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]
In the matter of fruit culture, Aberdeen is far behind Perthshire
and Lanark, which have a richer soil and a superior climate. But the
Aberdeen strawberries, grown mostly on Deeside, are noted for size
and flavour. In 1909 only 219 acres were devoted to this crop. The
cultivation of raspberries, which is so great a feature of lower
Perthshire, has made only a beginning in Aberdeen, and the small
profits that have come to southern growers of this crop in recent years
have acted as a deterrent, in its extension.
12. The Granite Industry.
Aberdeen has long been known as “The Granite City.” It is built of
granite, chiefly from its great quarries at Rubislaw. The granite is
a light grey, somewhat different in texture and grain from another
grey granite much in vogue, that of Kemnay on Donside. There are many
quarries in the county, and each has its distinctive colouring. The
Peterhead stone is red; Corrennie is also red but of a lighter hue. The
granite industry has made great strides of recent years. The modern
appliances for boring the rock by steam drills, the use of dynamite and
other explosives for blasting, as well as the devices for hoisting and
conveying stones from the well of the quarry to the upper levels by
means of Blondins have all revolutionised the art of quarrying.
[Illustration: Granite Quarry, Kemnay]
It was long before Aberdeen people realised the value of the local
rocks for building purposes. The stone used in the early ecclesiastical
buildings was sandstone, which was imported by sea from Morayshire
and the Firth of Forth. The beginnings of St Machar Cathedral and the
old church of St Nicholas as well as the church of Greyfriars, built
early in the sixteenth century and recently demolished, were all of
sandstone. Not till the seventeenth century was granite utilised. At
first the surface stones were taken, then quarrying began about 1604,
but little was done till 1725. Between 1780 and 1790 as many as 600 men
were employed in the Aberdeen quarries. Great engineering works such
as the Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Thames Embankment, the foundations
of Waterloo Bridge, the Forth Bridge and London Bridge, where great
durability and solidity are necessary, were made possible by the use
of huge blocks from Aberdeenshire. The polishing of the stone made a
beginning in 1820, and now a great export trade in polished work for
staircases, house fronts, façades, fountains and other ornamental
purposes is carried on between the county and America as well as the
British Colonies.
Apart from building purposes, granite slabs are largely used for
headstones in graveyards. This monumental department employs a great
number of skilled workmen. There are over 80 granite-polishing yards
in Aberdeen. Here too the modern methods of cutting and polishing the
stones by machinery and pneumatic tools have greatly reduced the manual
labour as well as improved the character of the work. Unfortunately the
export trade in these monumental stones has somewhat declined owing to
prohibitive tariffs. In 1896 America took £55,452 worth of finished
stones; in 1909 the value had fallen to £38,000. The tariffs in France
have also been against the trade, but an average of nearly 10,000 tons
is sent to continental countries. Strangely enough, granite in the raw
state is itself imported to Aberdeen. Swedish, Norwegian and German
granites are brought to Aberdeen, to
[Illustration: Granite Works, Aberdeen]