Part 4
summer. Of course in a large county a distinction must be drawn between the coast temperature and that of the high lying districts such as Braemar. The fringe round the coast is in the summer less warm than the inland parts, a result due to the coolness of the enclosing sea, but in the winter this state of affairs is reversed and the uplands are held in the grip of a hard frost while the coast-side has little or none.
The mean temperature of Scotland is 47°, while Aberdeen has 46°·4 and Peterhead 46°·8. That of Braemar, the most westerly station in the county, though in reality very little lower, is arrived at by entirely different figures; the temperature being much higher during July, August and September, but lower in December, January and February. Braemar is 1114 feet above sea-level and since there is a regular and uniform decline in temperature to the extent of 1° for every 270 feet above the sea, the temperature of this hill-station should be low. As a matter of fact, from June to September it is only 9° and in October 7°·5 below that of London. Yet its maximum is 10° higher than is recorded at Aberdeen, only in winter its minimum is 20° lower than the minimum of the coast.
Braemar and Peterhead as lying at the two extremes of the county may be compared. Peterhead receives the uninterrupted sweep of the easterly breezes, for it has no shelter or protection either of forests or mountains. The impression a visitor takes is that Peterhead is an exceptionally cold place. As a fact, its mean winter temperature is above the average for Scotland, but the lack of shelter and the constant motion of the air give an impression of coldness. In the summer and autumn its mean falls below that of Scotland. It is therefore less cold in the cold months and less warm in the warm months than Braemar and has a seasonal variation of only 16°·3 between winter and summer, whereas Edinburgh has a range of 21° and London of 26°.
[Illustration: Inverey near Braemar]
The rainfall over the whole county is also moderate, ranging from less than 25 inches at Peterhead—the driest part of the area—to 40 inches at Braemar, and 32 at Aberdeen. This is a small rainfall compared with 60 or 70 inches on parts of the west coast. The driest months in Aberdeenshire are April and May, and generally speaking less rain falls in the early half of the year when the temperature is rising than in the later half when the temperature is on the decline. Two inches is about the average for each month from February to June, but October, November and December are each over three inches. The most of the rainfall of Scotland comes from the west and south. This explains why the west coast is so much wetter than the east. The westerly winds from the Atlantic, laden with moisture, strike upon the high lands of the west, but exhaust themselves before they reach the watershed and, having precipitated their moisture between that and the coast, they reach the east coast comparatively dry. Braemar just under the watershed is relatively dry. Its situation as an elevated valley, 1114 feet above sea-level and surrounded on three sides by hills of from three to four thousand feet, and the fact that it is 60 miles from the sea combine to make it one of the most bracing places and give it one of the finest summer climates in the British Isles. This sufficiently accounts for its popularity as a health resort. May is its driest month, October its wettest.
Easterly winds bring rain to the coast, but as a rule the rain extends no further inland than 20 miles. Easterly winds prevail during March, April and May, which make this season the most trying part of the year for weakly people. In summer the winds are often northerly, but the prevailing winds of the year, active for 37 per cent. of the 365 days or little less than half, are west and south-west. East winds bring fog, and this is most prevalent in the early summer, June being perhaps the worst month. The greatest drawback to the climate from an agriculturist’s point of view is the lateness of the spring. The summer being short, a late spring means a late harvest, which is invariably unsatisfactory.
The low rainfall of the county is favourable to sunshine. Aberdeen has 1400 hours of sunshine during the year in spite of fogs and east winds; the more inland parts being beyond the reach of sea-fog have an even better record.
The great objection—an objection taken by folks who have spent part of their life in South Africa or Canada—is the variableness of the climate from day to day. There is not here any fixity for continued periods of weather such as obtains in these countries. The chief factor in this variability is our insular position on the eastern side of the Atlantic. When, on rare occasions, as sometimes happens in June or in September, the atmosphere is settled, Aberdeenshire enjoys for a few weeks weather of the most salubrious and delightful kind.
10. The People—Race, Language, Population.
The blood of the people of Aberdeenshire, though in the main Teutonic, has combined with Celtic and other elements, and has evolved a distinctive type, somewhat different in appearance and character from what is found in other parts of Scotland. How this amalgamation came about must be explained at some length.
