THE CELTIC SYSTEM 1 63 



the heavy, cumberous six-horse ploughs then employed, is now 

 disused since the introduction of the two-horse plough, which 

 has of late been general in this county." ^ 



The long ridges were called riggs or dales, the short ones hutts. 

 The riggs contained from one-fourth to one-half of an acre each, 

 the butts less. As in the midland system, headlands were to be 

 found, and the acres were gathered into " shots." All these fea- 

 tures were apparent in 1599, as the following enumeration of six 

 acres, part of a husbandland at Eymouth, Berwickshire, shows: — 

 *' One acre containing three rigs lying in that shot called the 

 Schuilbraidis, sometimes occupied by Patrick Huldie, malt- 

 man 

 other three acres, sometime occupied by John Johnstone, mer- 

 chant, of which one is in Over Bairfute, called the Heidland 

 acre, half an acre containing three butts adjacent in the 

 Over Welsteil, half an acre containing two rigs and a rig- 

 end in the Blackcroft, and the other acre containing two 

 daills in the Hilawbank 

 another acre containing two daills and a rig lying on the west 

 side of the said Hilawbank, sometime occupied by Robert 

 Gotthra . . . 

 and the other acre, containing three rigs of land, lying in Nather 



Bairfute." ^ 

 The transition from ridges to runrig is made for us in Sir John 

 Sinclair's disdainful account of Caithness. " In order to prevent 

 any of the soil being carried to the adjoining ridge," he writes, 

 " each individual makes his own ridge as high as possible, and 

 renders the furrow quite bare, so that it produces no crop, while 

 the accumulated soil in the middle of the ridge is never stirred 

 deeper than the plough." Here at length is intermixed owner- 

 ship or occupation; and Sir John leaves the matter in no doubt. 

 " The greater part of the arable land in this County," he con- 

 tinues, " is occupied by small farmers, who possess it in run-rig 

 or in rig and rennal, as it is here termed, similar to the common 

 fields of England, a system peculiarly hostile to improvement. 



1 Midlothian, p. 55. 



2 Hist. MSS. Commission, MSS. of Col. D. M. Home (1902), p. 214. 



