The flail appears to have been the only article used to separate the grain from its husk, and the only winnowing it got was from the draught that passed through the rude barn, which had two doors opposite each other for the purpose.
The quern or hand-mill is the oldest machine used for grinding grain. It consisted of two stones, one above the other, the former turned round by a handle and having an opening in the top to admit the grain. This primitive kind of mill, even for long after 1745, was used all over the Highlands to convert the scanty supply of grain into meal. The quern was generally driven by two women sitting opposite each other, but it was also adapted to a rude water-wheel, the axle of which was fixed in the upper stone. This rude water-mill is still used in Shetland, and is of the very simplest construction.
Quern, from the collection of the late
Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart.
A common method of preparing the grain for the quern was called graddaning, which consisted in taking a handful of corn in the stalk, setting fire to it, and when it had burnt long enough, knocking the grain from the head by means of a stick; thus both thrashing and drying it at the same time. This of course was a wretched and most extravagant mode of procedure, blackening and otherwise spoiling the grain, and wasting the straw. This process was common in the Western Islands, where also there was a kind of very rude kiln, on the bare ribs of which were put the heads of the grain, which, when dried, were pulled down on the floor and immediately thrashed and winnowed, and stored up hot in plates, ready for the quern. Thus could a man have cut the sheaves, dry and thrash the barley, clean it for the quern, and make his breakfast thereof after it was ground.[37] Another method common in Badenoch and the central Highlands was to switch the corn out of the ear with a stick, separate it from the chaff, and put it in a pot on the fire, while a person kept stirring it with a wooden spatula. “I have seen,” says a gentleman from Laggan, “the corn cut, dried, ground, baked, and eaten in less than two hours.”[38]
There must, however, have been a mill on a somewhat larger scale than either the hand or water-quern, situated in a great many of the Highland districts, as it is well known that in the Highlands as well as the Lowlands, multure and thirlage were common exactions by which the tenants were oppressed. The tenants would be no doubt glad in many cases to escape the heavy mill-dues by grinding their grain for themselves, as well as their rude contrivances would allow them. But the convenience of a well-constructed mill in a district is evident, and of course it is but fair that those who take advantage of the mill should pay for it. Moreover, in early times, when large mills were first introduced into a district by the laird or proprietor, it was natural enough that he should endeavour, either by bargain or force, to get his tenants to take their grain to the district-mill to be ground, as only by this means could the expense of building and keeping up of the mill be defrayed and a miller induced to rent it. As money was scarce in those days, and as rent and other dues were paid in kind, it was natural and fair enough that the landlord should exact a small portion of the grain taken to his mill as due to him for keeping the mill up, and also for the miller to take payment for his trouble and time by keeping to himself a certain proportion of the meal into which he had converted the grain. But like every other custom, this was liable to abuse, and did in the end turn out to be a most grievous exaction and a great hindrance to agricultural improvement. Every farmer was thirled to a particular mill, thirlage being a due payable to the landlord; and the miller, besides having a croft or small farm attached to the mill, was allowed to exact multure, or a proportion of meal, to pay himself for his trouble. Besides these there appears to have been other exactions which could be made by the miller on various pretexts, and the amount of which depended pretty much upon his own caprice. Altogether they not unfrequently amounted to an eighth or a tenth of the meal produced by the grain. Yet for long after 1745, even into the present century, did these exactions continue to be in force in many parts of the country; and an almost universal complaint by the writers of the articles on the Highland parishes in the Old Statistical Account, is the grievous nature of these and other exactions.
Almost the only fuel used by the Highlanders, not only in the early part but during the whole of last century, was peat, still used in many Highland districts, and the only fuel used in a great part of Orkney and Shetland. The cutting and preparing of the fuel, composed mainly of decayed roots of various plants, consumed a serious part of the Highlander’s time, as it was often to be found only at a great distance from his habitation; and he had to cut not only for himself but for his laird, the process itself being long and troublesome, extending from the time the sods were first cut till they were formed in a stack at the side of the farmer’s or cottar’s door, over five or six months; and after all, they frequently turned out but a wretched substitute for either wood or coal; often they were little else than a mass of red earth. It generally took five people to cut peats out of one spot. One cut the peats, which were placed by another on the edge of the trench from which they were cut; a third spread them on the field, while a fourth trimmed them, a fifth resting in the meantime ready to relieve the man that was cutting.
