Notes and sketches illustrative of northern rural life in the eighteenth century

Preface

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Tue Notes anp Sxetcues of which the present small volume consists have not been written upon any systematic plan. The nucleus of the whole was a paper read several years ago before an audience of decent country folks, who, it was thought, might listen with some interest to matters connected with the social and industrial life of those who had preceded them, and lived under conditions as to occupation and the daily round of duty, corresponding as nearly as might be with their own. The object in view then met with at least the amount of success that had been expected ; and the paper with variations—or rather, perhaps, part of it with additions—was, at intervals, repeated to other similar audiences. And thus the essay grew in bulk. The style is admittedly not altogether that which would have been adopted had publication been in view at the outset, the paper having been shaped mainly to suit the original purpose for which the materials were gathered. The sources of information were various, and are generally indicated in the text. Of the books chiefly consulted a list has been given in the Appendix (1) in preference to an excessive multiplication of foot notes, And it occasionally happens vl PREFACE.

that a statement made, or an opinion expressed, is the result of a comparison of two or more authorities rather than the unqualified averment of a single individual.

In acknowledging his obligations to several friends who have supplied information on particular points, the author feels it right to say that he has been specially indebted to Mr. Alexander Cruickshank, M.A., whose unwearied industry in the collection of facts and statistics is not more marked than his unselfish readiness to make his stores of knowledge available to others.

The sketch of a twelve oxen plough, which forms the frontispiece, is from the skilful and accurate pencil of Mr. Andrew Gibb, F.8.A., Scot.; and was taken from the specimen in Marischal College Buildings mentioned at page 33. The beam remained entire at date of drawing ; the stilts, &c, had to be somewhat helped out from the parts of them still extant, and a certain measure of traditional knowledge. And as the plough is drawn to scale, readers interested in such matters, and who care to do so, will be able to compare its size and the proportion of parts with those of the improved plough of the present time.

ABERDEEN, April, 1877.

CONTE NGL Ss

San ELE

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I, INTRODUCTORY—STAGNATION OF AGRICULTURE DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, . ‘ ‘ : 2 1 II. TOPOGRAPHICAL AND SOCIAL, . : : ‘ P (f III. RURAL OCCUPATION—OLD LAND MEASURES, d ayes IV. CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL, 1700-1800, : j so eh V. FIRST IMPROVERS —AN EARLY AGRICULTURAL ESSAY, . 24 VI. IMPLEMENTS OF THE FARM—THE TWAL OWSEN PLOUGH, 32 VII, RESULTS OF CULTIVATION—PERIODS OF FAMINE, s. 41

VIII. THE BAD HARVEST OF 1782—EFFECTS IN TOWN AND COUNTY OF ABERDEEN, . , : ; ; . 48 IX. LIVE STOCK—EARLY IMPROVERS—HIGHLAND REIVERS, 60 X. LIVE STOCK—CATTLE DEALING AND DROVING, . ee OS XI. COUNTRY FAIRS—THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER, . 177

XII. ROADS AND ROAD-MAKING—STATUTE LABOUR—FIRST TURNPIKES, : ; ' é ‘ : : Lace

XIII. IMPROVED LOCOMOTION—THE EDINBURGH FLY— SCORGIE’S CARAVAN, . ; ; : ; : eo?

XIV. EARLY AGRICULTURAL IMPROVERS IN ABERDEEN AND KINCARDINESHIRES, . : é ‘ : : Jima RT XV. CHARLES HACKET OF INVERAMSAY, . é / . 108

XVI. AN AGRICULTURAL TOUR—ANDREW WIGHT, SURVEYOR— DR. JAMES ANDERSON, . ‘ ‘< : : PeeLLo

XVII. DOMESTIC LIFE AND SOCIAL HABITS—DRESS—FOOD— DRINK, : : ‘ : : P ; : Oar

XVIII. DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES AND OUT-DOOR LABOUR, . . 134 eae

Vill CONTENTS.

CHAPTER.

XIX, THE MILL AND THE MILLER—THIRLAGE—FETCHING HOME THE MILLSTONE—MULTURES, . 5 . ° XX. CRAFTSMEN, ITINERANT AND OTHER—JOCK YOUNG AND TIBSDOO; a. . . . . : . : XXI. VAGRANT LIFE—FLETCHER OF SALTOUNS OPINIONS— TIBBIE CAMPBELL, ° e ° . ° . .