The earliest inhabitants of Britain must have crossed from Europe when as yet there was no dividing North Sea. They used rough stone weapons (see p. 114) and were hunters living upon the products of the chase, the mammoth, reindeer and other animals that roamed the country. Such were _palaeolithic_ (ancient stone) men. Perhaps they never reached Scotland: at least there is no trace of them in Aberdeenshire. They were followed by _neolithic_ (new stone) men, who used more delicately carved weapons, stone axes, and flint arrows. Traces of these are to be found in Aberdeenshire. A few short cists containing skeletal remains have been found in various parts of the county. In the last forty years some fifteen of these have been unearthed. From these anthropologists conclude that neolithic men lived here at the end of the stone age, men of a muscular type, of short stature and with broad short faces. They were mighty hunters hunting the wild ox, the wolf and the bear in the dense forests which, after the Ice Age passed, overspread the north-east. They clothed themselves against the cold in the skins of the animals which they made their prey and were a rude, savage, hardy race toughened by their mode of life and their fierce struggle for existence. They did not live by hunting alone; they possessed herds of cattle, swine and sheep and cultivated the ground but probably only to a slight extent. Their weapons were rude arrow-heads, flint knives and flint axes; and a considerable number of these primitive weapons as well as the bones of red-deer and the primeval ox—_bos primigenius_—have been recovered from peat-mosses and elsewhere throughout the district. Such have been found at Barra, at Inverurie and at Alford.
Besides these remains, have been found urns made of boulder clay, burned by fire and rudely ornamented. These were very likely their original drinking vessels, afterwards somewhat modified as food vessels, and were, it is supposed, deposited in graves with a religious motive in accordance with the belief common among primitive peoples that paradise is a happy hunting-ground in which the activities of the present life will continue under more favourable conditions.
In addition to these relics the county has a great number of stone circles, circles of large upright boulders set up not at hap-hazard but evidently with some definite object in view. These will be dealt with in a later chapter. The probability is that the so-called Pictish houses, the earth or Eirde houses found on Donside and the lake dwellings at Kinnord already referred to, were the homes of these people. But the whole subject is by no means clear. The general opinion is that the north-east was first inhabited by Picts, who may or may not have been Iberians, and that after the Picts came the Celts; but some critics hold that the Picts were only earlier Celts. In any case the Stone Age was succeeded by the Bronze Age, when Bronze took the place of Stone in the formation of weapons. The Celts made their way through Central France to Britain and ultimately to Scotland. Unlike the people they found in possession of Scotland, they were tall (5 ft. 9 in.) These are the ancestors of the Gaelic speaking people of Scotland. They are supposed to have amalgamated to some extent with the Neolithic men whom they found on the spot, and it is certain that they were christianised at an early period. Later on Teutonic tribes, tall, longheaded and fairhaired men crossed from the Baltic to Britain and in due course they too reached Aberdeenshire. But up to the time of David I (1124-1153) the population and institutions of the north-east were entirely Celtic. The Saxon or Teutonic element was introduced by way of the coast and the trading towns. From the towns it spread to the country districts. When Henry II expelled the Flemish traders from England many migrated to the north and formed settlements in many parts of the country, establishing trade and handicraft, particularly weaving, and reclaiming waste land. The defeat of Comyn, the Earl of Buchan, by Bruce in 1308, when Bruce harried Buchan from end to end and spared none, opened the way for lowland immigrants and not only gave an impetus to Teutonic settlements, but helped to kill out the Celtic language and the Celtic ways. These immigrants are really the ancestors of the present Aberdeenshire people, but they have been greatly modified by absorbing the Celtic population and mixing with it, for though reduced by slaughter, and by an exodus to the hills, it had not entirely disappeared. Scandinavians from Norway and Denmark also found a footing at various periods in this north-eastern region and these elements are all blended in the modern Aberdonian. Celt, Saxon, Fleming and Scandinavian came in one after the other and possessed the land, forming a new people in which all these elements were fused.
Aberdonians are credited with a distinct individuality, partly the result of race, partly due to environment. The strain of practicality in the Teuton toned down the Celtic imagination and warmth of feeling, and added a certain tincture of the phlegmatic such as is so prominent in the Dutchman. Hence the cautious “canny” nature of the typical Aberdonian, dreading innovations, resisting agricultural novelties, and disliking ecclesiastical changes. They have been described as people
Who are not fond of innovations, Nor covet much new reformations; They are not for new paths but rather Each one jogs after his old father.
This requires some elucidation. They are far from slothful or indifferent. They will uphold with zeal the cause they think right, but they must first reach assured conviction that it _is_ right. They are not swift nor slow to change, but firm.
The Celtic population was in fact absorbed, as we have said, but a certain contingent betook themselves to the mountains and for long kept up a warfare of reprisals upon those who had dispossessed them. This caused no end of trouble in Aberdeenshire but not without its uses for it braced the occupants in the arts of defence and made them alert and courageous.
No less potent a factor in the evolution of the Aberdonian has been his struggle with a well-nigh irreclaimable soil. The county is without mineral wealth, and the only outlet for his energy was found in attacking the boulder-strewn moors and in clearing them for the plough. To this he set his mind in the eighteenth century with grim determination. Small farmers and crofters by dint of great personal toil and life-long self-sacrifice transformed stony tracts of poor and apparently worthless land into smiling and productive fields. It is this struggle with a malignant soil, more than anything else, that has made the Aberdonian; one triumph led on to another, and to-day the spirit of enterprise in farming is nowhere more pronounced than in this difficult county.
