Series 2 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society

INTRODUCTION
217
preparateiv ’ in time coming.1 In 1670 it was enacted that
the tenants in the parish of Forbes (following the Militia
Act.of 1669) must pay their soldiers for this present militia
‘ ane constant fie in land and money,’ and that ‘ ewry
shoulder of the militia within the pariochin of Forbes sail
hav after Witsonday nixt and als long as the militia sail
happin to continow yeirly ten markes money.’ 2 In 1671
there is reference to the distribution of arms for the militia,
and the exaction from tenants, cottars or grassmen of
‘ so jours fies, clothing, money or vages for the randiwowes.’3
In 1677 there are two Acts, one for the principal properties
and the other for Tolmaads,4 that each inhabitant accord¬
ing to his social position is to bear arms for his own de¬
fence, the arms appropriate to each class being specified;
which reads like a revival of the legislation of fifteenth-
century Parliaments on this head.5
Of duties exigible from tenants, there is one seemingly
not recorded elsewhere, viz. carr meall,6 which Dr. Wilson
interprets carr mail, payment for the right to rear calves.
Of unfamiliar measures of capacity, we should note the
Haddish of meal, exigible by an ordinance of 1670 :7 it
is quoted in dictionaries from a legal document of 1814,
but is now obsolete. It is said to have meant in some places
one third, in others one quarter, of a peck. Dr. Wilson
suggests that it is a corruption of half-dish. The Muttie,
ordered in 1676 to be kept and precisely measured along
with the mill peck, of which it is declared to be a quarter,
in each of Lord Forbes’s mills,8 is said in the Dialect
Dictionary to contain half a stone of meal. The moudefow,
1 Pp. 320-21. 2 P. 279.
4 PP- 313. 315-
6 Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ii. 10, 45, 226.
7 P. 279. 8 P. 304.
3 Pp. 282-83.
" P- 234.