XXII. POPULAR AMUSEMENTS—COCK-FIGHTING—FOOT-BALL— WAD-SHOOTING, . . ° . . . . ° XXIII. SMUGGLING, LOWLAND AND HIGHLAND—PHILIP KEN- NEDY THE SMUGGLER — MALCOLM GILLESPIE THE

GAUGER, . io) Vian : an Ce XXIV. THE PROPHET OF BETHELNIE—STATE OF MEDICAL PRACTICE—SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS,. . . ‘

XXV. THE KIRK-SESSION AND ITS DUTIES—LAYING A GHOST— TIBBIE MORTIMER AND GEORDIE WATT, . . , XXVI, IN CONCLUSION —SUMMARY, SOCIAL, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS,, — ee APPENDEX#" =)./) 0) aan

PAGE.

208 215

ILLUSTRATIVE OF

MORTHERN, RURAL. LIFE IN, THE MEFCHTEENTH CENTURY.

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INTRODUCTORY—GENERAL STAGNATION OF AGRICULTURE DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

In the annals of Scottish agriculture, and specially of agriculture as it concerned that limited district in the north-eastern part of Scotland to which the jottings that follow will be chiefly confined, the eighteenth century was, throughout almost its whole course, a period of remarkable stagnation. It opened inauspiciously, in so faras the close of the preceding century had been marked by a series of very ungenial seasons, which brought with them disastrously deficient harvests, and want of food, amounting in many parts to absolute famine. ‘The method of tillage, too, had seen no improvement from time immemorial; and as a natural consequence of this, the land, even in ordinary seasons, had in many cases come to yield not more, but less than it had yielded in the time that had gone before. The system pursued was one of exhaustion, and the cultivated part of the soil was to a large extent getting quite worn out. The native cattle were small, ill-grown animals ; and they were correspondingly ill fed.

The spirit of enterprise was not yet abroad. For the first thirty years of the century, that is from 1700 to 1730, “the. medium price of lands sold in the county | of Aberdeen did not,” we are told, ‘exceed sixteen 2 years’ purchase of the then low rents.” It was not always that the lairds could find tenants willing to “keep in the rigs” at a merely nominal rent, until resort was had to the practice of stocking farms as occasion required on ‘‘ steelbow,” a technical term, the signification of which was that the landlord provided a “stocking” of cattle, corn, and implements, and the tenant became bound to return to him articles equal in quantity and quality at the end of his lease, if he could not free himself sooner. A man, if he were so minded, might readily obtain a “tack” on very easy terms, so far as a money or other payment was concerned; and that tack to last not for his own lifetime only, but for the period of one or two lives thereafter of such persons as he chose to name.

And small in amount as the money payments to rental were, they were not always, nor indeed generally, made off the produce of the land. It was chiefly through the manufacture of home-spun cloths, and the knitting of stockings for exportation that money came into the hands of the smaller tenants, sub-tenants, and cottar folks; and it was chiefly through them that it reached both the principal tenant and the proprietor, other sources of revenue hardly existing for either, in so far as local industry was concerned.

The roads they had were roads only by courtesy. Wheeled vehicles were scarcely known, and would have been but little serviceable if they had been more plentiful. The best frequented lines of road were not much else than mere tracks, that had taken their form from the hoof-marks of the cattle that traversed them ; a few stones being sometimes roughly thrown into the bottom of a soft bit, forming a kind of rude causeway, sometimes not. And thus came the story of a certain man and his mare. As he plodded along, driving the animal before him, with the pack saddle on her back, the wary beast boggled at a particular part in the road, where she had “laired” on a previous occasion,

Introductory. 3 and fairly refused to goon. But the mare had overlooked the fact that it was now in the drought of summer, whereas it had formerly been raw winter. And her master, failing to persuade her that it was safe to hold on her way, exclaimed ‘‘ Wae-worth ye, beastie ; yer memory’s a hantle better than your jeedement.”

