Note 82 — Part II.

The suggestion from this passage seems to be that the lads did not sleep in the house, but in a ‘bothy’ in the vicinity. The arrangement in many farm houses in some parts of Scotland is—and it was much more common a century ago—that the maid servants slept in the house, while the men were accommodated in an out-house. During harvesting operations, shearers from a distance lived in a wooden ‘bothy’ erected on the farm. The system was not quite satisfactory, and often gave rise to serious irregularities.