The old native sheep of the Highlands, now rare, though common in some parts of Shetland, is thus described by Dr Walker. “It is the smallest animal of its kind. It is of a thin lank shape, and has short straight horns. The face and legs are white, the tail extremely short, and the wool of various colours; for, beside black and white, it is sometimes of a bluish grey colour, at other times brown, and sometimes of a deep russet, and frequently an individual is blotched with two or three of these different colours. In some of the low islands, where the pasture answers, the wool of this small sheep is of the finest kind, and the same with that of Shetland. In the mountainous islands, the animal is found of the smallest size, with coarser wool, and with this very remarkable character, that it has often four, and sometimes even six horns.
“Such is the original breed of sheep over all the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It varies much indeed in its properties, according to the climate and pasture of different districts; but, in general, it is so diminutive in size, and of so bad a form, that it is requisite it should be given up, wherever sheep-farming is to be followed to any considerable extent. From this there is only one exception: in some places the wool is of such a superior quality, and so valuable, that the breed perhaps may, on that account, be with advantage retained.”
The small, shaggy black cattle, so well known even at the present day in connection with the Highlands, was the principal live-stock cultivated previous to the alterations which followed 1745. This breed appears to have been excellent in its kind, and the best adapted for the country, and was quite capable of being brought to admirable perfection by proper care, feeding, and management. But little care, however, was bestowed on the rearing of these animals, and in general they were allowed to forage for themselves as best they could. As we have said already, the Highland farmer of those days regarded his cattle as the only money-producing article with which his farm was stocked, all the other products being necessary for the subsistence of himself and his family. It was mainly the cattle that paid the rent. It was therefore very natural that the farmer should endeavour to have as large a stock of this commodity as possible, the result being that, blind to his own real interests, he generally to a large extent overstocked his farm. According to Dr Walker,[27] over all the farms in the north, there was kept above one-third more of cattle than what under the then prevailing system of management could be properly supported. The consequence of course was, that the cattle were generally in a half-fed and lean condition, and, during winter especially, they died in great numbers.
As a rule, the arable land in the Highlands bore, and still bears, but a very small proportion to that devoted to pasture. The arable land is as a rule by the sea-shore, on the side of a river or lake, or in a valley; while the rest of the farm, devoted to pasturage, stretches often for many miles away among the hills. The old mode of valuing or dividing lands in Scotland was into shilling, sixpenny, and threepenny lands of Scotch money. Latterly the English denomination of money was used, and these divisions were termed penny,[28] halfpenny, and farthing lands. A tacksman generally rented a large number of these penny lands, and either farmed them himself, or, as was very often done, sublet them to a number of tenants, none of whom as a rule held more than a penny land, and many, having less than a farthing land, paying from a few shillings to a few pounds of rent. Where a number of tenants thus rented land from a tacksman or proprietor, they generally laboured the arable land in common, and each received a portion of the produce proportioned to his share in the general holding. The pasturage, which formed by far the largest part of the farm, they had in common for the use of their cattle, each tenant being allowed to pasture a certain number of cattle and sheep, soumed or proportioned[29] to the quantity of land he held. “The tenant of a penny land often keeps four or five cows, with what are called their followers, six or eight horses, and some sheep. The followers are the calf, a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a three-year-old, making in all with the cow five head of black cattle. By frequent deaths among them, the number is seldom complete, yet this penny land has or may have upon it about twenty or twenty-five head of black cattle, besides horses and sheep.” The halfpenny and farthing lands seem to have been allowed a larger proportion of live stock than the penny lands, considering their size.[30] It was seldom, however, that a tenant confined himself strictly to the number for which he was soumed, the desire to have as much as possible of the most profitable commodity frequently inducing to overstock, and thus defeat his main purpose.
During summer and autumn, the cattle and other live stock were confined to the hills to prevent them doing injury to the crops, for the lands were totally unprotected by enclosures. After the ground was cleared of the crops, the animals were allowed to roam promiscuously over the whole farm, if not over the farms of a whole district, having little or nothing to eat in the winter and spring but what they could pick up in the fields. It seems to have been a common but very absurd notion in the Highlands that the housing of cattle tended to enfeeble them; thus many cattle died of cold and starvation every winter, those who survived were mere skeletons, and, moreover, the farmer lost all their dung which could have been turned to good use as manure. Many of the cows, from poverty and disease, brought a calf only once in two years, and it was often a month or six weeks before the cow could give sufficient milk to nourish her offspring. Thus many of the Highland cattle were starved to death in their calf’s skin.