The people dwelt almost of necessity much amongst themselves, living in a simple, homely style, on the produce of ‘their own cultivation. Observant strangers, in speaking of diversities in manners, and style of speech, among the common people, professed to note specific differences, if not between the inhabitants of one parish and the inhabitants of another, certainly between those of one district and those of other districts in the same shire ; and it might be, in some instances, not half-a-dozen miles apart. The state of matters was not unfavourable to the growth of certain virtues, such as neighbourliness, social sympathy, and the like. And along with these there was almost necessarily contractedness of view and lack of the spirit of progress. It was equally natural that there should exist a considerable tinge of superstitious feeling, manifesting itself in such forms as the prevailing beliefs in fairies, ghosts, witches, and water kelpies, as well as in a sort of character who seems to have held a midway place between the fully developed warlock, who had his commission directly from the Prince of Darkness, and the seer, or person originally gifted, more or less, with superhuman power which enabled him to cope with certain bodily ailments and various other of the ills that afflict humanity.

Among the peasantry generally, as indeed amongst other classes of society during the same period, religious feeling was in a rather dormant state. The prevailing sentiment was pretty much that which, at a later era, came to be described by the term ‘“ moderate,” understood in its worst sense. The “ Seceder,” when, in due time, he became an existing entity, here and there, was ordinarily regarded, and described as a pestilent fanatic simply ; the “ Missionar’,” who in his turn was held in similar repute, did not come on the scene till a later date. It is not very easy, and might not be altogether wise, to pronounce an explicit judgment on the social morality of the period, comparatively viewed. In the north-eastern part of Scotland the great religious movements that accompanied and followed the Reformation, down to the Revolution of 1688, did not pervade the commonalty to the same extent, nor stir their feelings to a like depth, as in districts further southward.. How far this may have been significant of, or have tended to promote, obtuseness of moral feeling in a comparatively rude state of society, we do not profess to say. But in so far as local records lead us, there does not at any rate appear to be much ground to believe that the social morality of the eighteenth century was in many of its phases of a higher or purer type than that of the century that has followed it.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, and even a little before it, the subject of improvement in agriculture had engaged the attention of men of intelligence ; chiefly men of some position, who, while they had a direct interest in the subject as landed proprietors, were in several cases also actively engaged in professional life or in commerce. Some of these to advanced theorising added successful practice in such matters as turnip cultivation and the establishment of a rotation of crops; and notably also in the planting of timber trees. But it took long time till their example, in the matter of improved husbandry, was generally followed by the tenants, who were, as a rule, equally devoid of means and of the spirit of enterprise. Prejudice in favour of the old system and against the new was strong, too ; and in some cases manifested itself in direct attempts to obstruct or defeat efforts toward improvement. Nor need we be altogether surprised at this. The.time bad not long gone by, when the highest agricultural wisdom

Introductory. 5 merely sought to conserve the experience of the past as a creed for the present, and a guide in the future.

And the changes mooted must have seemed exceedingly revolutionary. It was not at an early date in the century, but towards the latter part of it--somewhere between the years 1770 and 1780—that a decent woman in the district of Garioch, in Aberdeenshire, found herself left a widow, with two sons coming toward man’s estate. The family had cultivated the same farm for several generations, perfectly contented with their lot. It was a good farm ; but under a constant succession of cereal crops, with no variation except from oats to bere every third or fourth crop, even good “intoon” land did not improve ; and now the elder son and heir to the ‘‘tack”—lhke a headstrong young man, and disregarding the example of his seniors—would follow the new fashion of husbandry, which some of the neighbouring lairds had begun to practise. His mother was sadly distressed at the idea ; but what availed it that she had the sympathy of her younger and more timorous son if the other would have his way; his latest extravagance was the determination to apply lime-shells as a quickening manure to the exhausted and inert “rigs.” The perplexed widow could only send for a neighbour farmer of acknowledged sagacity and prudence to decide what ought to be done. The neighbour came, duly took note of what was going on, and, seeing the hopelessness of the case, proceeded to discharge his office of counsellor faithfully ; and of course, very adversely to the youthful improver, winding up with this deliverance— Weel, ’oman, I dinna believe that that loon ’ll halt till he herry ye oot at the door, an’ syne gae to the sodgers.” ‘The result of this “ finding” was that the hot-headed young man threw up his birthright and was paid off with the sum of £30 sterling, his cannier brother assuming the office of farmer in his stead. The wilful young man did not go to the soldiers, it may be said, but betook himself to the county town for the purpose of acquiring as perfectly as he could the handicraft of the blacksmith, then in a rather’ primitive state in country districts. And having fairly mastered his business at a somewhat mature stage of his life, he set up his “‘smiddy,” building his fire wholly of coals in place of home-made charcoal, and otherwise prosecuting his calling in accordance with his own advanced notions: although it was not he, but his son, who followed in succession to him in the same business, whose services came to be in repute in the first quarter of the present century as the only blacksmith over a wide district who understood, and could, with his own hand, fit up all the iron work of the thrashing mill and winnowing machine, then coming into general use, and if need were of the ‘‘ meal mill” as well.

