.
.
This, the second of three papers on Scottish Gastronomy, was headed:
.
'Oats, a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’
.
Alan F. Harrison, Head of Faculty of Community Studies at Canterbury College of Technology, UK , provides another contribution from his study of the social history of Scottish food and drink.
It was published in Nutrition & Food Science,
No. 88, May/June 1984.
.
It was Samuel Johnson who uttered the title of the paper in quotation marks above. It is in the Dictionary of the English Language, 1755.
There is an index below the published paper.
.
.
.
"Oats ...in Scotland Supports the People"
Gastronomy is life
Link
Paragraphs have been numbered in 2009 for ease of referencing
1
Oatmeal is widely identified with Scottish food and indeed is its culinary leit-motiv for the many tourists who visit a proud land. Sadly, however, Scotland has turned its back on oatmeal in favour of the easier to handle but less nutritious ‘modern’ foodstuffs. Perhaps the decline was instituted with the arrival of the potato.
2
The Dictionary of the English Language (1747) gives oatmeal the identification mark of Scottish nationality, with the oft-quoted words given in the title. More recent discussion referred to the use of oats ‘for human food without competing with the requirements of animals’ as one dimension in the formulation of the food habit. [1]
3
The factor is climate: ‘ ‘oats’ is a cereal which is capable of growing under the most unfavourable conditions of soil and climate, and which is grown furthest north and highest up in the mountains’. It therefore became a convenient cereal in Scotland. [1]
4
The fact that its use as a food became such a habit in Scotland is probably due to the idea that grass grows so plentifully there that the competition for oats between beast and man is less keen than in other countries with poorer pastures, where horses require the whole crop of oats.[1]
5
If any one foodstuff could be singled out as longest runner in the Scottish food- marathon it would be oatmeal and it was well established in Scotland by the sixth century.[2]
6
Its ease of preparation had been a significant factor in its early acceptance and ‘could be made ready being reaped if the cook used the neolithic threshing method (still known in the nineteenth century Highlands as gradaning) of setting fire to the chaff. This also toasted the grain and made it digestible’. [2]
7
In earlier times ingenuity was not confined to setting light to the chaff. ‘In his chronicle for the year 1327 Froissart noted that on their forays into England, Scottish soldiers never bothered with pots and pans, but seemed content to ride with a bag of oatmeal and a flat stone strapped between the saddle and the saddle cloth. When they got tired of a diet of stolen cattle they mixed up a paste of oatmeal and water and made little cakes, cooked on the stone among the campfire embers.[3]
8
In 1425, oatmeal was a luxury to the poorest people in Scotland and it was not until 1560 that we find the earliest mention of the word scone in literature.[4] Mills were not in common use until the year 1742 and unknown in the Highlands until the close of the century.[5]
9
Most people in Scotland before the middle of the eighteenth century experienced a diet which was ‘monotonous and limited’[6] to oats, barley, milk and kale when the cereal was converted into ‘oatmeal cakes, with barely or mashlum bannocks or scones’.[7] (Mashlum means ‘mixed grain’).
