THE CELTIC SYSTEM 1 69 



is of importance. Hamlets and small fields were peculiar to 

 Scotland, villages and large fields to the English midlands. 



A single feature remains to be added to the picture of a 

 Scottish hamlet-farm, one which appears in certain changes 

 made by James Robertson in the second edition of his report on 

 Perthshire. After repeating that fifty years ago all farms were 

 occupied in runrig, and after pointing to the inconvenience of the 

 intermixed ridges, he continues: "And to add to the evil, one 

 farmer possessed this year what his neighbor did possess the 

 former. Not only farms but in some instances estates were 

 divided in this manner, especially where a property fell into the 

 hands of co-heirs. The first deviation from run-rig was by dividing 

 the farm into Kavels or Kenches, by which every field of the same 

 quality was split down into as many lots as there were tenants in 

 the farm . . . [and] the possessors cast lots (or Kavels in the 

 Scottish dialect) for their particular share. (Kench signifies a 

 larger portion of land than a ridge.) This was a real improve- 

 ment so far as it went; every farmer had his own lot in each 

 field, . . . reaping the benefit of his industry, which by the 

 run-rig husbandry he could not enjoy, owing to the exchange of 

 ridges every year. Kavels still exist in the Stormont, and in 

 some other parts of the county in a certain degree, and almost 

 universally in village lands. In the latter they are unavoidable; 

 in the former they are regularly exploded, as the old leases fall." ^ 

 In his description of Inverness-shire Robertson amplifies this 

 statement about the annual exchanging of ridges. " In some 

 parts of the Highlands," he writes, " I have seen the land first- 

 ploughed without leaving any boundaries except the furrow be- 

 twixt the ridges; then the field was divided by putting small 

 branches of trees into the ground to mark off every man's portion 

 before the field was sown. No man knew his own land till the 

 seed was to be cast into the ground and it became impossible 

 for him to have the same portion of land any two successive 

 years." ^ 



We are at length in a position to summarize the principal 

 characteristics of the Scottish agricultural system as it appeared 



1 Perth (1799), p. 61. 2 Inverness, p. 335. 



