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The Country Gcntlcviaiis Magazine 



much inconvenience. And yet their cash must 

 have been comparatively scant, for a precise 

 calculation shews that a farm that could winter 

 2000 whitefaced sheep left a balance of only 

 ^109 to the tenant, while the same number of 

 blackfaccd yielded only about £6(y a-year of 

 profit. Part of the rent was then paid in 

 gratuitous carriages of fuel, corn, hay, &c., and a 

 certain number of kain fowls, also a darg 

 or day's work, and sometimes a quantity of lint 

 or tow had to be spun. Tenants in general were 

 also restricted to certain mills, where they were 

 obliged to have their corn ground. In 1792 a 

 thrashing-machine was brought into Selkirk- 

 shire, but was never used ; and the first actually 

 employed was made in 1796 by a wheelwright in 

 Galashiels. There was no regular rotation of 

 crops, oats being the principal crop, and the rest 

 of the arable land being occupied in about equal 

 proportion with turnips, barley, and clover, after 

 they were introduced. Thistles, collected and 

 dried, were often used as winter food for cattle, 

 and in the towns they were sold for so much per 

 bundle. The oats were of the red, white, Angus, 

 and Dutch sorts ; and the barley was of the 

 coarse kind called bigg or bere, which ad- 

 mitted of late sowing, and was less liable, on 

 that account, to be choked with weeds. A sort 

 named battledore or sprat barley, was brought 

 from Yorkshire in the year 1790, by George 

 Currie, who occupied the farm of Carter- 

 haugh, three miles from Selkirk. It was small, 

 plump, and remarkably thin in the skin, which 

 made it give well both in meal and pot-barley, 

 and it had the advantage of sending forth a 

 great number of shoots from one stalk, but it re- 

 quired to be sown three weeks earlier than the 

 other. Potatoes were not planted in the fields 

 previous to 1772, and no kind was then known 

 except the red and a few kidneys. 



About this period whites were introduced, and a 

 few years later red-nebs were brought from Lang- 

 holm, and they were soon raised in sufficient 

 quantities to form a staple article of food, and 

 even to supply the contiguous parts of Mid- 

 Lothian and Tweeddale with seed. When turnip 

 culture began, idle and hungry people pulled and 

 ate them to a great extent, even before they had 

 attained any size ; and Swedish turnips especially 

 were eaten " with prodigious avidity by every 

 passenger, especially in spring." Shepherds 

 were entitled to eight soums of grass — a soum 

 being the quantity eaten by one cow or ten sheep, 

 which in net money value was calculated at ;^22, 

 IDS. The common wages, however, were sixty or 

 sixty-four sheep, a cow kept throughout the year, 



a house and garden, his master's horses to bring 

 home his fuel, and a stone of oatmeal' every 

 week. Ewe-milking being considered the hardest 

 of all female labour, was remunerated at the rate 

 of 50s. to 60s. of wages for the summer half-year ; 

 but women in winter received only a guinea to 

 30s. 



In 1707 there were no roads in the district. 

 Peats and turf were conveyed on sledges or 

 on the backs of horses, and the road to Edin- 

 burgh hctd not improved since the days of the 

 first Selkirk carrier. In 1764, indeed, an Act of 

 Parliament was obtained for constructing a road 

 from Crosslec toll-bar, on the confines of Mid- 

 Lothian, through Selkirk to Hairmoss toll-bar, 

 on the Hawick road, with a branch of three 

 miles to " the village of Galashiels." A road also 

 led from Kelso to Peebles, the same route 

 along which the monks of Kelso had many 

 centuries before travelled habitually to and from 

 Lesmahago, in Lanarkshire ; and a bridge was 

 constructed across the Tweed at Fairnilee. 

 About the same time, also, a good road was 

 made from Selkirk five miles up the Yarrow, and 

 over by Minchmoor to Peebles. But even to the 

 close of last century there was nothing better 

 than a track up the Ettrick and Yarrow, utterly 

 impracticable for wheeled conveyances, and 

 neither safe nor easy even for travellers on horse- 

 back. Among the first experiments in road- 

 making in the district was a piece on an inclined 

 plane. " Roads made on this plan," says Dr 

 Douglas, " may be very durable, and answer the 

 purpose extremely well in mild weather ; but 

 during the severity of winter frost may render 

 travelling upon them highly dangerous, espe- 

 cially in those places of this hilly and cold coun- 

 try which then feel not the influence of the sun." 

 Even down to the close of the century the whole 

 south of Scotland was almost without any good 

 roads. The first Road Act in Scotland was 

 obtained in 1760 to carry a turnpike through 

 East-Lothian, thus improving the communication 

 from Edinburgh to London, by way of Berwick, 

 In 1764, as we have seen, an Act was obtained 

 for a road part of the way between Edinburgh 

 and Hawick, by way of Selkirk. Next came the 

 road from Edinburgh to Kelso by way of Soutra 

 Hill and Lauder. About 1790 a road was 

 made from Kelso to St Boswells, which 

 was afterwards prolonged to Selkirk, and years 

 afterwards extended up the Yarrow and the 

 Ettrick to ?\loffat, and to Langholm and Hawick. 

 From Jedburgh and Kelso roads were made to 

 Wooler, to Morpeth, and to Newcastle, thus 

 opening up a new and profitable market for 



