WEAVING AND A VILLAGE OF WEAVERS. 2/ 



land, of from two to four acres, and kept a cow. At early 

 morn every day, as certainly as the sun rose, the blast of 

 the horn of the common village cowherd resounded over 

 the vale ; when from every gate a cow joined the general 

 herd, which was led by him to the wide common in the 

 hollow, below the town to the north, now under cultivation. 

 The same merry sound was heard in the evening, when he 

 returned with his lowing charge, and every animal went of 

 her own accord to her own byre, bearing rich treasures for 

 the pail. The public cowherd, generally an elderly weather- 

 beaten man, was known throughout Scotland by the title of 

 " Tootie," from his tooting or winding his horn a name still 

 attached to places such as " Tootie's Nook," a street corner 

 where he used to assemble his cattle in an ancient town in 

 Angus, where the writer was born. His name and functions 

 recall a bygone picturesque state of life once prevalent in the 

 country, but now seldom seen ; the upland rural village of 

 Lauder, south of Edinburgh, being one of the very few spots, 

 if not the only place, in Scotland where this remnant of past 

 rural comfort still lingers. 



In Drumlithie, the staple trade at this period was that of 

 " green " or unbleached linen, though a little woollen was 

 made in the shape of wincey. Some time after John 

 Duncan left it, when bleaching was better developed 

 through increased knowledge of practical chemistry, " white 

 weaving," or bleached linen, was introduced, and added to 

 the local population and prosperity. In John's time there, 

 flax was extensively cultivated in the neighbourhood, but it 

 has been abandoned for more than thirty years, and there, 

 as elsewhere over the country, the remains of the pits 

 where it was steeped may still be found. The whole of 



