CHAPTEE XVIII. 



DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES AND OUT-DOOR LABOUR THE 



TRADE IN PLAIDING AND FINGRAMS SPINNING AND 

 KNITTING A SPINNING MISTRESS REGULATION OF THE 



TRADE SCHOOL EDUCATION THE FARMER'S EVENING 



FIRESIDE THE FLAILMAN. 



IN the latter part of the seventeenth century the home 

 manufacture of plaiding, fingrams, and stockings was a 

 very important industry. Both spinning and weaving 

 of wool and lint were carried on, not in large factories, 

 but as domestic employments, pursued all over the 

 country in their own houses by those who had no other 

 occupation, as well as by the members of the farmer's and 

 cottar's families. In a letter of date 1 680 ; and attributed 

 to the Countess of Erroll of that time, it is said " the 

 women of this country are mostly employed spinning 

 and working of stockings and making of plaiden webs, 

 which the Aberdeen merchants carry over the sea ; and 

 it is this which bringeth money to the commons ; other 

 ways of getting it they have not." Very similar is 

 the language of Baillie Alexander Skene of Newtile,* 

 writing five years later. He enumerates plaiding, 

 fingrams, and stockings among " the natural products 

 of our land "; and maintains that with due attention to 

 keep the market by an honestly produced article, which 

 condition it appears was not fulfilled latterly, the whole 

 wool grown in Scotland could be wrought by " the 

 commons of the nation," working at " such times as 



* Memorials for the Government of the Royal Burghs in Scot- 

 land, 1685. 



