Farming was based on an open field system, with separate rigs culti-

vated by different people, though it was possible to have more than one

rig. The size of the rigs could vary from one district to another, but was

usually about a quarter acre. The rigs were divided by baulks (banks) of

uncultivated land which provided a means of communication both for men

and animals. The inefficiency of such a system is obvious, and frequently

exchanges of rigs were negotiated in order to create larger holdings —— though

clearly one uncooperative person could block an arrangement beneficial to

many others. But maximum efficiency depended in the end on enclosure of

a field for the exclusive use of one farmer.

For many hundreds of years the main crops were oats and bere (a hardy

form of four-row barley). When the balance of production and demand was

upset by a run of bad harvests there was severe deprivation or even famine — —

which occurred a number of times during the 1600s, when a contributing

factor seems to have been a more severe climate than in. earlier or later cen-

turies. When this happened people could be forced to become vagrant beggars

or robbers in order to survive. The poor law of the time was hopelessly

inadequate, and the responsibility for the care of the poor vested in the Kirk

Sessions was restricted to the poor of their own parish. Beggars and vagrants

were everywhere regarded without much sympathy, as they were a charge on

the rest of the population.

Even the tenant farmer suffered severely in times of famine. He had to

pay his rent mainly in grain, and in bad years he might be forced to eat some

of the grain set aside as rent, or even in extreme conditions eat the seed grain

for the following year.

Periods of food shortage sometimes came in cycles lasting several years, as

in the late 1 690s, and this affected very seriously the resistance of the popu-

lation to disease.

The tenants on an estate were compelled to send their grain to a miller on

that estate who, like the farmers, paid his rent for the mill to the landowner in

grain. In arable farming areas like Fife landowners were dealers in grain,

and depended on their tenants for their supplies. The landowner’s income

came, in large part, from selling his grain in other parts of Scotland including

Edinburgh and the Highlands.

This practice which obliged tenants and sub-tenants on an estate to send

their grain to a particular miller who was also a tenant of their landlord was

known as ‘thirlage’. Millers were a much maligned group, as the tenant-farmers

had to give to the miller a fixed percentage (or ‘multure’) of the grain sent

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