8 Notes and Sketches. 



certain measure of local knowledge, the attentive topo- 

 graphic student might readily call up to the mind's eye 

 quite a distinct picture of any given locality. He 

 would be able not only to form an estimate, very nearly 

 correct, of the actual population of any particular parish 

 180 years ago; but could also ascertain how that 

 population was employed, and how it was located the 

 forms of occupation corresponding to a great extent 

 with those which had obtained for some hundreds of 

 years, as we shall afterwards see. He would find the 

 Poll List for the parish headed by the laird and his 

 family and servants ; then, apart from them, the tenants 

 and sub-tenants, with generally a group, more or less 

 numerous, under some principal tenant, of cottars and 

 their wives, of " grassrnen" and they? wives ; and 

 occasionally a " lone" woman or two in a " mailt house." 

 Such was the more specifically farm establishment in 

 which the relation of the various members of the small 

 community to each other were readily intelligible. At 

 the next place we have the hamlet. Here were congre- 

 gated sundry minor farmers, along with the weaver or 

 "wabster," and the tailor and smith, each of whom 

 usually had his croft or piece of land to till, and his 

 " lair" in the moss to furnish him with fuel. The two 

 latter, important enough functionaries in their re- 

 spective spheres, do not figure so frequently in the Poll 

 Lists as we, with our modern notions, might expect. 

 The people were not given to variety in " changeable 

 suits of apparel" to the like extent that their descendants 

 are. The common male dress consisted chiefly of coarse 



and female, and 6s. additional if the man had a trade, such as that 

 of a tailor or smith. And if he had property he had to pay a 

 fortieth part of its value ; while if he chose to call himself a 

 "gentleman," his poll was 3 Scots. Pretty stiff all this no 

 doubt, considering the value of money at the time ; and so appa- 

 rently thought those immediately concerned, for it was with great 

 difficulty they could be got to pay the poll-tax. The Poll Book 

 gives complete lists of the adult persons in each parish. Compre- 

 hensive as was the poll-tax of 1696, it produced in Aberdeenshire 

 only the sum of 28,148 7s. Id. Scots, or 2,345 13s. 7d. sterling. 