Generally, the latent energies of the people, which in the early part of the eighteenth century had been starved down by the meagre style in which physical life was sustained on the one hand, and the discouragement to enterprise found in the existence of heritable jurisdictions and. the repressive fiscal system of the time on the other, had been only partially stirred at its close. Old customs; old habits of life, thought, and speech ; antiquated implements, and obsolete modes of operation still kept their place with a wonderful tenacity ; and the march of improvement, clogged as it was by sundry extraneous impediments, the weight of which we have difficulty under our greatly altered conditions in realising, was yet but slow and halting.

TOPOGRAPHICAL AND SOCIAL—-ABERDEENSHIRE POLL BOOK — A PICTURE FROM IT—~ HEATHER AND DUB BUILDINGS—-AN OLD FASHIONED HAMLET.

For the purpose of arriving at a reasonably distinct notion of our country districts in their general features a century or a century and a-half ago, we shall do well to bear in mind that, along with the prevailing paucity of passable roads and absence of bridges on the larger streams, much of the surface of the land remained in its natural state. Cultivation was more picturesque than systematic in its developments ; bogs, “mosses,” and marshes continued undrained, covering in the aggregate a greater extent of the superficies of the country than it is easy now to realise. Natural forest grew in some places now bare enough of trees, but thousands of acres of the most valuable timber-land planted in the latter half of the eighteenth century had, prior to that date, produced little but stunted heather and clumps of broom.

If we go on to inquire how the rural population were distributed and how they were occupied, the contrast between the life of the people then, and what it has become since, is found to very marked. There is perhaps no county in Scotland in which materials fitted to illustrate this point are more abundant than in Aberdeenshire. By the aid of the Poll Book* alone, and a

* The ‘‘ List of Polable Persons within the shire of Aberdeen,” printed by the gentlemen of the county in 1842, with the sanction of the Spalding Club, and under the editorial care of Dr. John Stuart, from MS. in the possession of General Gordon of Cairness, is almost unique in its way. In the year 1693, and again in 1695, a poll-tax was imposed by the Government of the time on all adults, for the purpose of paying off arrears due to the army, &c. The tax consisted of 6s, Scots per head, on each grown-up person, male certain measure of local knowledge, the attentive topoeraphic student might readily callup to the mind’s eye quite a distinct picture of any given locality. He would be able not only to form an estimate, very nearly correct, of the actual population of any particular parish 180 years ago; but could also ascertain how that population was employed, and how it was located—the forms of occupation corresponding to a great extent with those which had obtained for some hundreds of years, as we shall afterwards see. He would find the Poll List for the parish headed by the laird and his family and servants ; then, apart from them, the tenants and sub-tenants, with generally a group, more or less numerous, under some principal tenant, of cottars and their wives, of “‘grassmen” and their wives; and occasionally a “lone” woman or two in a “ mailt house.” Such was the more specifically farm establishment in which the relation of the various members of the small community to each other were readily intelligible.. At the next place we have the hamlet. Here were congregated sundry minor farmers, along with the weaver or ““wabster,” and the tailor and smith, each of whom usually had his croft or piece of land to till, and his “lair” in the moss to furnish him with fuel. The two latter, important enough functionaries in their respective spheres, do not figure so frequently in the Poll Lists as we, with our modern notions, might expect. The people were not given to variety in ‘“ changeable suits of apparel” to the like extent that their descendants are. ‘lhe common male dress consisted chiefly of coarse and female, and 6s. additional if the man had a trade, such as that of a tailor or smith. And if he had property he had to paya fortieth part of its value ; while if he chose to call himself a “gentleman,” his poll was £3 Scots. Pretty stiff all this no doubt, considering the value of money at the time ; and so apparently thought those immediately concerned, for it was with great difficulty they could be got to pay the poll-tax. The Poll Book gives complete lists of the adult persons in each parish. Comprehensive as was the poll-tax of 1696, it produced in Aberdeenshire only the sum of £28,148 7s, 1d. Scots, or £2,345 18s, 7d._ sterling.

