1 66 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



common danger, and to call attention to the general safety, that 

 so much of the corn lands lay in run-rigg or in run-dale property; 

 and that almost every farm was run-dale in the corn-lands, and 

 common in the pastures among four, six, eight or sometimes more 

 tenants." ^ Lastly, the reporter from Dumbarton notes, " In 

 some places the old system ... is yet retained, [and] a mixed 

 farm of little more than a hundred acres is subdivided, stuck- 

 runways, among five or six tenants." - 



Sometimes, however, the tenants of a farm might come to 

 number distinctly more than six or eight. Not, to be sure, the 

 normal contributors to the plough, as the rhetorical phrase of Sir 

 John Sinclair might suggest; ^ but the increase was due rather to 

 the addition of crofters, or cottagers, so well described by Mar- 

 shall in his account of the agriculture of the Highlands. '* This 

 extraordinary class of cultivators appear to have been quartered 

 upon the tenantry after the farms were split down into their 

 smallest size; the crofters being a species of sub-tenants on the 

 farms to which they are respectively attached. Besides one or 

 two ' cows holdings ' and the pasturage of three or four sheep, 

 they have a few acres of infield land (but no outfield or muir), 

 which the tenant is obKged to cultivate; and they in return per- 

 form to him certain services, as the work of harvest and the cast- 

 ing of peats, the tenant fetching home the crofter's share. And 

 still below these rank the Cotters, answering nearly to the cot- 

 tagers of the southern provinces; except that, in the Highlands, 

 they are attached, like the crofters, to the tenants or joint-tenants, 

 on whose farm they reside; receiving assistance and returning for 

 it services." ^ Robertson tells of similar holdings of cottagers in 

 southern Perthshire : '' Without taking notice of small possessions, 

 which are called pendicles, because they are small portions of 

 the land allotted by the farmer to cottagers, labourers and 

 servants, which in some places is still the practice; the extent 

 of what may be called farms, where one or more ploughs are 

 yoked, is from 30 to 400 acres." ^ Elsewhere he says, " Many 



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



"^ Dumbarton, p. 15. * Central Highlands, p. 32. 



' See above, p. 164. ^ Sotithern Perth, p. 57. 



