tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1885184849467086568.post8826747371817903234..comments2024-03-18T10:40:00.766+00:00Comments on A Kilchoan Diary: An Archaeological WanderJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11348491898920520197noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1885184849467086568.post-21814996560969295772015-11-29T01:20:41.705+00:002015-11-29T01:20:41.705+00:00I’d say your understanding corresponds with mine J...I’d say your understanding corresponds with mine Jon except in a few minor respects.<br /><br />I’ve never heard the ditches between rigs called “runs” before. A little book I have called “The Shaping of Scotland – 18th Century Patterns of Land Use and Settlement” by R J Brien calls the ditches “baulks”.<br /><br />The question I had was, are rig and lazybed direct synonyms? My hypothesis is that they’re not. Rather, I think lazybeds are a subset of rigs, namely, those found in the interstices between rocky outcrops and in which the soil is to a very large extent an imported manure, typically seaweed; a lazybed would always have been worked by hand rather than horse or ox drawn plough. As such, lazybeds are characteristic of very marginal ground for cultivation (and therefore of townships to which the population was cleared to off better agricultural land). Indeed, it’s for that reason that lazybeds are the most visible surviving form of rig (because rigs on better land have been obliterated by modern farming methods). And that fact may explain why the public tends to conflate lazybeds and rigs. But all that said, there will be a continuum with rigs at one end and lazybeds at the other and, in between the extremes, it may be hard to ascribe a tag.<br /><br />http://binged.it/1MLLtQH - lazybeds<br />http://binged.it/21m2Vmr - rigs<br /><br />One thing we can agree on 100% - the subject is fascinating!Neil Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15567487892239196569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1885184849467086568.post-71720342060993911002015-11-27T19:38:04.107+00:002015-11-27T19:38:04.107+00:00I have struggled to be clear in my mind what the t...I have struggled to be clear in my mind what the terms rig, run and lazy bed mean. This is my best understanding:<br />Runrig is the system of cultivation which uses rigs, the banked up areas of soil, separated by the lower runs. So one seems to be able to refer to a 'runrig field' which contains several rigs and runs. The word lazy bed seems to almost synonymous with a run, so to me lazy beds are lines of ridges in a field. As far as I know, all runrig was arable land within the toun or clachan's inbye.<br />There are several different types of runrig, the width and length of the rig varying, along with how straight it is - though this might depend on the availability of good soil, so rigs often curved as they crossed the landscape. The rigs and runs of hand-ploughed land was different from that of horse-ploughed.<br />I've written this as if I knew - but I don't. Somewhere there is a good treatise on runrig and on its different forms. I wish I could read it. JonJonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11348491898920520197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1885184849467086568.post-30497954095697626962015-11-27T17:43:29.474+00:002015-11-27T17:43:29.474+00:00Do you regard lazybeds and rigs as the same thing ...Do you regard lazybeds and rigs as the same thing - synonyms? Clearly, there will be some overlap in some places but I'm not sure they're always the same and when I asked a Hebridean what the difference was he said that rigs were a method of cultivating arable land whereas lazybeds were a method of cultivating land which was not arable; indeed lazybeds were a method of creating arable out of nothing. He also felt that lazybeds were more a feature of post-clearance townships after the people had been cleared off the arable to make way for sheep. My guess (and it's no more than that) is that what you can see in your yellow elipse is rigs rather than lazybeds. But what about the area outside the elipse at 2-3 o' clock? These look too straight to be rigs (or lazybeds) and I wonder if they aren't late 19th or even 20th century drains? Neil Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15567487892239196569noreply@blogger.com