DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES AND OUT-DOOR LABOUR—THE TRADE IN
FLAIDING AND FINGEAMS—SPINNING AN~KNITTING—A SPINNING MISTRESS—EEGULATION
OF THE TEADE—SdHOOL EDUCATION—THE FARMER’S EVENING FIEESIDE—THE FLAILMAN.
IN the latter part of the seventeenth century the home
manufacture of plaiding, fingrams, and stockings was a very important
industry. Both spinning and weaving of wool and lint were carried on, not
in large factories, but as domestic employments, pursued all over the
country in their own houses by those who had no other occupation, as well
as by the members of the farmer’s and cottar’s families. In a letter of
date 1680, and attributed to the Countess of Erroll of that time, it is
said "the women of this country are mostly employed spinning and working
of stockings and making of plaiden webs, which the Aberdeen merchants
carry over the sea; and it is this which bringeth money to the commons;
other ways of getting it they have not." Very similar is the language of
Baillie Alexander Skene of Newtile,~ writing five years later. He
enumerates plaiding, fingrams, and stockings among "the natural products
of our land "; and maintains that with due
attention to keep the market by an honestly produced article, which
condition it appears was not fulfilled latterly, the whole wool grown in
Scotland could be wrought by "the commons of the
nation," working at "such times as their other country work permits," at
rates that defied competition by those who set up a "particular
manufacture." In proof of this latter point, he relates how—in view of the
large sums of money brought into the kingdom by the plaiding trade,
especially through the Aberdeen merchants, who got their wool chiefly from
the sonth of Scotland, and then sold it out in "smalls" to the country
people—a "substantious merchaut in Edinburgh called Mr. Barnes," conceived
the idea that having the wool at first hand he could, by employing people
expressly to manufacture for him, sell in the market of Holland at a
greater profit than the Aberdeen merchants with their roundabout mode of
manufacture. But having made "about ten sea packs of plaiding, which might
be reckoned worth twenty thousand pounds," he perceived that the Aberdeen
men were selling their plaiding in Holland "at as low a rate as his stood
himself at home "; whereupon -he "fell a
wondering" as to the reason of this. Having put the case to Alexander
Farquhar, an Aberdeen merchant of his acquaintance, the "substantious"
Edinburgh trader was informed "that the people that wrought
their plaiding had not by farr such entertainment as
his servants had, and that they drank oftener
clear spring water than ale; and therefore they had their plaiding much
cheaper than his; whereupon he quickly gave over his manufacture." Baillie
Skene adds that notwithstanding the "sober rate" at which the commons
lived they were "so set at work upon the account of their advantage in the
north parts of Scotland, that in former years the product of their lahours
hath brought into this kingdom yearly upwards of an hundreth thousand rex
dollars for mapy years together; without this the nobility and gentry in
thir parts could not get their money rents well paid." Surprisingly high
prices had been given; for our present authority speaks of a certain
George Pyper, who to prevent decay in the trade and stimulate improvement
in the style of knitting stockings, had encouraged the country people by
giving them a little money or some linen at times, so "that from five
groats the pair he caused them work at -such a
fynness that he hath given twenty shillings sterling and upward for the
pair." Mr. Pyper flourished a little after the middle of the seventeenth
century, and about 1676 had as many as four hundred people spinning and
knitting for him.
In a memorial to the Trustees for the Improvement of
Manufactures, of date 1728, the local importance of the question is urged
"as it will not be denyed, but there is a greater quantity of coarse wool,
commonly called tarred wool, manufactured in the shire of Aberdeen, and
the manufactures thereof exported yearly from the port of Aberdeen than
from all Scotland besides." There was also a considerable quantity of
linen cloth made and sold yearly; and thus "the gentlemen of the county of
Aberdeen, whose rents are for the most part paid by the produce of their
manufactures, have a very great concern that they should be improven."
Substantially the same style of domestic industry
continued throughout the eighteenth century, as is seen from the
statements of various of the Old Statistical writers. The minister of
Kincardine O’Neil says of his parish, "600- women are employed in spinning
and knitting of woollen stockings, at which they earn from 2s. to 2s. 6d.
a-week." Of the women of Strathdon we are told that "they are in general
capital spinners, and they bring a great deal of money into -the parish."
The statist for the parish of Rayne calculates that the knitting of
stockings—at which all the women and some of the boys, and old men even,
of his parish were employed—yielded about £400 sterling; and, he says, if
it were not for the results of the knitting "the rents of the crofts could
not be paid." The minister of Glenmuiek says, with some emphasis, "while I
accuse the men of indolence, I should do great injustice to the women
if I did [not] exempt them from the charge, by whose
industry and diligence their families are in a great measure supported."
Those exemplary women of Glenmuick, it appears, spun flax for the Aberdeen
manufacturers, as well as made blue homespun cloth and tartan webs of
their own wool, and which they sold at 2s. and 2s. 6d. an ell.
