found stowed up in it, by " y* 

 wy ves of y" toune," for security, " yame, lynnen, hempe, and heaps of such baggage 

 beside." These were •' very liberally let alone ;" (p. 35.) Turner (1562) says, 

 flax, " called of the Northern men lynt," "groweth very plenteously in the north 

 parte of England." (Herb, part ii.) Almost contemporaneously in the rent-rolls of 

 Holy Island there is in 1501-2, " tithes of hay, lint, and hemp, 28 shillings." There 

 is, however, an enti'y more than a century prior to this, " hay, flax, and garden herbs 

 (porrecti) 24sh ;" (Raine, p. 117.) In the reign of William the Lion there was a 

 place called " Lintedikes," near Lilliesleaf, in Roxburghshire ; (Morton's Teviotdale 

 p. 271.) In Cromwell's invasion in 1650, the Scotch women of Ay ton and other 

 places passed through in the march from Mordington to " Coppersmith," were 

 " clothed in white flannel, in a very homely manner." (Relation of the fight at Leith, 

 &c 1660.) This was doubtless home made, for even the thrifty dames of last cen- 

 tury confess they could not proficiently tint their woollen cloth, but sent it to the 

 dyer, who, for the process, charged the extravagant price, in their estimation, of two 

 sliillings per yard. 



