What the simple folk do

A long flight to London, a bus ride to Cheshire, a couple of days catching up with friends who look after our motorhome, then off we headed to Scotland, lickety-split, in case the weather changes tune. Scotland is having a summer for once. Two days of rain in 4 weeks is the best anyone can remember in the last three or four years. We rush there to take advantage of it. 

Our first stop is in the Border country, a tucked away little village called Cessford. Here we hunt down a pint-sized squarish castle that, like similar Scottish castles, had to erect a barmkyn--a solid enclosure for cattle.

After Culloden, border landowners were required to strengthen defences and to build stone fortifications with 60' stone tower lookouts for the protection of their families, their workers and their animals. Even in remote villages like this there was many a bloody siege. 

This tiny stronghold was built by the Ker family, one of the more powerful Border Reiver families and ancestors to the Dukes of Roxburgh. Many barmkyns were burned and destroyed by the English during sieges over the border lands. 

The further we moved into Scotland we found castles aplenty--and not all wee ones like this. It is always amazing to us that in those times, with villages so far apart, and the population so much smaller, how local landowners ever garnered together sufficient labour to built their castles.  So much time must have gone into construction that surely it would have cut into animal and grain production big time. And that's without starting on all the stone churches and abbeys that also litter every other hill in these parts. 

But it is increasingly clear what the simple folk did on their days off. 

Our road led to Perth. Here, in medieval times, all goods to be sold at market were brought to the Mercat Cross, or the Market Cross, to be assessed for sale. Where the ancient market cross once stood in old Perth town is now marked by a granite octagon set into the walkway where the busy Skinnergate path crosses town and meets the High Street. The original old market cross was chopped down by Cromwell's henchmen in 1651. This marker simply shows where it once stood.

Market days were most often Wednesdays and Fridays--but, some were held on special feast days, like St Andrew's Day, or St John the Baptist's feast day. The burgesses of the town had priority selling on market days: the market was for their goods, and their sales only. But on feast days, the country folk might sell their wares.  If they were very careful. Their bread could not be too light or their ovens would be hunted down and smashed. Their ale could not be too expensive or their brewing vessels would be reduced to clay chunks. 

The countryfolk would bring their cattle and sheep on the hoof to the appreciatores carnibus, the meat appraisers, near the Mercat Cross. Once approved, their beast was then slaughtered, hung from nearby lintels from which joints of beef or mutton were butchered fresh for each buyer's consumption. 

Porters were ever at the ready to cleng and dycht, or cleanse, the market floor of the resulting gore, blood, and entrails, as all around the market was seething with people and animals: horses, cattle, dogs, and pigs, goats and birds. 

Competition was rife. Any attempt at forestalling or regrating--selling their animal before offering it for sale in the open market--was harshly controlled. Special courts were set up for just that, and severe penalties were brought down if anyone was so tempted.

Life was not easy for common folk attempting to make a penny at those bygone markets. 

Tiny Cessford Castle

Mercat Cross at the Perth markets