T. M. Devine's The Scottish Nation, A History, 1700-2000, was first published in 1999, and did well enough to be restocked several times at Barnes and Noble Bookstore in hardcover before being reprinted and offered a few years later in softcover. I found it a bit unpleasant as a text--I have read Mark Twain's classics, Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It, and Innocent Abroad; everybody admires Mark Twain's style, Devine is no Mark Twain. Yet in Chapter 7, Devine's book provides much of interest about rural Renfrewshire between 1690 and 1850, the time period during which a large part of Scottish lowlanders migrated to the ends of the earth: North America, Australia, and elsewhere.

Devine states that what is known about early rural Renfrewshire is derived largely from estate papers, tax, church, and legal records.

In 1690, survival depended on the August harvests of oats, barley and wheat. The potato was not a significant crop. Two-thirds of a farmer's income went to pay for the food he ate. Oatmeal and pottage were eaten almost daily; occasionally there was fish. Ale was the daily beverage.

The most common settlement consisted of little more than 20 households, called ferm-touns, "despersed among the countryside virtually bereft of the hedges, ditches, dikes, roads or any of the other man-made constructions that form the rural landscape today." (p. 127). Just below the landlords, "the tenants were at the top, ranked below them, cottars, farm servants, and tradesmen." (p. 128.)

Almost half of the male head of households in Renfrewshire were tenants, and around half of the farms were less than 30 acres. Tenants owning a few acres were the majority. The majority of tenancies were shared among co-tenants. (p. 128.)

Devine indicates that a detailed description of rural Renfrewshsre in 1790 is available in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, Edinburgh 1825 [extracts available online]. Traditional long-houses with living quarters, byre and barn under one roof were increasingly replaced by a dwelling house enclosing a courtyard. (p. 129.) Cottars were largely phased out. Yields were two to three times more than a century earlier, because of introduction of sown grasses, such as clover, fertilization with manure, and crop rotation permitted by larger size consolidated tenancies. Hill country livestock farming had been combined with lowland arable agriculture so that each enriched the other. (p. 137.) The traditional oxen drawn plough was being rapidly replaced by the two horse plough invented by James Small in 1787. (p. 138.)

As Scotland became increasingly urbanized, the need for more food and wool increased the value of unused and unoccupied lands, which became appended to the adjoining Estates.

Devine mentions that Renfrewshire had a food shortage in 1724-1725, which was of particular interest to me. This was the time when my Scottish ancestors moved from flax clothed Renfrewshire to buckskin Pennsylvania.

For further reading, Devine recommends quote a few texts, among which are:

T. M. Devine, The Transformation of Rural Scotland (Edinburgh, 1994); T.M. Devine, ed., Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770-1914 (Edinburgh 1996 edn); R. A. Dodgson, Land and Society in early Scotland (Oxford, 1981); I.D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth Century Scotland (Edinburg, 1979); I.D. Whyte,, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1995).