An Englishman’s Views
10
Although the Scots seemed very proud of their food, visitors may have thought otherwise. In 1812 an English visitor to an inn in Dumfriesshire remarked that ‘my host… brought me some oatcake and butter… as if he had set before me a feast for a prince… At least one third of the husk of the grain is mixed up in the cake… and it has a surface like a file… to gums not properly seasoned’.[8]
11
Later, in the same century there is a comment on the diet in general: ‘there was a basic uniformity of diet throughout, and oatmeal was said in 1869 to have formed the leading article of daily subsistence amongst 90 per cent of the labouring classes of Scotland’ [9] particularly the agricultural labourers. [10] There was no particular concern, however, for an 1891 reference states that such cereal has ‘all the elements necessary to life’.[11]
12
The variety of methods used to make the best (?) of oatmeal might be placed on a continuum founded upon ease of preparation. At one end might be ‘crowdie’ where ‘The process is extremely simple: and consists in pouring boiling water over oatmeal…’[12] Then there is a ‘brochan', a kind of gruel consisting of oatmeal and water, boiled – a standard dish in winter and spring’.[13]
13
Beside this might appear porridge which surely needs no explanation. Perhaps last on the scale is ‘sowens’: ‘The wealthy sid or hull of the ground oat which is steeped in blood-warm water for two days…put on the fire…until it comes tough like a paste’.[14]
Twentieth century changes
14
As the range of foodstuffs available to the population improved with better farming methods and transport systems , Scotland turned its back on oatmeal except to give it to tourists. Scotland joined ‘…industrialized Europe, where in the twentieth century. country after country changed from a diet dominated by cereals of the wheat family to a diet in which most of the proteins are furnished by products of animal origin’.[15]
15
In doing so it gave up a cheap worthwhile foodstuff. The remarkable thing, all the same, is the length of time the traditional pattern lasted. Although trends are hard to pinpoint, it seems fairly clear that the use of oatmeal began to decline during and after World War 1: ‘ …from that time onwards vans began increasingly to wend their way around the countryside, bringing such items as white breads and buns, sugar and syrup – alluring wares for those accustomed to simple fare. Sadly the story becomes one of progressive deterioration from then on, although many of the old ways persisted in the more remote places until late as World War 2’.[16]
16
One of the foodstuffs which was to help draw Scotland away from its ‘oat culture' (which) still ordains the Scotsman’s porridge (sic)’[17] was the potato and tatties are a relatively modern contrivance.
17
There have been varying, seldom confirming, but equally empathic statements about the introduction of the potato in Scotland. ‘The earliest mention is in 1683’.[18] They are mentioned as vegetables for the garden…by John Reid’, 1683.[19]
18
They were first grown in ‘Kirkcudbright in 1725’[20] and in Scotland in 1728.[21] Kilsyth is put forward as the first field crop in 1729[22] but none were grown in Roxburgh and Selkirk ‘till the year 1772 and 1773’.[23]
19
In 1770 the potato was a common crop on the holdings of the poor though in most of the Lowlands and fifteen years later universal in all the parishes of the Highlands.[24]
20
Possibly in relation to the later increased availability of the potato, the suggestions as to how much potato should be eaten are somewhat surprising today. ‘An able-bodied labourer in Urquhart (in 1843) needed 8 to 10lbs a day’.[25] As late as 1891 similar amounts were suggested for Highlanders which were less, however, than the ‘ten to eleven pounds of potatoes daily’ required by Irishmen![26]
21
In concluding, it is appropriate to consider that the potato ‘had always arrived in the baggage carts of distress’.[27] The irony for the Scottish poor was that it helped to increase their numbers.
22
There is something very Malthusian in the assertion that the potato was to bear much of the responsibility for the population explosion that took place in the Highlands around 1800.[28] there can be little doubt that the baggage carts loaded as a result of the Clearances carried a few potatoes for a then unknown field miles away from haim.
References
[1] Renner, H D; 1944 The Origin of Food Habits, Faber and Faber: (p. 247)
[2] Tannahill, R; 1981 Food (in) D Daiches (ed) Companion to Scottish Culture, Edward Arnold: (p.127)
[3] Henisch, B A; 1976 Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society, Pennsylvania State University: (p.99)
[4] Grant, I F ; 1931 Everyday Life in Scotland, Allen and Unwin: (p 101)
[5] Mackie, R L; 1916 Scotland: An Account of her triumphs and Defeats, her manners, institutions and achievements in Art and Literature from earliest times to the death of Scott: G Harrap and Co: (p 514)
[6] Anderson, D; 1977 Lang Syne: Scottish Customs and Curiosities, Heatherbank Press, Glasgow: (p 6)