The place names are almost entirely Celtic, and even when they appear to be Saxon they are only Gaelic mispronounced or assimilated to something better known. The parish of King Edward might very plausibly be referred to the northern visits paid by the Hammer of the Scots, but it is really Kinedar, with the Gaelic _Kin_ (seen in Kinnaird, Kintore and Malcolm Canmore), meaning a head.
The county has a distinctive dialect, really imported and originally uniform with the dialect of the Mearns, and of Northumbria, the dialect spoken at one time all the way from Forth to Humber. To-day it is called the Buchan Doric and though varying somewhat in different parts of the county and hardly intelligible in the Highlands of Braemar, where Gaelic still survives, it is a Teutonic speech with a thin tincture of Gaelic words such as _bourach_, _closach_, _clachan_, _brochan_, etc.
The dialect contains many vocables not found in literary English, such as _byous_ and _ondeemis_ for extraordinary, but where the words are English, they are greatly altered. It is characterised by broad, open vowels; “boots” is pronounced “beets,” “cart” is “cairt,” “good” is “gweed.” The final _l_ is dropped; “pull” is “pu,” “fall” is “fa.” Final _ol_ becomes _ow_; “roll” is made “row,” and “poll” is “pow.” _Wh_ is always _f_: “white” is “fite” and “who?” (interrogative) is “fa?” It is rich in diminutives like the Dutch—_a lassie_, _a basketie_. The finest embodiment of this striking dialect, giving permanent life to its wealth of pathos and expressiveness, is Dr William Alexander’s _Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk_.
_Scots wha hae_, which is supposed to be a characteristic phrase common to all the dialects, would be in Buchan—_Scots at hiz_, which is largely Norse. “The quynie coudna be ongrutten” is Buchan for “The little girl could not help crying.”
The population of the county which a hundred years before was 121,065 in 1901 was 304,439. Since the county contains 1970 square miles this brings out an average of 154 to the square mile—just a little over the average of Scotland as a whole, but as Aberdeen city accounts for more than half of the total, and towns like Peterhead and Fraserburgh between them represent 25,000, the figure is greatly reduced for the rural districts. The country districts are but thinly peopled, especially on the Highland line, and the tendency is for the rural population to dwindle. They either emigrate to Canada, which is a regular lodestone for Aberdonians, or they betake themselves to the towns, chiefly to Aberdeen itself. Except in and around the principal town, the county has hardly any industries that employ many hands. Agriculture is the main employment, and modern appliances enable the farmer to do his work with fewer helps than formerly: hence the depopulation of the rural districts. The towns tend to grow, the rural parishes to become more sparsely inhabited.
11. Agriculture.
This is the mainstay of the county, and considering the somewhat uncertain climate, the shortness of the summer and the natural poverty of the soil, it has been brought to marvellous perfection. The mountainous regions are necessarily cut off from this industry except in narrow fringes along the river banks, but in the low-lying area it is safe to say that every acre of ground worth reclaiming has been put to the plough. A century ago the industry was rude and ill-organised, the county being without roads and without wheeled vehicles, but the advent of railways gave an impetus to the farming instinct and an extraordinary activity set in to reclaim waste land by clearing it of stones, by trenching, by draining and manuring it. The proprietors were usually agreeable to granting a long lease at a nominal rent to any likely and energetic man who was willing to undertake reclamations and take his chance of recouping himself for outlays before his lease expired. Being thus secured, the farmer or crofter had an incentive to put the maximum of labour into his holding. He often built the dwelling-house, and as a rule made the enclosures by means of the stones, which, with great labour, he dragged from the fields. In this way a great acreage was added to the arable land of the county, and though some of it has fallen into pasture since the great boom in agricultural prices during the seventies in last century, the greater part of the reclaimed soil is still in cultivation.
The area of the county, exclusive of water and roadways, is 1955 square miles, or 1,251,451 acres. Of this exactly one half is under cultivation, 628,523 acres. When we remember that Scotland contains some nineteen million of acres and that only 25 per cent. of this acreage is arable land, it is apparent that Aberdeen with its 50 per cent. is one of the most cultivated areas. As a matter of fact it has by far the largest acreage under cultivation of any Scottish county. Next to it is Perthshire with 336,251 acres. The uncultivated half is made up of mountain, moor and woodlands. Part of this is used for grazing sheep, as much as 157,955 acres being thus utilised. In the matter of woods and plantations the county with its 105,931 acres stands next to Inverness-shire, which has 145,629. The trees grown are mostly larch and pine and spruce, but the deciduous trees, or hard woods, the beech, elm and ash, are not uncommon in the low country, more especially as ornamental trees around the manor-houses of the proprietors.