As would naturally be expected, the houses and other buildings of the Highlanders were quite in keeping with their agricultural implements and general mode of life. Even the tacksmen or gentlemen of the clan, the relations of the chief, lived in huts or hovels, that the poorest farmer in most parts of Scotland at the present day, would shudder to house his cattle in. In most cases they appear to have been pretty much the same as those of the small farmers or cottars, only perhaps a little larger. Burt mentions such a house belonging to a gentleman of the clan, which he visited in one of his peregrinations round Inverness. He says[39] it consisted of one long apartment without any partition, “where the family was at one end, and some cattle at the other.” The owner of this rude habitation must have been somewhat shrewd and sensible, as he could not only perceive the disadvantages of this mode of life to which he was doomed, but had insight and candour enough to be able to account for his submission to them. “The truth is,” Captain Burt reports him to have said, “we are insensibly inured to it by degrees; for, when very young, we know no better; being grown up, we are inclined, or persuaded by our near relations, to marry—thence come children, and fondness for them: but above all,” says he, “is the love of our chief, so strongly is it inculcated to us in our infancy; and if it were not for that, I think the Highlands would be much thinner of people than they now are.” How much truth there is in that last statement is clearly evidenced by the history of the country after the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions, which was the means of breaking up the old intimate relation between, and mutual dependence of, chief and people. Burt says elsewhere, that near to Inverness, there were a few gentlemen’s houses built of stone and lime, but that in the inner part of the mountains there were no stone-buildings except the barracks, and that one might have gone a hundred miles without seeing any other dwellings but huts of turf. By the beginning of last century the houses of most of the chiefs, though comparatively small, seem to have been substantially built of stone and lime, although their food and manner of life would seem to have been pretty much the same as those of the tacksmen. The children of chiefs and gentlemen seem to have been allowed to run about in much the same apparently uncared for condition as those of the tenants, it having been a common saying, according to Burt, “that a gentleman’s bairns are to be distinguished by their speaking English.” To illustrate this he tells us that once when dining with a laird not very far from Inverness—possibly Lord Lovat—he met an English soldier at the house who was catching birds for the laird to exercise his hawks on. This soldier told Burt that for three or four days after his first coming, he had observed in the kitchen (“an out-house hovel”) a parcel of dirty children half naked, whom he took to belong to some poor tenant, but at last discovered they were part of the family. “But,” says the fastidious English Captain, “although these were so little regarded, the young laird, about the age of fourteen, was going to the university; and the eldest daughter, about sixteen, sat with us at table, clean and genteelly dressed.”[40]
There is no reason to doubt Burt’s statement when he speaks of what he saw or heard, but it must be remembered he was an Englishman, with all an Englishman’s prejudices in favour of the manners and customs, the good living, and general fastidiousness which characterise his own half of the kingdom, and many of an Englishman’s prejudices against the Scotch generally and the turbulent Highlanders in particular. His letters are, however, of the utmost value in giving us a clear and interesting glimpse into the mode of life of the Highlanders shortly before 1745, and most Scotchmen at least will be able to sift what is fact from what is exaggeration and English colouring. Much, no doubt, of what Burt tells of the Highlanders when he was there is true, but it is true also of people then living in the same station in other parts of Scotland, where however among the better classes, and even among the farmers, even then, there was generally a rough abundance combined with a sort of affectation of rudeness of manner. It is not so very long ago since the son of the laird, and he might have been a duke, and the son of the hind were educated at the same parish school; and even at the present day it is no uncommon sight to see the sons of the highest Scottish nobility sitting side by side on the same college-benches with the sons of day-labourers, ploughmen, mechanics, farmers, and small shop-keepers. Such a sight is rare in the English universities; where there are low-born intruders, it will in most cases be found that they belong to Scotland. We do not make these remarks to prejudice the reader in any way against the statements of Burt or to depreciate the value of his letters; all we wish the reader to understand is that he was an Englishman, rather fond of gossip, and perhaps of adding point to a story at the expense of truth, with all the prejudices and want of enlightenment and cosmopolitanism of even educated Englishmen of 150 years ago. He states facts correctly, but from a peculiar and very un-Scottish point of view. His evidence, even when stripped of its slight colouring, is invaluable, and, even to the modern Highlander, must prove that his ancestors lived in a very miserable way, although they themselves might not have realised its discomfort and wretchedness, but on the contrary, may have been as contented as the most well-to-do English squire or prosperous English farmer.