Series 3 > Selections from the Monymusk Papers, 1713-1775

INTRODUCTION
xix
there were two open beds with chaff mattresses. In the
fire house or living-room there was the usual large open
hearth with a crook or iron hook suspended in the chimney
on which the pots were hung. The fuel was, of course,
peat carried home from the moss in creels, which, along
with the muck creels and tubs, were stored in the men’s
house, for excepting the bed there was no other furniture
there. Every day there was baking to do, and for this
the girdle was the indispensable instrument. The porridge
pot was almost always beside the fire, and the ‘ sowen
bowie ’ kept on tap a supply of sowens, a dish made from
a mixture of flour of oatmeal and water. When Morgan
returned from the fields at midday the family sat down
at the long table to eat their oat or barley cakes, washed
down with ale of their own brewing. There might be kail
brose or porridge or sowens and, on rare occasions, salted
meat from the ‘ beef stand ’ in the inner chamber. For
the housewife there were endless jobs to do, including
milking and butter-making. Moreover, there was the
spinning-wheel which filled in every odd minute of the
day.1 Morgan had a horse for riding round the estate,
and on his death there stood in his yard, sheltered by his
oat barn, a stack of bear. Away at the Mains, where he
had been a well-known figure, he had a small stack of
bear yet to be collected. On 9th February 1738 all his
effects were valued at £185, 12s. 8d. Scots.
Lower in the social scale was Christian Gellan, whose
effects were sold on 30th October 1752.2 For some years
previously she had held a small croft of about 2J acres as
well as grass for a cow. The list of goods sold suggests
that her house must have been a very modest one indeed,
1 For a discussion of the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the
domestic duties of the housewife see Ivy Pinchbeck, Women and Industrial
Revolution (1930). 2 Infra, p. 16.