CHAP. I. SCOTLAND AT THE MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY, 97 



winter and sixpence in summer. 1 The food of the 

 working class was almost wholly vegetable, and even 

 that was insufficient in quantity. The little butcher's 

 meat consumed by the better class was salted beef and 

 mutton, which was stored up at Ladner Time, betwixt 

 Michaelmas and Martinmas, for the year's consumption. 

 Mr. Buchan Hepburn says the sheriff of the county of 

 East Lothian informed him that he remembered when 

 not a single bullock was slaughtered in the butcher- 

 market at Haddington for a whole year, except at the 

 above period ; and when Sir David Kinloch, of Gril- 

 rnerton, sold ten wedders to an Edinburgh butcher, he 

 stipulated for three several terms to take them away, to 

 prevent the Edinburgh market from being overstocked 

 with fresh butcher's meat ! 2 



The rest of Scotland was in no better state : in some 

 parts it was even worse. The now rich and fertile 

 county of Ayr, which glories in the name of " the garden 

 of Scotland," was for the most part a wild and dreary 

 common, with here and there a poor, bare, homely hut, 

 where the farmer and his family were lodged. 3 There 

 were no enclosures of land, except one or two about a 

 gentleman's seat, and black cattle roamed at large over 

 the face of the country. 4 More deplorable still was the 



1 G. Buchan Hepburn's * General 

 View of the Agriculture and Economy 

 of East Lothian.' Edinburgh, 1794. 

 P. 95. 



2 Ibid., p. 55. 



3 The Rev. Mr. Eobertson, in the 

 ' Statistical Account of Scotland.' 



4 When it was attempted, in 1723, 

 to form enclosures in the adjoining 

 county of Kirkcudbright, for the pur- 

 pose of preventing the black cattle 

 from straying, the poor people, who 

 had squatted or were small tenants 

 on the land, were turned out, and 

 mobs assembled at different points 

 and levelled the enclosures. "It is 

 not pleasant," says a Kirkcudbright 

 chronicler, " to represent the wretched 



VOL. II. 



state of individuals as times then 

 went in Scotland. The tenants in 

 general lived veiy meanly, on kail, 

 groats, milk, graddon ground in 

 querns turned by the hand, the grain 

 being dried in a pot, together with a 

 crock ewe now and then about Mar- 

 tinmas. They were clothed very 

 plainly, and their habitations were 

 most uncomfortable. Their general 

 wear was of cloth, made of waulked 

 plaiding, black and white wool mixed, 

 very coarse, and the cloth rarely dyed. 

 Their hose (when they wore them) 

 were made of white plaiding cloth, 

 sewed together ; with single-soled 

 shoes, and a black or blue bonnet 

 none having hats but the lairds, who 



H 



