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This paper provides a survey of healing wells as a background to help understand a personal narrative using autoethnology, self-reflection in personal experience to relate my own personal experienc...

While Scotland was an important centre for the early development and manufacture of reaping machines, other countries such as England and the United States started to manufacture them in extensive numbers in later years. By the 1870s English manufacturers were selling large numbers of these machines to Scottish farmers, and Scottish manufacturers were competing in a busy market place with their English counterparts. By 1900 some of the Scottish manufacturers that had been renowned for their machines for a number of decades had stopped manufacturing them and sold machines that were manufactured by English or American manufacturers. This pattern raises a number of questions: when and at what rate did the diffusion of English machines into Scotland take place? Why were English manufacturers interested in competing with Scottish manufacturers in the Scottish market? How did Scottish manufacturers react to the competition from English ones? Why were Scottish farmers attracted by machines from English manufactu...

This paper examines the agricultural implement makers in Scotland during the period 1850 to 1914, when there were significant developments in agricultural implements and machines and in associated work practices. It considers themes such as the character of the implement makers, their geographical distribution, their standing, and reputation. It charts how their activities changed during this period. It shows that the capacity of their industry developed to support an increased number of family members, there was a growing number of larger businesses that increasingly had a customer base over a wider geographical area and that could be regarded as having a national standing; some also had an international standing. The technological advances in the production of implements and machines meant that production became more complex and was increasingly undertaken by businesses with more and better resources.

This paper examines whether there were regional patterns in the exhibition of different breeds of cattle and sheep, two of the most important classes of livestock to be displayed at the Royal Highland Show, in the period 1872 to 1905. At this time the Show was a movable one, being held in a different region each year.

This paper explores the relationship between three subscription lists inserted into agricultural books of David Young of Perth in 1785, 1788 and 1790. It shows that there are connections between the lists and the subscribers, including their personal details listed in them. It shows how the lists were managed by their compilers and the typographers who were setting them for printing.

In the eighteenth century, a period of intense agricultural and rural change, the authors of Scottish agricultural books left a large body of evidence on agricultural systems, changes to the farming landscape and attitudes towards them. These writers also recorded a range of information about themselves, their characters and identities, all of which was conveyed in a number of ways. First, in personal details inserted throughout the subject matter of their books. Second, through the dedication, an established device in which they devoted a book to an individual or organisation, demonstrating their esteem of them or encouraging them to adopt the ideas put forward in the book itself A third device was employed by both the author and the bookseller (or bookseller publisher) that published and distributed a given book. This was the title-page, an important feature in a book. Unless a half-title was inserted, the title-page was the first printed page seen by a reader on opening a book. It demonstrated ...

Three distinct groups of Irish migratory workers were employed in Scottish agriculture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These groups were shaped by the development of Scottish agriculture, by the types of crops cultivated, by work tools and techniques, and by the use of harvesting labour systems. The first group emerged in the early nineteenth century, when the introduction of labour-intensive cropping patterns required that large numbers of seasonal workers were employed. The ‘Donegal workers’, small groups of males from Donegal and other northwestern counties of Ireland, were employed at general agricultural work, including harvesting activities, between May and November or December each year.

During the nineteenth century Scottish agriculture attained a worldwide reputation for its excellence. Innovations were made and introduced: the enclosure of fields, which had gathered speed during the late eighteenth century, continued to advance; the old rigs were levelled and underground tile drainage was laid; further land was reclaimed and brought under cultivation; new tools and implements were developed; agricultural engineering developed into an increasingly important industry; new methods of power, such as steam, were applied to agriculture; remote areas gained access to a range of raw materials, goods, markets and specialised agricultural districts started to emerge. Increasingly, agriculture became industrialised. Central to this industrialisation was the diffusion of the knowledge of agricultural innovations and practices. Agricultural historians such as Stuart McDonald have identified that this diffusion took place through a number of channels: personal contacts, farmers' clubs and ag...

Although attention has been given to social, moral and health problems faced by Irish migrants who settled permanently in Britain during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, little work has focused on these subjects for the Irish seasonal migratory workers, especially those employed in agriculture. Even though these seasonal migrants were employed for a few months or for much of the year from sowing time to the completion of harvest, they were also subject to them. However, not all of the groups' seasonal workers were affected in the same way or to the same extent. Some were regarded to be more susceptible than others due to such factors as character of the migration, group organisation, sex and age of the migrants, work patterns and work conditions. Of them, Achill workers, the ‘tattie howkers’ or ‘tatie hokers’, a group of some 2,000 workers that migrated annually from Mayo, Donegal and Galway to harvest the potato crop in south-western and central Scotland, was regarded to be the most v...

(2007). The English Countryside Between the Wars: Regeneration or Decline? Folk Life: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 161-163.

(2007). The Scottish Countryside Its Changing Face, 1700-2000. Folk Life: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 157-159.