THE CELTIC SYSTEM 1 67 



instances might be pointed out where all the tenants of several 

 ploughs and a number of cottagers are huddled together in one 

 hamlet." ^ 



The phrases " tenants of several ploughs " and " where one or 

 more ploughs are yoked " introduce a new complication. Thus 

 far we have been told of the farm of one plough, whose tenants, 

 besides crofters, were usually three or four, but might be six or 

 eight. Their settlement, which was clearly the typical Scottish 

 farm, was correspondingly small. If, however, the ploughs of a 

 settlement sometimes increased, so too must the population have 

 increased, the tenants to a plough remaining constant. For this 

 larger aggregate of lands and tenants a special term was some- 

 times reserved. It was called, par excellence, a township. Al- 

 though Marshall speaks without differentiation of " the nominal 

 farms or petty townships," ^ Robertson makes the distinction. 

 In outKning the obstacles to improvement he begins with " town- 

 ships," and under this rubric proceeds: " A number of plough- 

 gates [' farms ' in the first edition] in one village or several ten- 

 ants about one plough, having their land mixed with one another 

 is a great bar to the improvement of any country. [Although 

 they have disappeared where cultivation has made progress] in 

 some districts they still remain and the blame is to be attributed 

 to the landlord. Wherever a stranger sees four or six or eight 

 ploughs of land, possessed perhaps by double that number of 

 tenants and perhaps a cottage or two annexed to each plough, all 

 huddled together in one village, he instantly judges that the pro- 

 prietor is destitute of understanding. . . . However necessary 

 these hamlets were for the mutual aid of the inhabitants in rude 

 ages and unsettled times ... in the happy days in which we Hve 

 such clusters of houses are no longer necessary." ^ Immediately 

 after this the author notes as the second obstacle to improvement 

 the existence of runrig. '* This," he says, '' is a species of the 

 former evil upon a smaller scale,'" and he continues with the 

 description, already quoted, of the two or three or four men who 

 yoke their horses in one plough team.^ 



' Southern Perth, p. 117. ^ Perth (1799), p. 392. 



2 Central Highlands, p. 32. ■• See above, p. 165. 