[7] Ashley, W; 1928, The Bread of our Forefathers; an Inquiry into Economic History, Oxford, Clarendon: (p79)
[8] Personal communication from L. Ardern, Hon. Librarian, E A Hornel Art Gallery and Library, Kirkcudbright
[9] Fenton, A; 1971, The Place of Oatmeal in the Diet of Scottish Farm Servants in the 18th and 19th Centuries, in Studia
Ethnographica et Folkloristica: (p 87-101)
[10]Letheby, H; 1973, On Food, its Varieties Chemical Composition… Preparation…Aduleration and Co. being the substance of the four Cantor Lecutures, 1868, Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, London: (p16)
[11] Thompson, H, (Sir): 1891, Food and Feeding, London: (p 14)
[12] Renner, op cit, who cites Sir Frederick Eden’s The State of the Poor, 1797
[13] Fenton, op cit, (p 88)
[14] Fenton, op cit, (p 96)
[15] Aymard, M; 1979, Forster and Ranum, Food and Drink in History: selections from the Annals; John Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore and London
[16] Stephens, M; 1982, A Better Diet for Scotland - McCarrison Society: (p10)
[17] Allen, D E ; 1968, British Tastes: An Enquiry into the Likes and Dislikes of the Regional Consumer, Hutchinson: (p33)
[18] Salaman, R N; 1949, The History of and Social Influence of the Potato, Cambridge University Press: (p 344)
[19] Graham, H G; 1969 (4th Edit), The Social Life of Scotland in the 18th Century, A and C Black, (p 172)
[20] Haldane, E S; 1933, The Scotland of our Father: a study of Scottish Life in the Nineteenth Century, Alexander Macclehose:
(p214)
[21] Fullarton, A; and Baird, C R; 1838, Remark on the evils at present affecting the Highlands and Islands of Scotland; with some suggestions as to their remedies, William Collins, Glasgow: (p14)
[22] Macphail, I M M; 1956, A History of Scotland for Schools: Book 2 – from 1702 to the Present Day, Edward Arnold: (p 29)
[23] Douglas, R; 1798, General Review of the Agriculture of the Countries of Roxburgh and Selkirk, Richard Philips, London:
(p 273)
[24] Smout, T C; 1969, A History of the Scottish People ,1560-1830, William Collins: (p270)
[25] Lebitt, I; and Smout, T C; 1979, The State of the Scottish Working Classes, 1843, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh: (p 7)
[26] Thompson, op cit, (p 29)
[27] Aymard, op cit, (p23)
[28] Tannahill, op cit, (p 129)
1
Oatmeal is widely identified with Scottish food and indeed is its culinary leit-motiv for the many tourists who visit a proud land. Sadly, however, Scotland has turned its back on oatmeal in favour of the easier to handle but less nutritious ‘modern’ foodstuffs. Perhaps the decline was instituted with the arrival of the potato.
2
The Dictionary of the English Language (1747) gives oatmeal the identification mark of Scottish nationality, with the oft-quoted words given in the title. More recent discussion referred to the use of oats ‘for human food without competing with the requirements of animals’ as one dimension in the formulation of the food habit. [1]
3
The factor is climate: ‘ ‘oats’ is a cereal which is capable of growing under the most unfavourable conditions of soil and climate, and which is grown furthest north and highest up in the mountains’. It therefore became a convenient cereal in Scotland. [1]
4
The fact that its use as a food became such a habit in Scotland is probably due to the idea that grass grows so plentifully there that the competition for oats between beast and man is less keen than in other countries with poorer pastures, where horses require the whole crop of oats.[1]
5
If any one foodstuff could be singled out as longest runner in the Scottish food- marathon it would be oatmeal and it was well established in Scotland by the sixth century.[2]
6
Its ease of preparation had been a significant factor in its early acceptance and ‘could be made ready being reaped if the cook used the neolithic threshing method (still known in the nineteenth century Highlands as gradaning) of setting fire to the chaff. This also toasted the grain and made it digestible’. [2]
7
In earlier times ingenuity was not confined to setting light to the chaff. ‘In his chronicle for the year 1327 Froissart noted that on their forays into England, Scottish soldiers never bothered with pots and pans, but seemed content to ride with a bag of oatmeal and a flat stone strapped between the saddle and the saddle cloth. When they got tired of a diet of stolen cattle they mixed up a paste of oatmeal and water and made little cakes, cooked on the stone among the campfire embers.[3]
8
In 1425, oatmeal was a luxury to the poorest people in Scotland and it was not until 1560 that we find the earliest mention of the word scone in literature.[4] Mills were not in common use until the year 1742 and unknown in the Highlands until the close of the century.[5]
9
Most people in Scotland before the middle of the eighteenth century experienced a diet which was ‘monotonous and limited’[6] to oats, barley, milk and kale when the cereal was converted into ‘oatmeal cakes, with barely or mashlum bannocks or scones’.[7] (Mashlum means ‘mixed grain’).
