100 T'ransactiont!. 



alone are seen. Clieviot slieei) are giving way, and blackfaced 

 prevailing. Instead of vehicles going to market at neighbouring 

 villages, cadgers' carts come to the farm houses. Since the new 

 Ground Game Act i-abbits are scarce, and hares are nearly 

 extirpated. The squirrels are fitful visitors. A great wave of 

 them appears ; then, as at present, there is an ebb. The curious 

 flat stones which roofed the houses have disappeared in favour of 

 slates. The number of inhabited houses has decreased, and their 

 ruins are not always picturesque. Tinkers with their donkeys do 

 not now visit us. Umbrella-inenders, knife-grinders, and sellers 

 with baskets are scarce, but tramps asking alms have noways 

 decreased. The river Shinnel runs as of yore, arched over for 

 many miles with a beautiful canopy of natural wood. Although 

 illegitimate methods of securing trouts, with which it was well 

 stocked, have been put down, yet the system of deep-draining, 

 suddenly flushing the water and carrying away the spawning 

 beds, is an angler's complaint. The heritors having mansions in 

 the parish are not now resident. They spend only a few summer 

 months with us, or let their houses, so the work of smith, coach- 

 man, and domestic servants is far less in demand. On the other 

 hand, houses that have been built or repaired since I came to the 

 parish are much more comfortable to the inmates. 



When I arrived in Tynron, and for years afterwards, water 

 was obtained almost universally from open wells ; chimneys were 

 swept by setting tire to them ; messages were conveyed across 

 straths by shrilly whistling on fingers ; towns were reached by 

 bridle patlis. These mountain tracts were used for sheep 

 conducted to the great stock markets, as Sanquhar, and not 

 being much employed for this purpose now are falling into decay. 

 The people around me to a greater extent than at present knitted 

 their own stockings, plaited their own creels, carved their own 

 crooks, made their own curling brooms or cows, bored their own 

 tod-and-lamb boards, squared their own draught-boards. A 

 very few women smoked tobacco like men, and a very many men 

 had chins like women. Broom was boiled, the juice mixed with 

 hellebore and tobacco, and used as a sheep-dip. The sheep, in 

 fact, were not dipped at all, but their wool was combed into 

 ridges, and the composition carefully poured in the skin from an 

 old teapot. There were no wooden frames for bees ; only th 

 eosy-lookiug straw skeps. The Shinnel drove several mill wheels ; 

 now it drives only one. There was a method of announcing the 



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