148 Notes and Sketches. 



ane's gotten an amshach at the spar." A not unfrequent 

 source of danger, too, in connection with the mill, was 

 found in the tendency of the indifferently set millstone 

 to fly in pieces when grinding, maiming, or even killing 

 the miller, if he happened to be in the way. 



The mill services and the exactions made in the shape 

 of multure and " knaveship," as part of the tax in kind 

 was called, seem to have caused the miller to be univer- 

 sally detested. Of both the existing system and the men 

 by whom it was carried on, Dr. James Anderson gives a 

 description that is more expressive than complimentary. 

 In speaking of the state of matters in Aberdeenshire in his 

 own time, he says the tenants, in some cases, paid the 

 seventeenth peck in thirlage. Then they paid " multure, 

 or the price of grinding, which/' says he, " is often the 

 thirty-second peck. They pay also to the miller a 

 lick of good ivill, or a bannock, which tenants have some- 

 times allowed to be measured ; and there are instances 

 where another unmeasured lick has crept in. Even the 

 seeds sifted from the bannock are sometimes paid. When 

 all these items are added together, they amount at some 

 mills to a twelfth or eleventh part of the whole corn 

 carried to the mill." But even this was not all. The cog 

 with which the shealing was measured was allowed to 

 be "made or mended," according to the fancy of the mul- 

 turer ; and so its size was as likely to be wrong as right ; 

 and if wrong, the error would probably not be to the dis- 

 advantage of the miller. Then the tenant was bound 

 to grind not only the meal to be used in his own family 

 at the mill to which he was thirled, but also " all the 

 other grain reared on his farm, seed only excepted ; or to 

 pay the full multure for every ounce of it that shall 

 be sold elsewhere or otherwise disposed of ; even horse 

 corn and wheat which they cannot manufacture, as well 

 as bear, are not excepted. The millers even insist for 

 payment of the multure for the corn that might have 

 grown on fields laid down to grass, which in the usual 

 rotation of crops in the county ought otherwise to have 





