Note 36 — Chapter XLII

Burton’s Scotland (1689–1748), vol. ii. p. 395.—“The poverty of the field labourers hereabouts is deplorable. I was one day riding out for air and exercise, and in my way I saw a woman cutting green barley in a little plot before her hut: this induced me to turn aside and ask her what use she intended it for, and she told me it was to make bread for her family. The grain was so green and soft that I easily pressed some of it between my fingers; so that when she had prepared it, certainly it must have been more like a poultice than what she called it, bread.”—Burt’s Letters, vol. i. p. 224.