0 Ce 
Transactions. 69 
Thus in consideration of the great expenses of the town and 
the great expenses of the tacksmen, some additional payment is 
required from the sucken inhabitants, bringing up the multures 
and miller’s dues to 5 per cent. of the malt taken to the mills. 
These old common wills of the burgh—small buildings, which 
with their straw-clad roofs and attendant water-wheels, turning 
with self-satisfied sleepy motion—must have been picturesque 
objects, joining rural and civic life, the scenes of multifarious 
and varied strifes, probably also of much pleasant gossip. They 
are one of the most frequent subjects of minute appearing in the 
town’s minute books. The several succeeding Town Councils, 
who so unweariedly and zealously guarded the privileges attached 
to the mills, were composed of men, many of them of rank, edu- 
cation, and wealth, who to their civic interests often joined 
extensive landed estates in the country. Homer Maxwell of 
Speddoch, at one time Provost of Dumfries, curiously enough 
owned and occupied a house in the burgh which adjoined the 
Over Sandbed Mill. It was the custom to let the town mills by 
roup, over a long period for one year only, and ultimately for 
three years ; and new tacksmen appear in possession nearly every 
new let. The tacksmen must have been farmers of the revenues 
rather than practical millers. Probably they might know 
as little about the Mills as the commendators did about Church 
matters spiritual, unconnected with the real revenues of the 
lands and worldly profits of the See. The miller, however, seems 
to have had a busy time of it. After a flood, the ‘“water-gangs ” 
required to be cleared of the sand with which they had been 
filled during the spate ; in droughts, the dam-dykes needed to be 
stopped with fog ; and at all times his eye must be abroad on the 
sucken to see that he is not defrauded of any of his dues. But 
the miller’s greatest troubles lie within the mill. Malt is often 
brought there and left an indefinite time, and, in the words of 
the Council’s minute, “albeit it should be lost,” the miller is 
blamed. If it be not lost, he is still charged with having dimin- 
ished its quantity, or of having substituted malt of inferior 
quality for that of better quality, which had been brought to his 
mill ; and, indeed, to cheat the miller by all fair means and the 
most ingenious artifices seems to have been the constant aim of 
all, from the time of Adam, the first miller of Dumfries, down- 
wards. The working millers, if we are to judge by one example, 
were not free of the propensity commonly attributed to the trade. 
