Ayrshire > Volume 1

336 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
when divine service was going on. The parish, however,
was cursed by the streams of beggars, mostly Irish, who
passed along the coach road from Ayr to Portpatrick,
and who were importune and violent in their cravings.
The salary of the schoolmaster of Straiton was the
same as that of his comrade in Kirkoswald, £5 12s 6d,
and it is not surprising to read that there was very
little choice of men when the frequent vacancy occurred,
or that the teachers only made the village school a
stepping-stone to a higher and more lucrative position.
The parish suffered in population from the conjoining
of small farms so as to make large ones. It had been
the home of a considerable number of smugglers, but the
extension of the excise laws had reduced their profits
and increased their risks, and they had taken to less
dubious ways of earning their living. The decay of
smuggling had, however, reduced some families, that
were wont to live plentiful^, to great poverty, and had
even compelled them to turn to the parish for support.
There were, however, few if any beggars. The
inhabitants of Dailly were comprised in 368 families,
with an average of nearly four and a half persons to each
family. " As marriage is not discouraged," says the
parish minister, " either by a deficiency of the necessaries
of life, or b}? an excess of its luxuries, the number of
those who continue unmarried after the usual age of
entering into that connection is comparatively very
small." Almost all the people were of Scottish origin,
only a few being from Ireland. Many of the women
in the lower ranks employed themselves " in working
up the inferior wool of the country into a coarse and
flimsy cloath, which was carried to the fairs of Ayr and
Maybole, and bought up for exportation at the rate of
eightpence to tenpence per yard." With the proceeds
they bought finer wool, which they made into clothes
for themselves and their families. The improvement
in the style of living during the twenty or thirty years
prior to 1794 had been so great as to amount almost
to a revolution. At the beginning of the period the