D       Be notified of updates to The Capital Scot		About Capital Scot Search this Site Site Map FAQ Notices Subscribers (Links) ICRA Checked

Scottish Units of Measure

Reported by
jc

Question:

In Scotland, imperial weights and measures date back only to the Treaty of Union of 1707. Just out of interest, what units of weight and measure did Scotland use before then?

Answer:

As it relates to food, the system is described at the back of F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (a wonderful book everybody ought to have) and in a wider context in the Aberdeen University Press Concise Scots Dictionary. It was a basically a binary system. For volume where 1 pint was 3.0065322139 Imperial pints:

• 4 gills = 1 mutchkin
• 2 mutchins = 1 choppin
• 2 choppins = 1 pint
• 2 pints = 1 quart
• 4 quarts = 1 gallon
• 8 gallons = 1 barrel
   

Dry measure was different depending on what was being measured. For wheat, peas, beans and meal a lippie (or forpet) was 2.268 litres; for barley, oats or malt it was 3.037 litres. From there on up:

• 4 lippies = 1 peck
• 4 pecks = 1 firlot
• 4 firlots = 1 boll
• 16 bolls = 1 chalder
   

Coal and herrings were measured by the "mett", a unit that seems never to have got more than local standardization.

Linear and areal measure were defined in terms of the Edinburgh standard ell, which led to a Scots inch being 1.0016 Imperial inches. Beyond that:

• 8.88 inches = 1 link
• 12 inches = 1 foot
• 3 1/12 feet = 1 ell = 1 1/57 yards = 94.1318 cm
• 6 ells = 1 fall = 1.123 Imperial poles
• 4 falls = 1 chain
• 10 chains = 1 furlong = 1.123 Imperial furlongs
• 8 furlongs = 1 mile = 1.123 Imperial miles
   

Obviously there were two intersecting systems in use here. Areal measure was defined in the obvious way except that:

• 40 square falls = 1 rood = 1525 Imperial square yards
• 4 roods = 1 acre = 1.26 Imperial acres = .5099 hectares
   

There were some interesting administrative features of this system. It had an line on federalization that exceeds anything the EU has come up with. Its final form was a statute of 1661 whereby different burghs were responsible for different basic standards, so Edinburgh had the ell, Linlithgow had the firlot, the jug (for liquid measure) was kept at Stirling, and there were two standards for weight, the "troy stone" (7.936 Kg) kept at Lanark and the "tron stone" (9.996 Kg) at Edinburgh. In terms of that:

• 16 drops or draps = 1 ounce
• 16 ounces = 1 pound (Lanark: 496 g, Edinburgh: 624.74 g)
• 16 pounds = 1 stone
   

Yarn had different measures for long lengths, which continued in use into the nineteenth century. In earlier times the units were shorter and varied with the type of yarn:

• 300 yards = 1 cut
• 2 cuts = 1 heere
• 2 heeres = 1 heid
• 3 heids = 1 hank or hesp
• 4 hanks = 1 spinle
   

At the time of the Union Scots currency was different in value from English. A Scots penny was worth about a twelfth of an English one. Larger values:

• 2 pennies = 1 bodle
• 2 bodles = 1 plack
• 3 bodles = 1 bawbee
• 2 bawbees = 1 shilling
• 13 shillings 4 pence = 1 merk
• 20 shillings = 1 pound
   

Resistance to imposition of English units was like what the English are now doing over the imposition of European ones, with better reason; who needs a base-10 system when you have a perfectly good binary one?

---

Memberships
Member of                     of the Internet Content Rating Association

Awards
                    

Accessibility