1 62 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



area of the farm, instead of all of it, as elsewhere. Apart from 

 the extensive but not very valuable stretches of permanent muir, 

 pasture, and meadow, a Highland farm was Uke any other in 

 Scotland. 



Up to this point in the description Scottish agriculture shows 

 slight resemblance to the two- and three-field system of the Eng- 

 lish midlands. The arable fields were, to be sure, open, and the 

 best of them, the infield, was subject to a three-course rotation; 

 but the three courses involved continuous cropping and knew 

 nothing of the fallow year. With the outfield, the larger part of 

 a Scottish farm, there was nothing in a midland township to 

 correspond, and its alternation of five years of tillage with five 

 years of recovery was far removed from midland methods. We 

 come now, however, to a characteristic of Scottish agriculture 

 which seems to ally it with the common fields of England. This 

 feature is runrig, or riindale, the subdivision of a holding into 

 strips or ridges intermixed with those of other holdings. 



The existence of ridges has already come to light in Anderson's 

 account, where he refers to the unproductiveness of the northern 

 halves of the ridges of infield during the year in barley. Ridges 

 may, of course, comport with almost any field system in which 

 there is no cross-ploughing. They are a device for drainage, and 

 were commended by the reporters when they were straight, not 

 too high, and so arranged as to drain the furrows properly. In 

 Scotland, as it happened, they had got out of hand, and, accord- 

 ing to the reporter for East Lothian, the following shape of the 

 ridge was universal: " Anciently almost every ridge in this coun- 

 try was from i8 to 22 feet broad and sometimes more; they had 

 curves at each end, somewhat in the form of the letter S; and 

 these ridges were always twice, and upon strong lands generally 

 three times, gathered from the level of the ground." ^ This re- 

 port is confirmed and explained by another from Midlothian: 

 " It was formerly the universal practice to form the land into 

 high and broad ridges, commonly from 36 to 48 feet wide and 

 elevated at least three feet higher in the middle than in the fur- 

 rows; but this mode, which perhaps was consistent enough with 



1 East Lothian, p. 51. 



