122 HALLDYKES AND THE HERRIES FAMILY. 
tradition may have done injustice to William Herries, the 
seller of the place in 1751. In these days no great extrava- 
gance would be required to come to grief on a rent-roll of 
£120, burdened with charges for the support of younger 
brothers. Mr H. G. Graham, however, in his Social Life in 
Scotland, says that in the first half of the 18th century a laird 
was considered well off with a rent-roll of £100 or even £80 
a year. 
The accounts of Robert Herries show that he gave £2700 
for the property in 1751. In the next fifty years this price 
was more than trebled, and the rental more than doubled. A 
memorandum by the Robert Herries who sold the place in the 
early rgth century gives the prices he obtained and the rent- 
roll at that time as follows :— 
Farms. Acreage. Rent. Purchasers. Prices. 
Sloda Hill .. 357 2 32 £57 Nov., 1801, William Stewart .... £1550 
' Byresteads.. 93 1 3 40 July, 1802, David Johnstone .. 1100 
Rosebank .. 128 3 1 52 10s March, 1802, Thomas Henderson 2200 
Mains bo. ay? PA eh 80 : 5 
Catchhall .. 57 2 14 35 April, 1803, Thomas Beattie .. 4300 
785 acres. £264 10s £9150 
_ The number of farms was less than in 1751, so possibly 
some had been thrown together. Advertisements of sale show 
that the 785 acres were Scots acres, equivalent to about 1000 
English acres. The tenants in 1801, in addition to rent, paid. 
‘“‘ Land Tax, Bridge, Rogue [a police rate] and Road Money, 
and School Salary.’’ Both in 1751 and 1801 the landlord had 
to pay out of his rent the feu duty of £43 6s 8d to the Superior 
of the lands and £7 towards the minister’s stipend. Of this. 
last sum £6 rgs 5d was paid in cash and the rest in kind, 
‘4 bolls, 1 firlot, 3 pecks, and 34 lippies Half Meal.”’ 
7 Half Bear 
Old houses are apt to gather legends about them. One 
such concerning Halldykes, so far as the present writer is 
aware, appears for the first time in print as a ‘‘ Border 
Rhyme ”’ in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, for July, 1845. The 
story is that at a convivial meeting of local gentry at Lockerbie 
Herbert Herries of Halldykes grossly insulted and struck his 
brother Hugh, after a quarrel as to which was the favoured 
of a certain lady. Herbert on his way home to Halldykes. 
