©F SCOTLAND.

253

SECT. IV.

OF the mode of living adopted by the labourers

IN SCOTLAND , AND THE PRICE OF PROVISIONS, AS AF-FECTING RURAL LABOUR.

The provision or food of farm-servants and labourers is va-rious in the different districts of Scotland . In the South-eastLowlands, farm-servants, boarded in their master’s house,have oatmeal porridge uniformly to breakfast; for the mostpart the same to supper ; and broth and barley-bread, withpork, beef, mutton, eggs, or cheese to dinner ; in some in-stances, in place of porridge, they have broth, or milk andpotatoes to supper. Those living in their own houses al-ways use porridge for breakfast, which is eaten along withmilk, mostly skimmed, or small beer, or a species of beermade with treacle and water. For dinner* potatoe broth,or potatoes boiled down to a kind of thick soup, with asmall quantity of any kind of fat, and seasoned with pepperand salt, eaten along with barley-bread, and sometimes withthe addition of a little pickled pork or salt herring. Forsupper, bread and milk, or potatoes and milk. Beef or mut-ton is used very sparingly by this class of servants, but boththese, and wheaten-bread, are gaining ground *.

Day labourers having no conveniency for cooking where

* Upon many farms in the south-east Lowlands, the hinds are in the practiceof buying a pig six or eight weeks old, for which they pay from 14 s. to 16 s.,and which they feed upon skimmed milk, barley-dust, and the refuse of theirpotatoes, till alxmt Martinmas, when the animal is slaughtered, and salted forwinter use, which enables the thrifty housewife* to have flesh moat for her fami-ly’s dinner, two or three times a*week, for six months in the year.