Volume 1

Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers.

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1858-1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    73/574 page 57
    of wheat for 4Z. 10s., and the boll of beare for 3/.; but ere twa lees. afternoon upon the same day, the boll of ait meal was sauld for 40s., 38s., and 36s., the boll of wheat for 50s., and the beare for 33s.’—D. 0} Little doubt is now entertained that the exanthematous disease called long ago the Pest, and now the Plague, and which has happUy been unknown in the British Islands for two centuries, was the consequence of miasma arising from crowded and filthy living, acting on bodies predisposed by deficient aliment and other causes, and that at a certain stage it assumed a contagious character. It will be found throughout the present work that the malady generally, though not invariably, followed dearth and famine—a generabsation harmonising with the observations of Professor Abson as to the connection between destitution and typhus fever, and supporting the views of those who hold that it is for the interest of the community that all its members have a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. The pest was not the only epidemic which afflicted our ancestors in consequence of erroneous living and misery endured by great multitudes of people. There was one caUed the land-ill or wame-ill, which seems to have been of the nature of cholera. In an early chronicle quoted below,* is the foUowing striking notice of this kind of malady in connection with famine as occurring in 1439:—‘ The samen time there was in Scotland a great dearth, for the bob of wheat was at 40s., and the boll of ait meal 30^.; and verily the dearth was sae great that there died a passing [number of] people for hunger. And als the land- ill, the wame-ill, was so violent, that there died mae that year than ever there died, OAvther in pestilence, or yet in ony other sickness in Scotland. And that samen year the pestilence came in Scotland, and began at Dumfries, and it was calbt the Pestilence but Mercy, for there took it nane that ever recoverit, but they died within twenty-four hours.’ At the time when the pest broke out in Edinburgh, there lived in the city a young man of the middle class, bearing the name of oct. George Bannatyne, who was somewhat addicted to the vain and unprofitable art of poesy. He was acquainted with the writings of his predecessors, Dunbar, Douglas, Henryson, Montgomery, Scott, and others, through the manuscripts to which alone they had as yet * The pest was severe in London in autumn 15G9, whether by communication from Scotland does not appear. 2 Ane Addicioun of Scottis Comicklis and Deidis, printed from an original manuscript by Thomas Thomson, Esq.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3