The statements of various writers show that
the-stocking manufacture was of much local importance all through the
eighteenth century. James Rae of White-haven, a volunteer under the Duke
of Cumberlaud in 1745, in his History of the Rebellion, says of Aberdeen
trade, "the manufacture here is chiefly stockings, all round the adjacent
country; and every morning the women bring in loads to sell about the town
to merchants, who have them scoured for exportation to London, Hamburg,
and Holland. They are generally all white from the makers, and knit most
plainly; some are ribbed, and a great many with squares, which greatly
please the Dutch. They make stockings here in common from one shilling
a-pair to one guinea and a half, and some are so fine as to sell for five
guineas the pair." And similarly, Mr. Francis Douglas, speaking of the
rather sterile seacoast district in the north part of Kincardineshire,
where one could see "numbers of poo~~huts and starved cattle," says,
"being within a few miles of Aberdeen, the females have constant
employnient in knitting stockings to the manufacturers. By their
unremitting labour in this branch they earn money to pay their rents." The
extent of the knitting industry must have been great. Douglas says,
" the manufac-ture was supposed to amount to
from a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling
annually; two-thirds of which are reckoned to be paid for spinning and
knitting; the other third goes to pay the materials, and afford a profit
to the manufacturers." The wool was still, it may be said, imported from
the south; and in 1778 it was stated on credible authority,
"that in the currency of a year wool shipped at
the port of London for Aberdeen was insured to the value of £40,000." Few
women, according to Douglas, could earn "above eighteenpence a-week by
spinning and knitting stockings;" but, as we have seen, some of them did
earn considerably more. He adds, that at a former time worsted stockings
had been worked in the country upon very fine brass wires, which sold as
high as three or four pounds sterling a-pair. A pair of these, however,
was almost constant work for a woman for six months; and thus valuable
chiefly "as a mark of great patience and ingenuity in the worker." These,
one would be disposed to believe, must have been the stcckings for which
George Pyper gave his highest premium.
In domestic spinning the rock and spindle were the only
available instruments during the first quarter of the century. With these
a woman could produce only about three and a-half hears (each heer
consisting of 240 threads or rounds of the reel) a-day. When the rock and
spindle came to be superseded by the spinning-wheel, a *oman could spin
twelve heers a-day.
The spinning of the thread was done in the farmers’
families, and the yarn was taken to the weaver to be wrought into webs. To
be able to spin well was, of course, an important accomplishment; and thus
in 1741, Elizabeth Thom, "spinning mistress" in Aberdeen, desires to make
known her readiness to teach women to spin "with both hands." On her
application, the County Clerk was authorized to sign her advertisement to
that effect. Eight years thereafter, in 1749, a "further encouragement"
was given to this lady, by the county gentlemen agreeing to draw the
attention of the Magistrates to the spinning school, and recommending that
people both in town and country should take the benefit of it. Tn 1751 a
competition for prizes in the matter of brown linen -cloth and linen yarn
took place, under the auspices of Isobel Swan, a spinning mistress in
Putachieside, Aberdeen.
Long before these laudable efforts had been put forth
the very prosperity of the trade, apparently, through the strong export
demand, had led to systematic attempts being made to deteriorate the
manufacture. So early as the tenth year of Queen Anne, an Act was passed
to prevent "diverse abuses and deceits" in making linen cloth, and for
regulating the length, breadth, and equal sorting of the yarn. A
subsequent statute of George II., applied directly to "serges, plaidings,
and fingrams," and " knit stockings." What we gather from various
"advertisements" issued by the Justices of Peace and. Deans of Guild of
Aberdeen, is, that many of the spinners and weavers contravened the
statfttes "by making serges and fingrams of unequal wool and yarn; and by
working the same unequally, having three or four ems of the firsL end of
each piece considerable better than the rest of the piece :" also that
"they continued to draw and overstretch the same after they are wrought,
whereby the cloth is much prejudged, and by shrinking after it is bought,
the buyers become losers ;" and they made them
of "unequal and irregular lengths," and too narrow in the breadth. Their
perverse ingenuity had even got the length of thickening the cloth with
batter, "whereby the faults and thinness of the work cannot be so well
perceived." The practice with stockings had evidently been none better:
and so the statute of George II., which provides under penalties that all
serges and fingrams should be "of equal work and fineness from one end of
the piece to the other," the narrow fingrams to be twenty-eight inches in
width, and the broad thirtyeight inches; also provided that "all stockings
that shall be made in Scotland shall be wrought and made of three threads,
and of one sort of wool and worsted, and of equal work and fineness
throughout, free of left ioops, hanging hairs, and of burnt, cutted, or
mended. holes, and of such shapes and sizes respectively as the patterns,
which shall be marked by the several Deans of Guild of the chief burghs of
the respective counties ;" all according to
dimensions specified in detail in the Act. Authorised stampers, whose
function it was to put the official stamp on all marketable webs and
bundles of stockings, were appointed for each district; but though these
gentlemen had to take the oath de fideli, and "find bail" on their
admission to office, they seem not to have been universally free from the
suspicion of allowing doubtful goods to pass occasionally; and then
marking the stamp so faintly that it did not show legibly, as it ought,
the initial letters of the parish from whence they came. And so detection
of the offenders, who were liable to a pecuniary mulct, was rendered very
difficult or altogether impossible. It was even charged against them that
they did not do the measuring in the manner laid down to them, and, in
some cases, marked a greater number of yards on a web than it contained.