Topographical and Social. 9 woollen, home-spun, and home tailored, with a scanty supply of linen, and thuscomparatively little professional tailoring was needed. As for the blacksmith, with scarcely a particle of iron in the plough or any other farm implement, and no horse shoeing to speak of— even where he was capable of doing it, which was not always the case—he could meet the wants of a very wide district. It was necessary, indeed, that he should do so ere he could find employment; and, in some cases, the smith had his “‘sucken” bound to attend his smiddy just as the miller, who had his place on every laird’s land, had his “ bun’ sucken” up to a much later date—the minister of a Highland parish, indeed, states that by an “immemorial assessment,” the smiths in his region were paid in meal by the farmers, they being in some cases also entitled to “the head of every cow slaughtered in the parish.” At the hamlet, too, we should find the ‘‘chapman” or ‘“ pack-merchant,” a very important member of the trading community in those days ; who could indeed have commanded a good deal more of ready cash, in most cases, than the ordinary class of farmers could. The “stocks” of individual chapmen are valued in the Poll Lists, in some cases, at as high a figure as 500 merks; and in a few instances at even more than that; and taking into account the relative value of money, 500 merks then was probably quite as large a capital, relatively, as many dealers in soft goods'can boast of now who exhibit their wares by the medium of a grand shop front, in place of undoing the. pack on the old kitchen “deece.” In addition to the classes named, the “herd” figures pretty regularly in the lists. He was not seldom a grown-up person of the male sex; perhaps some one who had been lamed of a hand or arm, or who was of more or less deficient intellect. And his mode of living was apt to be dependant and precarious ; “ herd in summer, but begs his meat in winter,” and “herd on charity, his winter maintenance being gratis,” are definitions of this official that repeatedly occur. In any case the “herd” was an indispensable functionary. And we now and then find in the lists such people as the “tinkler,” the “ horner,” the “pewterer,” and more rarely the “ pyper;” designations which sufficiently explain the occupations of those who bore them.

Let us attempt to sketch the general features in the outward aspect of one of these hamlets, or “ clachans,” as they were called inthe Highlands. The site of the hamlet had at first been determined, perhaps, by the presence of a gushing spring of “caller” water, or the vicinity of some “ wimplin burnie ;” or by the fertility of the soil at that particular spot ; for men did not then ordinarily resort to such artificial means as the use of the suction pump to supply them with one of the essentials of life, nor did they contemplate setting themselves deliberately down to reclaim barren moors and hillsides for the sake of the other. They rather chose those situations where it was likeliest that bread would be given them without extra toul, and where their water would be sure so long as perennial fountains, fed in hills and heights, should seek the gladsome daylight where undulating hollows and rifts in earth’s surface allowed it. It thus came to pass that the hamlet, in respect of site, had frequently a fair share of the elements of natural beauty ; and in time, these came usually to be enhanced by the presence of some goodly trees clustering about the place.

The walls of the straw-thatched cottages or huts were composed, in the upper part at least, of “feal” or turf; or it might be ‘‘ heather and dub,” or mud and straw. ‘The roofing “ cupples,” firmly embedded in the walls at bottom, were fastened with wooden pins a-top to a short cross bar, the roof-tree extending from end to end of the house over this bar, and between the points of the cupple legs. Stout binders, formed of saplings sawn up the middle, were placed horizontally down the rib of the.roof, and over these again transversely the “ watlin,” consisting of smaller sticks split

Topographical and Social. 11 with a wedge. The “watlin,’ which, with the cupple legs and binders, was quite visible from the interior, carried the “ divots,” and these latter the “thack,” ordinarily fastened on with “strae rapes.” Each house consisted of a “but” and a “ben,” with little variation in the character or extent of accommodation embraced.

