The Cottage, the Bothy and the Kitchen, an Inquiry Into the Condition of Agricultural Labourers in Scotland (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861. Excerpt: ... ABEKDEENSHIKE There seems to be a pretty general opinion throughout the country, founded on the statements of certain persons occupying prominent public positions, that the high percentage of illegitimacy in Aberdeenshire is in a great degree attributable to the prevalence of the bothy in that county. In face of such opinion and assertions, it was hardly less curious than it was unexpected, to find, as we did, that the bothy, so far from being universal, is not even the ruling but the exceptional mode of housing farm-servants in the county. Another very singular thing in connection with the statistics of illegitimacy, and the theories of some of our moralists thereanent, is the fact that there are more small holdings in this county than in any we have yet visited. There are fewer large farms, fewer bothies--two things which are regarded by some as the most fruitful sources of illegitimacy--and yet we have here a higher percentage of that vice than in any other county in Scotland with the single exception of Banff. In 1860 the percentage of illegitimacy here was 14.7--5.6 above the average over the whole of Scotland. From these facts it appears pretty clear that we must seek for the causes of an inordinate illegitimacy otherwhere than merely in large farms and in bothies. First, as to wages in this county (of which, hy the by, there was no return in the paper on the subject recently issued to Parliament), we find in the far north--a bare and bleak enough region naturally, yet brought into a wonderful cultivation by the energy and enterprise of the farmers, who really seem to have surmounted greater difficulties in making the land productive than any other of their class in Scotland--that the money received by ploughmen varies from. 14 to 20 per ...