Trnnxaclions. 51 



nearly in the same localities ; the smithies are in the identical 

 localities, these being the localities best adapted for the farmers 

 in the different straths. For joiners and blacksmiths in rural 

 and agricultural parislies there will always be found occupation, 

 and there will at all times be need. 



Fifty years ago and later there were many small shops scattered 

 up and down the parish. Every little group of cottages had its 

 shop. Villages of twenty or thirty families had two, rival shops, 

 where, besides the ordinary articles of grocery, tea and sugar, 

 butter and eggs, soap and candles, bread, meal, and flour, were 

 to be had, cotton and woollen goods, ropes and twine, brushes, 

 hammers, nails, and almost eveiy article of household economy. 

 Tliey were, in the strictest sense of the term, stores, and stores 

 very cosmopolitan in their contents. They contained every 

 article which, on an emergency, a person might require, not even 

 omitting medicines in common use. To a rural population, dis- 

 tant from a town, and with no direct means of communication, 

 these shops were a great convenience, and, to the shopkeepers 

 themselves, no small soui'ce of gain. But their day is done ; 

 their number is on the decline, and the few that remain have 

 little or no variety to attract customers. What is the reason 1 



Travelling grocers, travelling drapers, travelling butchers and 

 bakers, travelling vans, containing every conceivable article of 

 household or outdoor requirements traverse the parish from week's 

 end to week's end. 



Fifty years ago two carriers plied semi-weekly between Dal- 

 beattie and Dumfries, and semi-weekly on intermediate days 

 between Dalbeattie and Col vend. They brought the supplies of 

 bread and groceries to the different shops scattered up and down 

 the parish, and parcels to the diflerent houses situated along their 

 route. There were no bread carts, no butchers' carts, no grocers' 

 carts in these days ; and, without the carriers, I know not how 

 the people could have procured for themselves the necessaries of 

 life. They were an excellent and most useful class of men, but 

 their day is past, at least so far as Colvend is concerned. 

 Carriers still travel between Dalbeattie and Dumfries, but no 

 one comes to Colvend. 



Tliough not properly speaking a trade, peat-casting was an 

 industry of no little importance in former times, and even in times 

 so recent as fifty or forty years ago. Peats at that time were a 

 chief article of fuel in Colvend. Almost every family in the 



