Domestic Industries and Out-door Labour. 145 



" the thresher's weary flingin' tree." Here we have 

 an outline sketch of a professional flailman or barnman. 

 A gaunt, sinewy fellow, six feet in height, minus 

 coat, waist-coat, and neckerchief, with his shirt collar 

 loose ; his towsy head bare, and barefooted too, as he 

 shuffled to and fro in the floor and pelted away at the 

 loosened sheaves he had strewn over it from end to end. 

 He was paid by the boll ; and when in the humour for 

 a regular set-to, would thresh out the almost incred- 

 ible quantity of six bolls in a day. We need not 

 suppose that he was over nice in threshing clean. 

 Quantity was his aim, and too great nicety did not 

 tend to promote that object ; while he might justly 

 hold, as indeed he avowed his belief, that the cattle 

 would be " nane the waur o' a wisp wi' a fyou o' the 

 berries on't." In the case of smaller farms the thresh- 

 ing was done of a winter morning by the farmer and 

 his " man" getting up early for a " spell" at it together. 

 Before the degenerate era of clocks and watches, which 

 were rare in country houses down to quite the end of 

 the eighteenth century, the proper time to get up to 

 thresh was a matter of guess work ; and we have heard 

 of a decent Garioch quaker who had erred on the safe 

 side by leaving his bed about midnight and rousing 

 his servant man. They threshed on and on, and were 

 getting tired, and even hungry. The man had gone 

 and looked over the barn door repeatedly for tokens of 

 morning light; and at last he turned round with the 

 pettish exclamation, " I've seen as muckle as it never 

 come daylicht;" whereon the matter-of-fact quaker 

 quietly asked, " Whaur wast thou, friend, when thou 

 saw that V 



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