or moss, to keep out the blasts; the fire, usually in the middle of the house floor, in despair of finding an exit by the smoke-clotted roof, filled the room with malodorous clouds. The cattle at night were tethered at one end of the room, while the family lay at the other on heather on the floor. The light came from an opening at either gable, which, whenever the wind blew in, was stuffed with brackens or an old bonnet to keep out the sleet and blast. The roofs were so low in northern districts that the inmates could not stand upright, but sat on the stones or three-legged stools that served for chairs, and the huts were entered by doors so low and narrow that to gain an entrance one required almost to creep. Their thatching was of ferns and heather, for the straw was all needed for the cattle. Yet foul, dark, and fetid as they were, the people liked these hovels for their warmth.

'The houses of the tenantry were very little better in most cases than those of their ploughmen and herds, from whom the farmers differed little in their manners and rank. Even in Ayrshire, till long after the middle of the century, they were little removed from hovels, with clay floors, open hearths, sometimes in the middle of the room, with walls seven feet high, yet three feet thick, built of stones and mud. Only the better class of farmers had two rooms, the house getting light by two tiny windows, the upper part only glazed with two panes of bottle glass. It had been the practice in former times-but dying out in the early part of the century— for the outgoing tenant to remove from the farmhouse all the bearers and rafters which he himself had put in; and consequently his successor came not to a house, but to a ruin consisting of four broken walls, and had to virtually rebuild the house, which he in turn dismantled when it became his turn to leave. In these dismal, ill-lighted abodes, when night set in the fitful flare of the peat fire was all the light they had, for the "ruffies,” or split-roots of fir found in the peat moors, were only lit for set purposes, such as family worship.'

The food of the period was plain, but substantial, if monotonous. It was badly served and worse cooked. But, though the more fastidious taste of the present would scarcely relish it, it was not disliked by the people, who seem, indeed, to have preferred it. Mrs. Calderwood of Polton preferred Scots cooking to Dutch, though the Dutch, she admitted, prepared their dishes with more care. 'I thought,' she wrote from Holland, 'I had not got a dinner since I left home for want of broath.' The laird took his morning' of ale or brandy, over which he said a grace, about five or six o'clock. Breakfast, which was served at eight a.m., consisted of skink,' or water gruel, with fish, cold meat, eggs, collops or mutton, washed down with ale or wine. For dinner there was

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broth, or kail, of beef or mutton, hens, muirfowl, and pigeons. Vegetables were not served with the meat. Potatoes were almost unknown, and the turnips and parsnips, and whatever other vegetables were in use, went into the pot to make the broth or kail. Except with persons of rank, everything was put on the table at once, and served on wooden or pewter plates. The use of china or earthenware plates came in later, when two courses began to be served at dinner. The drinks were ample supplies of ale, sack, and claret. In many houses only one glass or tankard was used for the family, the custom being for each to pass it on to his neighbour after finishing his draught. After dinner came the four hours,' when ladies took their ale or wine, and when there were guests, a few slices of wheaten bread, and cake, and about seven or eight in the evening a substantial meal something like the dinner was served up as supper.' This was the way in the country. In the towns, at least in Edinburgh, it was much the same, except that somewhat later hours were kept. In his chapter on Town Life in Edinburgh, Mr. Graham writes:

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'The hours for rising were early in these old times, and the city was astir by five o'clock. Before St. Giles' bells had sounded seven the shops were open, the shutters were flung back on their hinges, and over the half-door the tradesmen were leaning, chatting to their neighbours, and receiving the last news; while citizens walked down to the Post Office, situated up a stair, to get their letters just brought in by the post-runner from Glasgow or Aberdeen. In the taverns the doctors were seeing their patients. Up till 1713, the celebrated physician, Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, was to be found in the dingy underground cellar, called from its darkness "the groping office," near St. Giles. Early every morning, by six o'clock, President Dalrymple had seen his agent, and gone over a dozen cases before breakfast. Eight o'clock was the breakfast hour, with its substantial meal of mutton, collops, and fowl, and libations of ale, and sometimes sack, claret, or brandy. The citizen shuts his shop, or

left his wife to tend it, when the St. Giles' bells rang out half-past eleven -a well-known sound which was known as the "gill bells," because each went to his favourite tavern to take his "meridian.' The dinner hour was at one o'clock till 1745, when it was being changed to two, though the humbler shopkeepers dined at twelve. The wonted fare in winter was broth, salt beef, boiled fowls, for only the wealthy could afford to get fresh beef at high prices until the summer, when the arrival of any supply of beef for sale was announced in the streets by the bellman. By two o'clock, all citizens wended their way down their respective

stairs to their places of business, re-opened the doors, and hung up the key on a nail on the lintel. . . . By the early afternoon the streets were crowded, for into the main thoroughfare the inhabitants of the city poured. At four o'clock the ladies had their refection, for the "four hours" all over Scotland, and with all ranks, was a necessary refreshment of the day. In the larger houses the hostess received her visitors in the drawing-room; but in smaller flats she was obliged, as in the country, to see them in her bedroom. Till 1720 ladies had drunk their ale or claret, but when tea came into vogue that beverage became a necessity, and wine was reserved for the gentlemen. . . . By eight o'clock all visitors had gone, for the supper hour had come; the maids had arrived with the pattens for the elderly ladies, and lanterns to light their mistresses to their homes in the dark yards and stairs. When citizens began their copious suppers they ate and drank till late, and guests departed not too soberly, while the servant guided their meandering footsteps, and held a candle or lantern to light them to the "mouth" of the close."

