The girdle—a round iron plate used for baking oaten cakes over a fire—a household article once universal among the middle and humbler classes in Scotland—was invented and first made at the little burgh of Culross, in Fife. In 1599, King James gave the Culrossians an exclusive privilege to make girdles, and this had been confirmed by a gift from Charles II. in 1666. Nevertheless, a neighbouring gentleman, Preston of Valleyfield, had kept girdle-makers (craticularum fabros) on his barony, for which he was now challenged at law by the burghers of Culross. He defended himself on various grounds; and the lords, before decision, ‘recommended to Drumcairn to take trial if the girdle-makers of Culross have any other trade or craft than that of making girdles, and at what prices they sell the same; and likewise to try if the men at Valleyfield do make sufficient girdles, and at what prices they make the same, and if they have any other trade than making of girdles, &c.’ How the matter ended we do not learn.—Foun. Dec.
About this time, an Englishman, apparently a military officer, described Scotland from personal observation, and so has preserved for us some general traits of the people.
‘Their drink,’ he says, ‘is beer, sometimes so new that it is scarce cold when brought to table. But their gentry are better provided, and give it age, yet think not so well of it as to let it go alone, and therefore add brandy, cherry brandy, or brandy and sugar, and [this] is the nectar of their country, at their feasts and entertainments, and carries with it a mark of great esteem and affection. Sometimes they have wine—a thin-bodied claret, at tenpence the mutchkin, which answers our quart.’
It is evident from this that whisky as yet formed no conspicuous indulgence among the Scottish people. They had come, however, to be much given to another stimulant, which has ever since had a great fascination for them. ‘They are fond of tobacco, but more from the sneesh-box [snuff-box] than the pipe. And they have made it so necessary, that I have heard some of them say, that, should their bread come in competition with it, they would rather fast than their sneesh should be taken away. Yet mostly it consists of the coarsest tobacco, dried by the fire, and powdered in a little engine after the form of a tap, which they carry in their pockets, and is both a mill to grind, and a box to keep it in.’[320]
1689.
The infatuated king had fled to France, the ministers of his will had dispersed in terror, and a convention was about to meet and settle the crown upon William and Mary, when a singular instance of private revenge, recalling the rougher days of a century earlier, took place in Edinburgh.
1689.
Sir George Lockhart, long the most eminent counsel at the Scottish bar—‘the most learned lawyer and the best pleader,’ says Burnet, ‘I have ever known of any nation’—and now President of the Court of Session, had had occasion, in the routine of judicial business, to give an award in favour of the unhappy wife and children of Chiesley of Dalry, near Edinburgh—a profligate man of violent passions, the descendant of a noted fanatic of the time of the Civil War. The sum assigned them from the husband and father’s estate was only ninety-three pounds a year. Chiesley openly avowed a resolution to be avenged on the judge; nay, he wrote to him, saying: ‘You have taken the government of my family from me—I desire a remedy at your hands; otherwise, I will not scruple to attack you at kirk or market;’ or using words to that effect.