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In ”Blackwood’s Magazine” for
October, 1892, there was an article by Mr James Colville, D.Sc., on “Lowland
Scotland in the Last Century,” in which references were made to the
conditions of agriculture and the social and domestic arrangements that
prevailed in Aberdeenshire, as well as elsewhere. The following extracts
will be found interesting: —
INTRODUCTION OF TURNIPS.
The introduction of turnips into Scotland was not a little romantic. James
Lawson, a farmer near Roxburgh, went to Leicester, and hired himself to
Bakewell, the famous sheep-breed, as a ploughman, he left in six months,
against the wish of Bakewell—going north, however, with a scheme for
drill-husbandry in his head. In the following year he had seventy acres of
turnips sown. This was about the year 1760. The turnip had been known before
this, and sown in gardens, like cabbage, but broadcast. The minister of
Kinellar, in Aberdeenshire, unwilling to weed a bed of turnips growing in
this fashion in his garden, and thinking it would not succeed, tore up the
greater part with the hoe. The crop turned out better than had ever been
seen before, and in a few years hoeing in drills became general.
FARMERS’ HOUSES.
The houses of Aberdeenshire farmers were commonly of sod, and consisted of a
fire-house, where the family and servants sat and ate, and a pantry, with
sometimes an intermediate space for beds and chests. This was a ha’-house.
The cottage of a labourer was on an inferior scale. A crazy woman, listening
to a preacher in Portsoy on the text, “In my Father’s house are many
mansions," astonished everybody by exclaiming, “My oortie, your feether’s
house— auld Baukie’s! I kent him weel—a but and a ben. and that but ill redd
up.” A minister, rebuking a labouring man for sleeping in church, was told,
“It’s because I canna sleep at hame for the rattons and the sklaters.”
THE DIETARY.
All over, it may be said that at the close of the century the rural
(population rarely had flesh in the pot. As fresh meat, visitors were
treated to fowls so lean that southern strangers thought of carving them by
using the breastbone of the one to cut up the other. Pork was looked upon
all over with the greatest aversion. In these days travellers noticed the
absence of the cottar’s pig. but admit that there wan little for it to live
on in the meagre establishments of the time. The general culture of the
potato did more than anything else for the cottar’s pig. At Aberdeen, and,
again, in Galloway and Dumfries, there was a great trade in pork for the
navy; but the staple grazing-stock was the black cattle, which prevailed
everywhere, almost to tlie total exclusion of sheep.
KAIL THE STAPLE DISH.
The staple dinner-dish was kail. Round every cottage was the kailyard,
fenced by a low turf-wall and sheltered by an elder-hedge. Little else but
kail or open cabbage was grown in it, latterly such additions were made as
gooseberry bushes, thyme, southernwood, balm, mint, and camomile. Water-kail
or barefoot broth—that is, without meat—was a Teutonic dish, for the
Highlanders of old abominated the plant as fit only for goats. In default of
kitchen or meat were used butter, cheese, herring, or raw onions from
Flanders. This dish was sometimes made of greens and grolls— oats stripped
of the husks in the mill—for pot-barley was difficult to procure. In every
cottage there used to be the “knockin’-stane" a deep cuplike block, in which
the barley was allowed to lie in water, and then beaten with a small mallet
till it was unhusked. Various were the dishes made with kail, for it was the
mainstay both of dinner and supper. Burns praises its virtues in his
“Epistle to M'Adam" —
“And when those legs to guid, warm kail
Wi’ welcome canna, bear me;
A lee dyke-side, a sybow [onionj-tail,
And barley-scone shall cheer me.”
The staple breakfast dish was porridge and milk, and for supper sowons, as
in Burns’s Hallowe’en supper—
“Till butter’d sowens, wi’ fragrant hint,
Set a’ their gabs a-steerin’.”
The simple diet of those days may be judged from the dietary of the boys of
Gordon’s Hospital, Aberdeen. Bread and milk, oat and barley meal, and
vegetables, formed the chief part of every day’s fare. Animal food was
seldom seen.
DRESS.
The dress of last century survived to within living memory. Dr Gregor, the
venerable minister of Pitsligo, has thus described to me his mother’s
preparations for church—“On her head she plated a skull-cap to keen the hair
up, and over that a fine linen cap, lying quite flat, followed by a broad
ribbon going round the head and fastened behind. Over all came a band of
thin cambric, drawn into a ruching on the top, and having a broad Hat
border, showing the hair on the edge. Her outer dress was a red cloak with a
hood, and made of fine wool. Her ordinary errand-going cloak was a duffle or
bluish-grey. My father at kirk and fair wore a long coat, with brass
buttons, of bluish cloth, and, for a working dress, home-made clothes, with
a smaller coat of home-spun wool. On all occasions he wore knee-breeches.” |