Legislation, imperial and local, failed to check the prevailing evil
practices effectually, till at length the Aberdeenshire manufacture of
fingrams got so "insufferably bad" that the
Dutch market was irrecoverably lost, the Hollanders declining to buy them
at any price.
The growth of flax to furnish lint for manufacture into
family linen at least, was a branch of the agriculture of the time, but
not a permanent one. Flax-growing was not much known before the middle of
the century, and by the end of it it was again on the decline. About 1780
to 1790 as much as 400 to 500 acres were annually occupied with this
plant—generally sown in small patches—in the county of Aberdeen. [*The
Old Statistical writer for the parish of Cairney naively says—"The
manufacture of linen has introduced a certain cleanliness all over the
country. It has almost banished the itch."] Twenty years
thereafter, by the introduction of the cotton manufacture, the breadth in
flax had diminished to not above 100 acres; but in Angus and Mearns the
plant was grown more extensively; the area in flax in the Mearns, so late
as 1807, being 236 acres. The spinning of flax afforded much employment to
women in the Buchan and Strathbogie districts of Aberdeen-shire about
1780; and at that date a good spinner could earn sixpence, and in some
cases sevenpence a-day at her wheel, which seems to have been the maximum
wage ever attained at this particular industry. Between spinning and
knitting worsted, and spinning flax, the time of the Aberdeenshire women
may be supposed to have been pretty fully occupied. It was so as matter of
fact—occupied, one may venture to think, in a very suitable fashion. And
so we have a tourist at the opening of the present century recording it as
what appeared surprising to him that "he did not perceive a single female
employed in field labour" in Aberdeenshire; such labour being "executed by
men," contrary to the practice of the southern counties, "where work of
that kind was performed by girls and boys," while the men worked the
horses in the summer months. Other writers tell of the barbarous way in
which the women in certain regions were made to do the roughest out-door
labour as occasion required. Especially was this the case in certain
Highland and half-Highland parts, where the inert lord of the creation
would lie on his hip and complacently look on while his wife did the most
menial and fatiguing labour on the croft, even to the extent, as has been
already said, of carrying the contents of the scanty dunghill a-field on
her back!
But in the north-eastern section of Scotland there was
little to complain of either as to fitness in the distribution of labour
as between the sexes, or the amount that each was expected to accomplish.
In the years of childhood a certain measure of schooling was deemed
needful. With girls it hardly went beyond giving them the capability of
reading in a moderate degree; not always so far. Writing was regarded more
in the
light of an elegant accomplishment, hardly as a thing
practically useful for the female sex, and some who looked at the matter
in the light of principle excused themselves from bestowing it on their
daughters under the plea that "mony ane’s deen ill wi’ vreet." As it
concerned the male sex, the school population, in the shape of sturdy
well-grown boys, were simply expected to tramp up leisurely day by day
during the winter months, each with his peat under his arm, to keep the
school fire going, and without anything further in the way of prepared
tasks than a question in the Shorter Catechism. The ordinary curriculum
was not complicated with other branches, as English Grammar and Geography;
as, indeed, the attainments of the dominie himself did not always admit of
his handling these in any formal or exact manner. Up to at least the end
of last century, the only reading books in use in the parish schools were
the Bible and Shorter Catechism. The pupils read in succession the
Catechism, and the Proverbs ; then the rest of the Bible, and it was
reckoned ~a great feat to read fluently those parts which were full of
proper names that were difficult to pronounce. The schoolmaster rarely if
ever thought of questioning his pupils on the subject matter of their
lessons, or of explaining to them the meaning of what they read. Under
this moderate intellectual discipline, a youth got leisure to grow to his
full stature, or at any rate to reach the age of eighteen or nineteen
before any heavier task was imposed upon him than that of herding the
cattle of his father, or, if a cottar’s son, those of some neighbouring
farmer. Of course the total absence of enclosures made the occupation of
cattle herd an essential and generally diffused one. We find the statement
made in 1750, that the herds in the Synod of Aberdeen at that date were at
least "five thousand in number."