The crops chiefly cultivated are oats, barley, turnips and potatoes. Wheat is not grown except now and again in an odd field. The climate is too cold, the autumn heat never rising to the point of ripening that crop satisfactorily. Oats is the most frequent crop, and Aberdeenshire is the oat-producing county of Scotland. A fifth of the whole acreage under this crop in Scotland belongs to Aberdeenshire. Perth, which is next, has only one-third of the Aberdeenshire oat-area. Twenty thousand acres are devoted to barley, only one-tenth of the barley-area in Scotland. Over seven thousand acres go to potatoes; the southern counties have a soil better adapted to produce good potatoes; Forfar, Fife, Perth and Ayrshire excel in this respect and all these give a larger acreage to this crop. As regards turnips, however, Aberdeenshire is easily first. Being a great cattle rearing and cattle feeding district, it demands a large tonnage of turnip food. It is estimated that a million and a half tons of turnips are consumed every year in the county.
As regards cattle and horses the county has first place in Scotland. In 1909 there were 204,490 agricultural horses in the country and of these 31,592 were in Aberdeenshire, while of 1,176,165 cattle it had 168,091. It has a quarter of a million sheep, but here it falls behind other counties, notably Argyll, which has nearly a million, or one-seventh of all the sheep in Scotland.
Aberdeenshire is a county of small holdings. No other county has so many tenants. Over five thousand of these farm from five to 50 acres, while there are nearly four thousand who farm areas ranging from 50 to 300. This is part of the secret of its success. Earlier, the number of small farms was greater, the tendency being in the direction of throwing several smaller holdings together to make a large farm.
The industry has been a progressive one. Up to the Union in 1707 tillage was of the most primitive kind. Sheep-farming for the sake of exporting the wool had been the rule, but the Union stopped that branch of commerce. Later on, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the droving of lean cattle into England was a means of profit. Meantime the system of cultivation was of the rudest. A few acres round the steading, called the infield, were cropped year after year with little manuring, while the area beyond, called the outfield, was only cropped occasionally. There was no drainage and enclosures were unknown. Improvement came from the south. Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk and Mr Alexander Udny of Udny were pioneers of better things; they brought labourers and overseers from the Lothians and the south of England, to educate the people in new methods of culture. At first a landlord’s, it by and by became a farmer’s battle; and ultimately in the nineteenth century it was the farmers who did the reclaiming. But the landlords set a good example by sowing grasses and turnips.
Near Aberdeen, a boulder-strewn wilderness was converted into fertile fields. The town feued the lands and the feuars cleared away the stones, which they sold and shipped to London for paving purposes; the process of clearing cost as much as £100 an acre, a fourth of this being recovered by the sale of the stones. This is typical of what was done elsewhere. Gradually the bleak moors were absorbed. A famine in 1782 opened the eyes of all concerned. Hitherto there was not as much as 200 acres in turnips. Hitherto also the heavy work-oxen, ten or twelve of them dragging a primitive and shallow plough, at a slow pace and in a serpentine furrow, had been imported from the south. Now they began to be bred on the spot. By and by cattle grew in numbers; by and by, two horses superseded the team of oxen in the plough.
But the chief factor in evolving Aberdeenshire into a cattle-rearing and beef-producing county was the turnip. Till turnips began to be grown in a large acreage, no provision was possible for the cattle in winter. Hence the beasts had to be disposed of in autumn. In 1820, as many as 12,000 animals were sent in droves to England. The advent of steam navigation in 1827 ended the droving. Then began the trade in fat cattle, but it was years before the county gained its laurels as the chief purveyor of “prime Scots” and the roast beef of Old England. The turnip held the key of the position; but turnips will not grow well without manure. The canal between Aberdeen and Inverurie carried great quantities of crushed bones and guano to raise this important crop.
[Illustration: Aberdeen-Angus Bull]
Cattle-breeding began with M^cCombie of Tillyfour and the Cruickshanks of Sittyton, one with the native black-polled cattle—the Aberdeen-Angus—and the others with shorthorns. By dint of careful selection, great progress was made in improving not only the symmetry of the beasts but their size and beefy qualities. There began a furore for cattle-rearing and prizes taken at Smithfield made Aberdeen famous. Railway transit came in as an additional help, and to-day the Christmas market never fails to give its top prices for Aberdeenshire beef.
Every year the beef of 60,000 cattle leaves the county for the southern markets, chiefly London; this in addition to supplying local needs, and Aberdeen has now 162,000 of a population. Cattle-rearing and cattle-feeding are therefore at the backbone of Aberdeenshire agriculture.
A recent development is the export of pure-bred shorthorns to America, more especially the Argentine Republic, for breeding purposes. As much as £1000 has been given for a young bull, in this connection.
[Illustration: Aberdeen Shorthorn Bull]