An Englishman’s Views
10
Although the Scots seemed very proud of their food, visitors may have thought otherwise. In 1812 an English visitor to an inn in Dumfriesshire remarked that ‘my host… brought me some oatcake and butter… as if he had set before me a feast for a prince… At least one third of the husk of the grain is mixed up in the cake… and it has a surface like a file… to gums not properly seasoned’.[8]
11
Later, in the same century there is a comment on the diet in general: ‘there was a basic uniformity of diet throughout, and oatmeal was said in 1869 to have formed the leading article of daily subsistence amongst 90 per cent of the labouring classes of Scotland’ [9] particularly the agricultural labourers. [10] There was no particular concern, however, for an 1891 reference states that such cereal has ‘all the elements necessary to life’.[11]
12
The variety of methods used to make the best (?) of oatmeal might be placed on a continuum founded upon ease of preparation. At one end might be ‘crowdie’ where ‘The process is extremely simple: and consists in pouring boiling water over oatmeal…’[12] Then there is a ‘brochan', a kind of gruel consisting of oatmeal and water, boiled – a standard dish in winter and spring’.[13]
13
Beside this might appear porridge which surely needs no explanation. Perhaps last on the scale is ‘sowens’: ‘The wealthy sid or hull of the ground oat which is steeped in blood-warm water for two days…put on the fire…until it comes tough like a paste’.[14]
Twentieth century changes
14
As the range of foodstuffs available to the population improved with better farming methods and transport systems , Scotland turned its back on oatmeal except to give it to tourists. Scotland joined ‘…industrialized Europe, where in the twentieth century. country after country changed from a diet dominated by cereals of the wheat family to a diet in which most of the proteins are furnished by products of animal origin’.[15]
15
In doing so it gave up a cheap worthwhile foodstuff. The remarkable thing, all the same, is the length of time the traditional pattern lasted. Although trends are hard to pinpoint, it seems fairly clear that the use of oatmeal began to decline during and after World War 1: ‘ …from that time onwards vans began increasingly to wend their way around the countryside, bringing such items as white breads and buns, sugar and syrup – alluring wares for those accustomed to simple fare. Sadly the story becomes one of progressive deterioration from then on, although many of the old ways persisted in the more remote places until late as World War 2’.[16]
16
One of the foodstuffs which was to help draw Scotland away from its ‘oat culture' (which) still ordains the Scotsman’s porridge (sic)’[17] was the potato and tatties are a relatively modern contrivance.
17
There have been varying, seldom confirming, but equally empathic statements about the introduction of the potato in Scotland. ‘The earliest mention is in 1683’.[18] They are mentioned as vegetables for the garden…by John Reid’, 1683.[19]
18
They were first grown in ‘Kirkcudbright in 1725’[20] and in Scotland in 1728.[21] Kilsyth is put forward as the first field crop in 1729[22] but none were grown in Roxburgh and Selkirk ‘till the year 1772 and 1773’.[23]
19
In 1770 the potato was a common crop on the holdings of the poor though in most of the Lowlands and fifteen years later universal in all the parishes of the Highlands.[24]
20
Possibly in relation to the later increased availability of the potato, the suggestions as to how much potato should be eaten are somewhat surprising today. ‘An able-bodied labourer in Urquhart (in 1843) needed 8 to 10lbs a day’.[25] As late as 1891 similar amounts were suggested for Highlanders which were less, however, than the ‘ten to eleven pounds of potatoes daily’ required by Irishmen![26]
21
In concluding, it is appropriate to consider that the potato ‘had always arrived in the baggage carts of distress’.[27] The irony for the Scottish poor was that it helped to increase their numbers.
22
There is something very Malthusian in the assertion that the potato was to bear much of the responsibility for the population explosion that took place in the Highlands around 1800.[28] there can be little doubt that the baggage carts loaded as a result of the Clearances carried a few potatoes for a then unknown field miles away from haim.
