94 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



Sutherland, and Ross the kitchen system is not a common 

 one, the unmarried men, and in Sutherland and Ross the 

 unmarried women also, either lodging in bothies or in the 

 houses of the married farm servants. In the Border 

 counties and the Lothians most farmers engage their 

 employes by families, who live in cottages on the farm 

 on which they work, though there are some unmarried 

 men hired by the year or half-year (mainly on the small 

 farms), who are lodged and boarded in the farmhouses. 

 In other parts of Scotland the proportion of the boarded 

 men is usually larger than that of the married men ; but 

 the number of married men which a farmer can engage 

 depends, of course, on the cottage accommodation on 

 his farm, the English village system being but little known 

 in Scotland. In the arable districts in the Border counties 

 and the Lothians, a considerable majority of the farm 

 servants are ploughmen or ' hinds/ the proportion of 

 orramen being small, and in the hill districts there are a 

 number of shepherds. The system of engagement is 

 generally similar to that described as prevailing in North- 

 umberland fathers, sons, and unmarried daughters working 

 on the same farm and living together rent free in the 

 cottages let to the tenant of the farm. Where a father 

 and son are hired to work on the same farm, it is sometimes 

 called a ' double binding.' All classes of male farm ser- 

 vants in these districts are paid a regular wage during 

 the term of engagement, and the women, ' women workers ' 

 or ' workers/ as they are generally called, are paid by the 

 day. The women are not paid, as the men are, if absent 

 on account of illness. They can stay away on such days 

 as they choose, and the farmer is not bound to employ 

 them in bad weather ; but in practice they are regularly em- 

 ployed, except, perhaps, in heavy snowstorms, and as a 

 rule do not lose more than about a day's pay in the year. 

 Farmers usually give preference to a man who can supply 

 women workers. A custom called the ' bondage system/ 

 which formerly existed in the Border counties and the 

 Lothians, under which men provided strangers as women 

 workers, if they had no daughters of their own, has dis- 

 appeared. A woman who takes a house direct from a 

 farmer is called a ' cottar.' Such a woman is usually 

 a widow, and she may, perhaps, have a daughter, or a 

 female relation living with her and working on the same 

 farm. In all parts of Scotland women are frequently 

 employed at field work, taking part in the ordinary work 

 of the farm. The women workers are generally the 

 daughters (particularly in the Border counties and the 

 Lothians), sometimes the wives, of the men li ving in cottages 

 and working on the same farm. Near towns and collieries 

 they are, however, sometimes the daughters of artisans 

 and colliers. In Ayrshire and other dairy districts the 

 women workers usually do milking and dairy work, as 