A custom prevailed among the Highlanders of old, common to them with other mountainous pastoral countries, e.g., Switzerland. During winter the tenants of a farm with their families, cottars, and servants, lived in the Bailte Geamhre, or winter town, in the midst of the arable land; but in summer, after all the sowing was done, about the middle of June, a general migration was made to the hills along with the cattle, the arable ground with all its appurtenances being allowed to take care of itself. The following passage, quoted from the old Statistical Account of Boleskine and Abertarff, Inverness-shire, will give a notion of the working of this practice:—
“The whole country, with two exceptions, consists of a variety of half davoch-lands, each of which was let or disponed by the Lovat family or their chamberlain to a wadsetter or principal tacksman, and had no concern with the sub-tenantry; each sub-tenant had again a variety of cottars, equally unconnected with the principal tacksman; and each of these had a number of cattle of all denominations, proportional to their respective holdings, with the produce whereof he fed and clad himself and whole family. As there were extensive sheallings or grasings attached to this country, in the neighbourhood of the lordship of Badenoch, the inhabitants in the beginning of summer removed to these sheallings with their whole cattle, man, woman, and child; and it was no uncommon thing to observe an infant in one creel, and a stone on the other side of the horse, to keep up an equilibrium; and when the grass became scarce in the sheallings, they returned again to their principal farms, where they remained while they had sufficiency of pasture, and then, in the same manner, went back to their sheallings, and observed this ambulatory course during the seasons of vegetation; and the only operations attended to during the summer season was their peats or fuel, and repairing their rustic habitations. When their small crops were fit for it, all hands descended from the hills, and continued on the farms till the same was cut and secured in barns, the walls of which were generally made of dry stone, or wreathed with branches or boughs of trees; and it was no singular custom, after harvest, for the whole inhabitants to return to their sheallings, and to abide there till driven from thence by the snow. During the winter and spring, the whole pasturage of the country was a common, and a poind-fold was a thing totally unknown. The cultivation of the country was all performed in spring, the inhabitants having no taste for following green crops or other modern improvements.”
The milk produced by the small Highland cows was, and indeed is, small in quantity, but in quality it resembles what in the Lowlands is known as cream. Of course, the butter and cheese made from such milk is unusually rich.
About the end of August or beginning of September, the cattle had generally been got into good condition by their summer feeding, the beef then, according to Captain Burt, being “extremely sweet and succulent.” It was at this time that the drovers collected their herds, and drove them to the fairs and markets on the borders of the lowlands, and sometimes so far south as the north of England. As from the want of good roads and any means of rapid conveyance, the drovers took a considerable time to reach their destination, and had in the meantime to be fed, a certain sum per head had to be paid to the owners of the territories through which they passed, for the liberty of being allowed grazing for the cattle. Burt gives the following graphic account of a scene he himself witnessed on the march south of one of these herds of cattle. “I have several times seen them driving great numbers of cattle along the sides of the mountains at a great distance, but never, except once, was near them. This was in a time of rain, by a wide river, where there was a boat to ferry over the drovers. The cows were about fifty in number, and took the water like spaniels; and when they were in, their drivers made a hideous cry to urge them forwards: this, they told me, they did to keep the foremost of them from turning about; for, in that case, the rest would do the like, and then they would be in danger, especially the weakest of them, to be driven away and drowned by the torrent. I thought it a very odd sight to see so many noses and eyes just above water, and nothing of them more to be seen, for they had no horns, and upon the land they appeared like so many large Lincolnshire calves.” These drovers do not seem as a rule to have been the owners of cattle, but a class of men whose business it was to collect into one herd or drove the saleable cattle of a number of farmers, take them south to the markets and bring back the money, receiving a small commission for their trouble. As a rule they seem to have been men who, when their integrity was relied on, made it a point of honour to be able to render a satisfactory account of every animal and every farthing; although probably no one would be more ready to join in a creach or cattle-lifting expedition, which in those days was considered as honourable as warfare. The drovers “conducted the cattle by easy stages across the country in trackways, which, whilst they were less circuitous than public roads, were softer for the feet of the animals, and he often rested at night in the open fields with his herds.”[31] A good idea of the character of this class of Highlanders may be obtained from Sir Walter Scott’s Chronicles of the Canongate.[32]
All the other operations connected with or arising out of agriculture were conducted in as rude and ineffective a manner as those above mentioned. The harvest was always an anxious season with the Highlander, as from the wetness of the climate and the early period at which rain set in, their crops might never come to useful perfection, or might be swept away by floods or heavy rains before they could be gathered in.[33] Dr Walker declares that in the Hebrides and Western Highlands the people made up their minds to lose one harvest in four on account of the wetness of the climate. If the crops, however, escaped destruction from the elements, the farmers were glad to get them reaped as quickly as possible. As a rule, the common sickle seems to have been used for cutting down the grain, although it appears to have been not uncommon to tear it from the earth by the roots.[34] The harvest work seems to have been generally performed by women, as is indeed the case still in some parts of Scotland. This, Burt thinks, tended much to retard the harvest, as it sometimes took a woman and a girl a fortnight to do what with the aid of a man might have been done in a couple of days.[35] So short-lived was the supply of grain, and so ill-off were the people sometimes, that it was not uncommon for them to pluck the ears as they ripened, like fruit, and even scorch the grain when green and squeeze it into an unwholesome pulp.[36]