References
[1] Renner, H D; 1944 The Origin of Food Habits, Faber and Faber: (p. 247)
[2] Tannahill, R; 1981 Food (in) D Daiches (ed) Companion to Scottish Culture, Edward Arnold: (p.127)
[3] Henisch, B A; 1976 Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society, Pennsylvania State University: (p.99)
[4] Grant, I F ; 1931 Everyday Life in Scotland, Allen and Unwin: (p 101)
[5] Mackie, R L; 1916 Scotland: An Account of her triumphs and Defeats, her manners, institutions and achievements in Art and Literature from earliest times to the death of Scott: G Harrap and Co: (p 514)
[6] Anderson, D; 1977 Lang Syne: Scottish Customs and Curiosities, Heatherbank Press, Glasgow: (p 6)
[7] Ashley, W; 1928, The Bread of our Forefathers; an Inquiry into Economic History, Oxford, Clarendon: (p79)
[8] Personal communication from L. Ardern, Hon. Librarian, E A Hornel Art Gallery and Library, Kirkcudbright
[9] Fenton, A; 1971, The Place of Oatmeal in the Diet of Scottish Farm Servants in the 18th and 19th Centuries, in Studia
Ethnographica et Folkloristica: (p 87-101)
[10]Letheby, H; 1973, On Food, its Varieties Chemical Composition… Preparation…Aduleration and Co. being the substance of the four Cantor Lecutures, 1868, Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, London: (p16)
[11] Thompson, H, (Sir): 1891, Food and Feeding, London: (p 14)
[12] Renner, op cit, who cites Sir Frederick Eden’s The State of the Poor, 1797
[13] Fenton, op cit, (p 88)
[14] Fenton, op cit, (p 96)
[15] Aymard, M; 1979, Forster and Ranum, Food and Drink in History: selections from the Annals; John Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore and London
[16] Stephens, M; 1982, A Better Diet for Scotland - McCarrison Society: (p10)
[17] Allen, D E ; 1968, British Tastes: An Enquiry into the Likes and Dislikes of the Regional Consumer, Hutchinson: (p33)
[18] Salaman, R N; 1949, The History of and Social Influence of the Potato, Cambridge University Press: (p 344)
[19] Graham, H G; 1969 (4th Edit), The Social Life of Scotland in the 18th Century, A and C Black, (p 172)
[20] Haldane, E S; 1933, The Scotland of our Father: a study of Scottish Life in the Nineteenth Century, Alexander Macclehose:
(p214)
[21] Fullarton, A; and Baird, C R; 1838, Remark on the evils at present affecting the Highlands and Islands of Scotland; with some suggestions as to their remedies, William Collins, Glasgow: (p14)
[22] Macphail, I M M; 1956, A History of Scotland for Schools: Book 2 – from 1702 to the Present Day, Edward Arnold: (p 29)
[23] Douglas, R; 1798, General Review of the Agriculture of the Countries of Roxburgh and Selkirk, Richard Philips, London:
(p 273)
[24] Smout, T C; 1969, A History of the Scottish People ,1560-1830, William Collins: (p270)
[25] Lebitt, I; and Smout, T C; 1979, The State of the Scottish Working Classes, 1843, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh: (p 7)
[26] Thompson, op cit, (p 29)
[27] Aymard, op cit, (p23)
[28] Tannahill, op cit, (p 129)
Index
bannock, mashlum - 1750 - oatmeal cakes - p9
brochan - gruel of water and oatmeal - p12
crowdie - boiling water poured over oatmeal - p12
Froissart in 1327 - oatmeal cakes in embers - p7
gradaning - oatmeal threshing method - p6
oatcake - feast for a prince - p10
oatmeal - identification mark since 1747 - p2
oatmeal a liet-motiv for tourists to Scotland - p1
oatmeal decline during WW1 – p15
oatmeal identified in Scotland before 6th century - p5
potato - a modern contrivance - p16
potato - Irishmen need 10lbs daily in 1891 - p20
potato and Malthus - population explosion - p22
potato arrived in the baggage carts of distress - p21
potato- ealiest mention in Scotland 1683 - p17
potato first grown in Kirkcudbright in 1725 - p8
scone first mention in literature 1560
sowens - oat hull two days in tepid water - p13