90 THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 



in Ayrshire, Black Loch in Wigtownshire, and the Loch of 

 Forfar ; in the Roman station at Newstead ; and in the 

 brochs of Orkney and Caithness these show that it was 

 a common article of food even to about the ninth century of 

 our era. There are many references in tradition and in 

 place-names to the presence of the wild boar in Scotland: 

 "Swinton" and the neighbouring "Swinwood" in Berwick- 

 shire, clearly hint at a time when the district was overrun by 

 its herds. The town of St Andrews stands upon the "Cape 

 of Boars " Muckross ; the village of Boarhills lies a few 

 miles along the coast to the south-east, and in the Boar's 

 Chase in the neighbourhood, a district eight miles wide by 

 about four in breadth, the Kings of Scotland made sport of 

 the ancestors of the domestic pig. History tells us too, how, 

 in the twelfth century, King Alexander I " dotat [presented] 

 the Bairrink, because ane bair [Scots for boar~\ that did gret 

 injurie to the pepyle was slain in the said field," or as Wyn- 

 toun puts the story of Bellenden : 



That land thai oysyd all 

 The Barys rayk all tyme to call, 

 Wes gyvyn on that condytyowne 

 To found there a relygyowne. 



Not many years passed before the persecution of the 

 boar by royal and less noble hunters led to its gradual dis- 

 appearance. The accounts of the Sheriff of Forfar for the 

 year 1263 bear witness to a charge made in that year, for 

 4^ chalders of corn for the support of wild boars, porci sil- 

 vestres" which are grouped with the King's horses and dogs 

 an indication that life was less easy than formerly for the 

 wild boars in the forests of Strathmore. 



From this fine creature of the primeval forest, 



That cruell boare, whose tusks turned up whole fields of graine 

 And wrooting, raised hills upon the levell plaine, 



man in his wisdom has bred the common swine. When the 

 transformation was wrought in Scotland I have been unable 

 to determine, for there is little to distinguish the odd bones 

 of the early domestic pig from those of its wild ancestor, but 

 the process must have been a gradual one. I believe, how- 

 ever, that this very indistinctness of the early remains, and 

 the ease with which the wild boar can be domesticated for 

 if wild pigs be taken young from their mothers they become 



