Early Agriculture - A' Chiad Àitachas

The ways in which land has been both held and utilised in the Outer Hebrides throughout the centuries is both complex and intriguing. In recent years people have looked back in our history to pre-crofting times - and even to pre-runrig times. Previously it had been assumed that runrig went far back into antiquity but it is now thought that runrig replaced an earlier system of enclosure which could have ‘embodied a different system of landholding and not just a different way of farming the land’. Recent studies also suggest that the earlier pattern of settlement was on a more individual, differentialed basis, pre-dating the constellated form of the baile. Field research of ruined settlements and of the remains of enclosure boundary walls is contributing to these more recent ideas. Plentiful evidence of runrig land use is available throughout the whole of the Western Isles. The Old Statistical Account (OSA) of 1794 gives the oft-quoted description of runrig as ’a little commonwealth of villagers, whose houses or huts are huddled close together with little regard to form, order, or cleanliness, and whose lands are yearly divided by lot for tillage, while their cattle graze on the pastures in common.’ A more recent description speaks of, ‘small, open-field townships organised around runrig and practising a communal system of farming based on in-field and out-field cropping.’

This way of life was very labour-intensive and relied largely on hand tools, especially the spade and the cas-chrom, these being used to cultivate the lazy-beds which formed the basis of runrig. Lazy-beds were cultivation ridges where the soil between the ridges was ‘turned’ on to the ridges. The OSA of Harris speaks of the lazy-beds being built in a ‘straight, circular, serpentine, or zig-zag direction, round the intervening rocks, pools, or bogs.’ The introduction of the plough into land use in the Hebrides is, in itself, worthy of study. The earliest forms seem to be the small wooden version (crann nan gad) and the ristle (an crann Turcach) for cutting through rough ground. (See the book by Hogg).

The barley grain was processed by small scale technology which was well adapted to the scale of cultivation being practised. There were different methods used for drying the grain before it was milled. The simplest of these was to set the sheaf on fire and then to smother it; this is described by numerous writers and is known as ‘graddening’. But kilns have existed in the runrig townships and the remains of these can be seen in many of the old townships (seann bhaile), situated usually along the coastline. The design of the kiln differs slighty among the different islands and their form remained, in relatively unaltered form, up into the earlier decades of this century.

Three mains methods were used for grinding the grain after it had been dried. The shoulder quern ( a’ chrotag) is the basic mortar and pestle where the grain was placed in the recepticle in the lower stone and pounded by a hand-stone. The circular quern ( a’ bhra) was also used for small-scale processing. An upper and lower stone was used, with the upper stone being turned by hand and the grain was fed into the throat of this upper stone and ground into meal between the two stones. Both the shoulder quern and the circular quern was used at home where small amounts of grain could quickly be processed. At township level, small and ingenious horizontal mills were built along the neighbouring streams. These are known as click mills, black mills or Norse mills. Recent research shows that such mills were in use in Ireland long before the Norse era, but the name is unlikely to change nevertheless. Such mills are still in use in many countries throughout Europe and Asia - from China to India and Iran, Turkey, Greece and Morocco. It is likely that this type of mill arrived in the Hebrides via Ireland. Over 300 sites of Norse mill have been found in Lewis and it is likely that many sites have been denuded.