CHAPTER XV.
RUN-RIG AND COMMON FIELD.
It is a familiar fact that the early open field system of agriculture of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, known as run-rig or rundale, differed in some important features from the common field system of England.
The mere fact suggests a series of questions with regard to the relationships between common field and run-rig; whether, for instance, the more complex common field system was evolved from the more simple and primitive run-rig system; or supposing the two not connected, whether a boundary can be defined on one side of which the early agriculture was of the English type and on the other of the Celtic type; and again, if so, which parts of England lie on the Celtic side of the boundary, and which, if any, of Wales and Scotland lie on the English side.
Obviously before considering such questions it is necessary to have a clear grasp of the nature of run-rig, and of the differences between it and the English system.
In the year 1695 the Scotch Parliament passed an Act allowing anyone “coterminous heritor” owning a share in a “commonty” to have his portion separate from the rest, and to enclose it; and a series of cases established a defined system of computing the share of the “commonty” to which the lord of the manor as such was entitled in lieu of manorial rights. This caused the process of the separation of intermixed properties in open fields to proceed without the intervention of special Acts of Parliament, except for Royal burghs. Also while in England under Enclosure Acts or agreements to enclose the three processes of (a) the separation of intermixed and intercommonable properties, (b) the separation of intermixed and intercommonable holdings, and (c) the hedging or fencing of the separated properties, were accomplished by one continuous series of actions on the part of those concerned, in Scotland it was otherwise. The separation of properties where necessary was first accomplished, and for long afterwards the system of run-rig was followed by groups of tenants on the same estate. After run-rig had been abandoned, the separate holdings remained open and unenclosed, and the process of building dykes or planting hedges was carried out at a later date, and by slow degrees.
The abandonment of run-rig was general, according to the reports to the Board of Agriculture, in the lowlands of Scotland about the year 1730. In the county of Perth up to the year 1744 “the land was always occupied in run-rigg, either by the different tenants on the same farm, and sometimes by coterminous heritors. The houses were in clusters for the mutual protection of the inhabitants.” (James Robertson, D.D., “Agriculture of the Southern District of Perth,” 1794, pp. 22, 23.) In the northern and Highland counties the transition was naturally later. Sir John Sinclair (“General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties and Islands of Scotland”) describes the cultivated land of the Islands as being open almost everywhere, except in the case of the “mains” or manor farms, the glebe lands, and the farms of a few principal tacksmen. Of Caithness he says, “The greater part of the arable land in this county is occupied by small farmers who possess it in run-rig, or in rig and rennal, as it is here termed, similar to the common fields of England, a system peculiarly hostile to improvement” (p. 207). But in the Orkneys “Much of the land that formerly lay in the state known in Scotland under the name of run-rig land has been divided, but much still remains in the same situation” (p. 227); and the process of enclosing had begun even in the Shetlands (p. 252).
Turning westwards, we find that in the inner Hebrides 1850 was the date at which the run-rig system finally died out, in a manner and under conditions which will demand further attention. But it survived in the Outer Hebrides to a considerably later date. A very full and interesting description by Mr. Alexander Carmichael is given in Skene’s “Celtic Scotland,” Vol. III. chapter x.
“Old systems are tenacious. They linger long among a rural people and in remote places. Of these is the land system of run-rig (Mor Barann) which characterises more or less the land system of the Western Isles. The outer Hebrides are called the Long Island. They are a series of islands 119 miles in length, and varying from half-a-mile to twenty miles in breadth. This kite-like chain of forty inhabited and upwards of a hundred and fifty uninhabited islands contains a population of 40,000. Much of this land is held by extensive tacksmen on leases (Fir Baile), and there being no intermediate tenantry, the rest of the land is occupied by small tenants at will without leases. These number 4,500, the majority of whom fish as well as farm.
“The country is divided into townlands of various extent. The arable land (Fearann Grainsich) occupied by the small tenants of these townlands is worked in three ways—as crofts wholly, as crofts and run-rig combined, and as run-rig wholly. In Lewis and Harris the arable land is wholly divided into crofts: in Uist and Barra the arable land is divided in part into crofts, and in part worked in run-rig; while in the townlands of Hosta, Coolas Paipil, and the island of Heisgeir in North Uist, the arable land is worked exclusively upon the run-rig system of share and share alike. The grazing land of the tenants of each townland throughout the Long Island is held in common (in Lewis called Comhpairt).