THE CELTIC SYSTEM l6l 



could manure as many of Infield [from which one crop of barley 

 and two crops of oats were then taken], had in all [each year] 

 twenty-five acres of oats and five acres of bear," ^ 



In the Highlands the poorer soil introduced slight modifica- 

 tions. WilUam Marshall's description is in substance as follows.^ 

 The valleys were separated from the hills by a stone fence called 

 the *' head dyke," or by an imaginary fine or partition answering 

 to it and running along the brae or slope. Within the head dyke 

 lay the more productive or greener surface, the black heathy 

 brows of the hills being left out as " muir." The muir was an 

 addition to the farm pecuhar to the Highlands, since the portion 

 within the head dyke comprised what was elsewhere called infield 

 and outfield. The description of these divisions runs much as 

 usual. Some patches, however, which were " too wet, too 

 woody, or too stoney to be plowed, are," Marshall notes, '' termed 

 meadow and are kept perpetually under the scythe and sickle 

 for a scanty supply of hay, being every year shorn to the quick 

 and seldom, if ever, manured." Other patches constituted per- 

 manent pasture. " The faces of the braes, the roots of the hills, 

 the woody or rough stoney wastes of the bottom; with a small 

 plot near the house, termed ' door land ' (for baiting horses upon 

 at meal times, teddering a cow, etc.) are kept as pasture for cattle 

 in summer and sheep in winter, the sheep and generally the 

 horses being kept during summer above the head dyke upon the 

 muir lands." In estimating the average amount of each kind of 

 land on a farm on the sides of Loch Tay, Marshall brings to light 

 the principal difference between the Highland farms and the more 

 level ones, whether of the north or of the south. The farms of 

 Loch Tay, he states, *' contain on a par about twenty acres of 

 infield, fifteen acres of outfield [both tilled as elsewhere], ten acres 

 of meadow, thirty-five acres of green pasture, with about ten 

 acres of woody waste — in all, about ninety acres within the head 

 dyke, and about two hundred and fifty acres of muir or hill 

 lands." The infield and outfield which were more or less avail- 

 able for tillage thus constituted only a small fraction of the total 



1 Annandale (co. Dumfries), app. iv, p. xxii. 

 '^ Central Highlands of Scotland, pp. 29 sq. 