In certain districts the style of building described was known as “ Auchenhalrig,” from its having been first used at a place of that name in Morayshire. Of the Auchenhalrig walls and the mode of constructing them, a detailed description informs us that :—“ This work is built of small stones and mud, or clay, mixed with straw. The proportions of these materials required to make a rood of thirty-six square yards are . . about thirty cart loads of stones, ten cart loads of clay or mud, and twenty-four stones weight of good fresh straw.” The straw and mud being. properly worked together, ‘‘ twenty-two inches are sufficient thickness for a wall of seven feet high—if higher, they should be two feet thick—carried up perpendicularly the same as other walls, and care should be taken never to build more than two or three feet in height in any one part in the same day; if raised more, the wall is apt to swell, for which there is no remedy but to pull it down and rebuild.” These walls were ‘‘ equal to the weight of any roof commonly put on mason work,” and would, “when properly built, and kept well under thatch, last for more than a century.”

Here then, in our hamlet, we have a number, varying from four or five to a dozen, of these homely yet tolerably comfortable houses, with their walls of rude “ concrete’—some with their adjuncts of barn and byre —planted down ina miscellaneous sort of way, as if they had dropt from the clouds, or been scattered broadcast over the knoll by Titanic hands. A winding road, or track rather, partly fenced in by round-headed “ feal dykes,” not in the best state of repair, leads up to the hamlet. ‘This road expands into “ the toon loan,” and loses itself somewhere about the “ head of the toon” at this end ; most likely it loses itself at the other end among ‘‘ the rigs outbye ;” or, at farthest, about the margin of the “moss,” where peats, or more likely “sods ” only, are dug as fuel for the community. About the place we find here and there an exceedingly rustic sort of garden. In these “ yards,” which occur in no regular order—are so placed, in fact, that a stranger could hardly guess from the position of any one of them to which of the indwellers it belonged—may be found, besides certain useful vegetables, as “ kail,” green or red, and “ syboes,” afew old fashioned herbs and flowers. Some clusters of rich-scented honeysuckle, a plant of hardy southernwood, peppermint, and wormwood ; with, mayhap, also a slip or two of “smeird docken,” the sovereign virtues of whose smooth green leaves, in respect of sore fingers or broken shins, commend it to careful consideration. And, as already indicated, in almost every case we find trees about the hamlet. A few ashes about the loan head, some rough scrubby elder (or “‘ bourtree ”) bushes about the corners of the gardens, and, it may be, a plane-tree enriching the scene with its mass of dark-green foliage. Then, in some favoured corner there is the rowan tree, or possibly a pair of these growing side by side like twin sisters with their arms interlaced. They have yielded many a slip for crosses to put above the byre-door, on Rood even, to fend the bestial from “ uncanny fowk.” For, as we know,

Rowan tree and red thread, Keep the witches fae their speed.

Such, in a general way, was the outward aspect of the hamlet and its surroundings, il why std eid hd Od te a aig? b

RURAL OCCUPATION——-OLD LAND MEASURES—THE PLOUGH- GATE AND DAVOCH—EARLY LAND LAWS——-EMANCIPATION OF THE NATIVI OR SERFS—-REMAINS OF EARLY OCCUPA- TION IN SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

In early notices of agricultural matters, we now and again stumble upon such expressions relative to the measurements of land as “ oxgate,” “ploughgate,” ‘‘forty-shilling land,” and somewhat more rarely, “ davoch.” By the learned industry of Mr. Cosmo Innes, it has been settled “ beyond reasonable doubt,” that an oxgate meant 13acres. A ploughgate consisted of 104 acres—it and the forty-shilling land being equivalents—and the davoch was “as much as four ploughs could till in a year.”* There was, too, the “husband land,” which consisted of 26 acres, being the extent of land held by a single husbandman. Lach husbandman furnished two oxen to the common plough, and, with the four pairs thus supplied, the ploughgate, which was a joint occupancy, was tilled. This principle of joint holdings, which found its extreme development in the “run rig” system, where two tenants cultivated alternate ridges on the same field, was well fitted to breed difficulties in the practical business of cultivation ; and so the overlords had rules of “ good neighbourhood ” established, under which the several tenants were bound to perform their respective shares of the farm labour at the sight of “birley men” chosen by themselves. Reece eee! ee 8 * Strathbogie was of old divided into forty-eight davochs, each containing as much as four ploughs could till in a year. (Antiq. Shires, vol. IV.) Hence the phrase ‘ the aucht-an’-forty dauch.”