The food of the tenants and their servants was hardly so substantial as that of the lairds. Servants and masters sat at the same table. Oatmeal pottage,' says Ramsay, was once esteemed a great luxury among that set of people. Pease or bean bread was a capital article with them, wheat loaves being now more common in farmers' houses than oatcakes were formerly. In times of scarcity oatmeal used to be mixed with mill dust, or with pease and bean meal. The first mixture was called 'grey meal; the other'egger meal.' The standing dish in every family was kail, and was made without flesh, of greens and grolls-i.e., oats stripped of the husks in the mill. No dinner was reckoned complete without it. After the kail, if there was no flesh, kitchen-i.e., butter, eggs, herrings, or sometimes raw onions were added. Salmon was an article of diet so common in some districts as to be served up to the servants at least three times a week. For supper they had sowens or flummery, 'a cheap and healthy drink.' Little ale was provided for them. Their drink in summer was whey and buttermilk; in spring milk, and generally water.

What seems to have been wanting in Scotland during the early part of the century, except during the hungry years,' was not food, but the art of cooking or preparing it, and the desire for dishes other than had been served up from time almost immemorial. Had there been a desire for improvements in the

culinary art, it is almost certain they would have been introduced. But in one or two points in this connection we are scarcely prepared to follow Mr. Graham. Here and there he seems to us to lay too great stress on the statements of one or two writers, and to have generalised somewhat rashly. Fresh beef may have been almost unprocurable during winter, owing to the custom of killing and salting down the meat at Martinmas-a custom followed among all the Teutonic races, which goes back to a very high antiquity, but fresh mutton, we imagine and believe, was procurable all the year round, certainly in what may be termed populous places. The trade of the fleshers or butchers could scarcely be confined to one or two months in the year. The fleshers of Dundee were in use to kill, besides sheep and oxen, cows, lambs, swine, and goats, and to expose their flesh for sale all the year round.* In his Judicial Records of Renfrewshire, Mr. Hector makes the remark that there is no mention of the use of wheaten bread between 1680 and 1730, except among the wealthy Mr. Ramsay of Ochtertyre agrees with him, and Mr. Graham adopts their statements. Yet in 1698, the bakers of Dundee were in the habit of buying wheat and using flour, and on the 31st November, having in view the practices of certain speculators, unanimously 'statut that non of our masters and members of trade shall not in all time comeing presume to sell any quantetie of wheat or flower to any persone not dwelling within the towne, or to any persone within the towne who are to convey the same to persons in other places without a libertie granted by gennerall consent of the trade.' They were in the habit, too, of baking flour, i.e., wheaten flour, bisket,' for the use of seamen, both bisket butred' and' unbutred.' 6 On 5th November, 1700,

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they passed the following enactment, from which it is clear that wheaten flour was in common use, and that different qualities of it were known: From this time furth no member of the said Baxter Craft presume to sell the twelvepenny loaf, 2s., 3s., 4s., and 6s., loaves of flour bread, either fyne, middling, or mashlome, as also of ry bread, at any lower rate than twelve pennies, 2s., 3s., 4s., and 6s., Scots under the penalties,' etc. Bread,

flour bread,' as it was called, was also carried to country markets for sale. In short, every royal burgh and some others had their Baxter crafts, whose business was not confined to making oat cakes and baps,' as is often supposed, but were also in the habit of baking and selling both rye and wheaten bread. From time immemorial, too, widows had in most towns tried to eke out a living by baking wheaten bread, though they had usually to obtain the consent of the Bakers' Crafts, who had the monopoly of making and baking bread for sale.

The ale used was what would now be termed home-brewed.' It was of various degrees of strength and quality, from the weakest to the strongest, and was taken in copious draughts. Especially at funerals was this the case. On seeing the company at the burial of the Laird of Abbotshaugh at Falkirk, some English dragoons, who chanced to be present said one to another, 'Jolly dogs! a Scots burial is merrier than our weddings.' Of the kinds of ale mentioned we have best,' 'middling,' ' black ale,'' cap ale,' and 'twopenny.' Its different qualities were also denoted by the terms 'ostler's ale,'' household ale,' and 'strong ale.' Some idea of the quantity drunk may be gathered from the fact that at the time of the Union there were no fewer than five thousand maltsters in the country. * It was the custom in gentlemen's houses in the North to bring little barrels of strong ale into the room and to ask the company whether they chose old or new. 'Scourging a nine gallon tree,' Mr. Ramsay tell us, was at one time a common feat among lads of mettle.' • It consisted,' he says, in drawing the spigot of a barrel of ale, and never quitting it night or day till it was drunk out.' In some houses spigots were dispensed with. The barrel head was prised off, and all comers helped themselves as freely as they chose. The favourite regale of the Scot until the present century,' Mr. Ramsay informs us, was French wine.' Casks of claret were at times treated in the same way as barrels of ale, and the claret served out by pailfuls. During the minority of Queen Mary, the pint of Bordeaux cost tenpence and Rochelle wine eightpence, if brought in by the east seas, but if brought in by the west seas, the pint

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Hewat's Little Scots' World, 126.