After three or four years, this fold would be ploughed up by exceedingly rude instruments. Barley or certain kinds of wheat would be grown year after year until the crop was not worth gathering. When that happened, another fold would be ploughed up. Probably the whole of Pennell Brae went through this rude sort of agricultural treatment at one time or another. At the same time goats, cattle, and the demand for firewood, obtained in the most reckless and wasteful manner, would have very seriously interfered with the forest.
Although no doubt great changes for the better were introduced, the spearmen of Wallace of Elderslie close by had their "infield" land, which was practically the sheepfold as above described, and their "outfield" or grazing commons. Even down to 1745 the above system was practised (see below).
But when men's minds were stirred up and invigorated by the great Revolution of 1788-1820, all sorts of new agricultural discoveries were made. Yet the cornfield on Pennell Brae was probably not drained or enclosed by stone walls and hedges until 1830 to 1840! About 1870, it was more profitable to its owner than it has ever been since, though even now it forms part of our British farmlands which yield, on the whole, a larger amount of oats per acre than those of any other country in the world (except possibly Denmark).
Let us however look a little closer into the long, long period during which the "fire and stone-axe methods" of farming prevailed. Before the Romans landed there seem to have been no towns.[69] There was but little cultivation, for the Britons wore skins and lived chiefly on milk and flesh.
In the time of King Alfred, the increase of population made it necessary to take more trouble about farming, so we find a description of what the good farmer ought to do. We might call this the very first Government leaflet, and it has led to the Agricultural Leaflets published by the Board of Agriculture for Great Britain and Ireland.
"Sethe wille wyrcan wastbaere lond ateo hin of tham acre aefest sona fearn and thornas and figrsas swasame weods."
He was to clear off fern, bracken, thorns, sloe, hawthorn, bramble, whin, and weeds. The names of the months give some idea of Anglo-Saxon methods of farming. May was Thrimylce, because the cows might then be milked thrice a day. August was Weodmonath (weed-month), November Blotmonath, or blood-month, because the cattle were then killed to supply salt beef for winter time.[70]
Very much later in history, after our English friends had laid waste and depopulated Scotland, so that woods sprang up again everywhere, and again long after that time when the gradual increase of population had again utterly destroyed those woods, a certain Dr. Johnson travelled from Carlisle to Edinburgh. This gentleman declared that he saw no tree between those places. This statement must not be taken too literally, for he had written a dictionary and considered himself not merely the Times but an Encyclopædia Britannica as well.[71]
The Earl of Dundonald (in 1795) thus describes the agriculture of 1745 (Prince Charlie's days): "The outfield land never receives any manure. After taking from it two or three crops of grain it is left in the state it was in at reaping the last crop, without sowing thereon grass-seeds for the protection of any sort of herbage. During the first two or three years a sufficiency of grass to maintain a couple of rabbits per acre is scarcely produced. In the course of some years it acquires a sward, and after having been depastured for some years more, it is again submitted to the same barbarous system of husbandry" (that is used as a fold and then ploughed up). In the same year (1745) in Meigle parish, the land was never allowed to lie fallow: neither pease, grass, turnips, nor potatoes were raised. No cattle were fattened. A little grain (oats or barley) was exported. In 1754 or thereabouts, there was only one cart in the parish of Keithhall. Everything was carried about on ponies' backs, as is the case nowadays in the most unsettled parts of Canada. The country in places was almost impassable. Bridges did not exist, and the roads were mere tracks. In Rannoch the tenants had no beds, but lay on the ground on couches of heather or fern. These houses were built of wattle and daub, and so low that people had to crawl in on hands and feet and could not stand upright.
"In the best times that class of people seldom could indulge in animal food, and they were in use to support themselves in part with the blood taken from their cattle at different periods, made into puddings or bread with a mixture of oatmeal. Their common diet was either oatmeal, barley, or bear, cleared of the husks in a stone trough by a wooden mallet, and boiled with milk; coleworts or greens also contributed much to their subsistence, and cabbages when boiled and mashed with a little oatmeal."[72] Potatoes were introduced in Dumfriesshire some time after 1750, and the use of lime as manure at about the same time. Even in 1775 the roads were such that no kind of loaded carriages could pass without the greatest difficulty.