Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (1.1968/1971)

180

ALEXANDER FENTON

and West Lothian, for example, six animal teams
consisting of four oxen preceded by a pair of
horses were frequent.
The difference in emphasis between horses and
oxen was clearly regional in the sixteenth century,
just as in later times. It can be shown, for example,
that horses were the main plough animals in a
western and northern arc from Galloway and
Ayrshire, through highland Perthshire and An-
gus, and on by Inverness-shire to Caithness. In
the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) teams
of four oxen were used, yoked abreast, or four
or three horses, the latter especially in Orkney,
perhaps as a result of the influence of the High-
lands. In the north and west, and in seventeenth
century Galloway, light, single-stilted ploughs
were associated with these teams, but in the
Highlands generally there was a small version of
the “old Scots” plough, a four-sided implement
with a pair of handles set in a very upright posi-
tion. Thus, regional differences in teams reflected
differences in plough types.
The question that begins to arise is whether or
not the heavy plough drawn by large teams of
oxen, that could go beyond the standard eight
up to twelve (in North East Scotland only), is to
be thought of as having displaced a lighter plough
and a smaller team, perhaps in the early medieval
period. This suggestion is given probability by
the fact that in the several early manuscript illu-
strations where ploughs and teams appear, the
number of animals is 2, 3, or 4, but never more.
The heavy plough with its big team, from this
viewpoint, is an intrusive element (for much of
Britain, not Scotland alone). It is to this element
that the plough and team of the Plough-Song
belongs.
The oxen in the team have their particular
names. Brandie is applied to an animal that is
almost entirely brown, with a stripe across the
back. It was a common cow name until the
twentieth century, mainly in the south of Scot-
land. Cromack is an animal with crooked horns.
The name was widespread in the Scottish dia-

lects in the form crummie into the twentieth cen-
tury. Hakey, a cow with a white face; also a
general term for a pet cow. Now mainly literary.
Humly, a hornless or polled animal, also survives
into twentieth century dialectal Scots. Garie is
applied to an animal striped or variegated on the
back or sides. The word marrow, a partner, mate,
applied attributively to the name, may be in
reference to the fact that the oxen were yoked
together in pairs.
These, like the other names - belly, bullock,
white horn, gray horn, are descriptive of the
animals’ characteristics in temperament or physi-
cal appearance, and convey some sense of a feel-
ing of docility, obedience, and patient strength in
the team.
Manpower. The reference to the gadwand is a
reminder that at this date, and indeed till the end
of the eighteenth century and sporadically into
the nineteenth, the team was controlled by a
driver, also known as the caller (a Scots term
meaning “driver”) or gadsman, and the plough-
man, the man between the stilts, was responsible
for controlling the plough alone.
A vivid description of ploughing with a team
of oxen urged on by a driver occurs in the “Tai 11
of the Foxe, that begylit (beguiled) the Wolf”,
one of Robert Henryson’s “moral fables”, written
c. 1450-1480:
In elderis dayis, as Esope can declair,
Thair was ane Husband, quhilk (who) had ane
pleuch to steir..
His use wes ay (always) in morning to ryse air (early);
Sa happinnit him in streiking tyme (time of first
ploughing) of yeir
Airlie in the morning to follow flfurth his feir (partner).
Unto the pleuch, bot his gadman and he;
His stottis (young oxen) he straucht (arranged)
with “Benedicite”.
The Caller cryit: how, haik upon hicht;
Hald draucht, my dowis (“doves”, dears); syne
broddit thame ffull sair.