Then when young men had got past the school and
herd-boy period, the labour imposed was not very contihuous or systematic.
In summer, with no green crops, such as turnips, to care for, and nothing
in the shape of improvement to carry out, once the "fauld dyke" had been
erected, which was done by the joint labour of the tenants of the
plough-gate or hamlet, there was little to do except to see to the drying
and carrying home of the peats and turves for winter fuel; and that in
many cases occupied a large portion of the farmer’s time during summer.
When shearing came, of course all were busy enough, and really hard work
it was. The period of harvest was mnch more protracted then than now, and
it was no unusual thing for the shearing to extend over six weeks or so.
As was right and proper, they made harvest a time of cheerfulness and
mirth ; and we read of a farmer in the Mearns who, to make his "hyeucks"
go on lightly and pleasantly, "kept a piper to play to them all the time
of harvest, and gave him his harvest fee." It was no doubt done on the
same principle that the "gaudman" was expected to whistle a voluntary, or
psalm tune, to the oxen he drove in the plough, as well as to give them
sharper admonition as required with his "gaud"—leading us to the origin of
a pithy variation of the proverb, Much cry for little wool—" Muckle
whistlin for little red lan’."
A graphic and realistic sketch of the scene about the
farmer’s fireside of a cvinter evening, when the young women of the
neighbouring farm houses had met, as the custom was to meet in the several
houses in turn, to pursue their knitting in friendly rivalry, while the
goodwife ordered the house or "span a thread," and the men, in addition to
caring for their cattle, took up such odd jobs of a light sort as could be
fitly done for personal use or the benefit of the establishment, is given
by a local rhymer who flourished early in the present century. He speaks
presumably of his own time, but even then "the old order," had not been
materially changed. [Fruits of Time Parings,
by W. Beattie, Aberdeen, 1813; republished 1873.] We have first the
farmer plunging round about byres and barn against the "endrift styth" in
the growing gloamin darkness.
For fear the poor dumb brutes sud smore,
He staps wi’ strae ilk navus bore,
An’ ilka crevice darns.
Syne aifter he has deen his best,
The sheep sought hame, an’ a’ at rest,
He bouns him to the house,
An’ sits him doon upo’ the bink,
An’ plaits a theet, or mends a mink,
To sair an aifter use. -
And then the scene when the "shankers" are gathered by the fireside
:—
The littleanes play at seek an’ hide
Ahint the kists an’ tables;
The farmer sits anent the licht,
An’ reads a piece o’ Wallace Wicht,
Or maybe AEsop’s Fables.
An’ little Pate sits i’ the neuk,
An’ but-a-hoose dare hardly luik,
But haud an’ snuff the fir;
An’ fan the farmer tines the line,
He says, "Yer light casts little shine—
Haud in the candle, sir !"
The gaudman sits an’ toasts his nose,
Or awkwardly heel-caps his hose,
Or maks yoke-sticks o’ rodden;
Auld Luckydaddy win’s at brutches,
An’ granny tells them tales o’ witches,
Until the kail be sodden.
And so on till the "brose is suppit," and they take to bed trusting to
be roused betimes next morning for flail and plough by the waukrife
goodman.
In autumn the "twal-owsen" plough -was set agoing, yhen
the services of the ploughman and gaudman came into active request; and
about farms of considerable extent there was in addition the barnman. In
winter it was his business every day and all day long to ply "the
thresher’s weary ifingin’ tree." Here we have an outline sketch of a
professional flailman or barnman.—A gaunt, sinewy fellow, six feet in
height, minus coat, waist-coat, and neckerchief, with his shirt collar
loose; his towsy head bare, and barefooted too, as he shuffled to and fro
in the floor and pelted away at the loosened sheaves he had strewn over it
from end to end. He was paid by the boll; and when in the humour for a
regular set-to, would thresh out the almost incredible quantity of six
boils in a day. We need not suppose that he was over nice in threshing
clean. Quantity was his aim, and too great nicety did not tend to promote
that object; while he might justly hold, as indeed he avowed his belief,
that the cattle would be "nane the waur o’ a wisp wi’ a Lyon o’ the
berries. on’t." In the case of smaller farms the threshing was done of. a
winter morning by the farmer and his "man" getting up early for a
" spell" at it together. Before the degenerate
era of clocks and watches, which were rare in country houses down to quite
the end of the eighteenth century, the proper time to get up to thresh was
a matter of guess work; and we have heard of a decent Garioch quaker who
had erred on the safe side by leaving his bed about midnight and rousing
his servant man. They threshed on and on, and were getting tired, and even
hungry. The man had gone and looked over the barn door repeatedly for
tokens of morning light; and at last he turned round with the pettish
exclamation, "I’ve seen as inuckle as it never come daylicht
;" whereon the matter-of-fact quaker quietly
asked, "Whanr wast thou, friend, when thou saw that ?"
