156 Notes and Sketches. 



duty from the whole of Scotland. And as dried peat 

 probably did not cost much more per ton than the 

 amount of the duty on that weight of coal, the yearly 

 consumpt by town's folks must have been very consider- 

 able. In the country districts the article coal was practi- 

 cally unknown. About 1785, it was recorded as a thing 

 worth making a note of that " some of the gentry burn 

 coals in their houses." But even then coal had not 

 come into general use with the ordinary blacksmith; 

 and without coal the smith was not good for much. 

 To fit up a machine of any sort where wheels and 

 pinions and a "journal" on which they might run 

 came into use was quite beyond him. It taxed the 

 powers of his peat and charcoal fire and his rude 

 " studdie " sufficiently to furnish forth the plough and 

 plough " graith," of the style already described, and, if 

 a moderately skilful man, to put a pair of shoes on the 

 fore-hoofs of the farmers' horses to wear while the peats 

 were driving, and then to be taken off and laid aside 

 for renewed use when the like season of work came 

 round again.* 



The wright did his part without calling iron very 

 prominently into use. He could "knit the cupples" 

 and set up the whole roof timbers of a house, mainly, 



* From the " Brieff e Narrative" of Gilbert Blakhal we learn 

 incidentally that country blacksmiths could, in some cases, do the 

 farrier's office readily enough in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century. In the Autumn of 1641 the worthy priest, travelling with 

 his " Mass cloathes" concealed in his valise, put up at a hostelrie 

 on Moor of Rhynie to feed his horse ; and there had his coolness 

 and courage put to the test by the rude captain of a local company 

 of " soldiers, all drunk as beastes," who vainly endeavoured to 

 bully the father into telling him who he was. He passed over the 

 hills of Cushnie, " as wyld a piece of ground as is in all Brittaine," 

 to Deeside ; when his horse, which had been stung in the breast 

 by an adder by and bye, got so lame on the off fore-foot that he 

 could not put it to the ground. ' ' I did make remove the shoe 

 of that foote at the Churche of Birs," says the Father, "to sie what 

 did hurt his foote. The smith did not discover anything, nather 

 in his foote or legge, and therefor set on the shoe again, and so I 

 did sometimes lead him, and sometymes ryde upon him to Aber- 

 deine, wher the ministers were holding their General Assembly." 



