Foyster E., Whatley C.A. A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600-1800
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212 Christopher A. Whatley
5. S. J. Connolly, ‘Unnatural death in four nations: contrasts and comparisons’,
in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland Since 1500
(Dublin, 1998), pp. 210–12; A.-M. Kilday, ‘Maternal monsters: murdering
mothers in south-west Scotland, 1750–1815’, in Y. G. Brown and R. Ferguson
(eds), Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance in Scotland since 1400 (East
Linton, 2002), pp. 156–77.
6. R. A. Houston, Social Change in the Age of the Enlightenment: Edinburgh, 1660–
1760 (Oxford, 1994), p. 169.
7. I. Donnachie, ‘Scottish criminals and transportation to Australia, 1786–1852’,
Scottish Economic & Social History, 4 (1984), pp. 21–4.
8. S. J. Connolly, ‘Albion’s fatal twigs: justice and law in the eighteenth century’,
in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds), Economy and Society in Scotland and
Ireland, 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 121.
9. See S. J. Davies, ‘The courts and the Scottish legal system, 1600–1747: the case
of Stirlingshire’, in V. A. C. Gattrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker (eds), Crime and
the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980),
pp. 120–54.
10. A.-M. Kilday, Women and Violent Crime in Enlightenment Scotland (Woodbridge,
2007), pp. 54–6, 155.
11. A. Whetstone, Scottish County Government in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 27–9; J. G. Harrison, ‘The justices of the peace
for Stirlingshire 1660 to 1706’, Scottish Archives, 12 (2006), 46–7.
12. K. J. Logue, Popular Disturbances in Scotland, 1780–1815 (Edinburgh, 1979).
13. C. A. Whatley, ‘An uninfl ammable people?’, in I. Donnachie and C. A Whatley
(eds), The Manufacture of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 51–71.
14. W. H. Fraser, Confl ict and Class: Scottish Workers, 1700–1838 (Edinburgh, 1988),
ch. 3.
15. For a useful introduction to these issues, see A. J. Fletcher and J. Stevenson,
‘Introduction’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order & Disorder in Early
Modern England (Cambridge, 1987 edn.), pp. 1–40, and also the seminal work of
E. P. Thompson, in, for example, Customs in Common (London, 1991).
16. C. A. Whatley, Scottish Society 1707–1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards
Industrialisation (Manchester, 2000), pp. 199–200.
17. See, J. R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2001),
pp. 118, 239–47.
18. R. Mitchison, The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574–
1845 (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 45–55; see also, I. D. Whyte, ‘Scottish population
and social structures in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: new sources
and perspectives’, Archives, XX: 84 (April 1997), 30–41; H. M. Dingwall, Late
17th-Century Edinburgh: A Demographic Study (Aldershot, 1994), p. 262,
19. E. P. Dennison, ‘Urban society and economy’, in Bob Harris and A. Macdonald
(eds), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c. 1100–1707 (Dundee,
2007), p. 161.
20. K. Bowie, Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699–1707
(Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 21–2.
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Order and Disorder 213
21. J. Burnett, Riot, Revelry and Rout: Sport in Lowland Scotland Before 1860 (East
Linton, 2000), pp. 32–5.
22. C. A. Whatley, ‘Labour in the industrialising city c. 1660–1830’, in T. M. Devine
and G. Jackson (eds), Glasgow, Volume 1: Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995),
p. 383.
23. R. Mitchison and L. Leneman, Girls in Trouble: Sexuality and Social Control in
Rural Scotland, 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998), p. 13; for a study of the system as
it worked in Argyll, see F. Bigwood, ‘The courts of Argyll, 1664–1825’, Scottish
Archives, 10 (2004), 26–38.
24. C. G. Brown, Up-Helly-AA: Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland
(Manchester, 1998), pp. 65–6.
25. See M. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven,
CT, 2002); and, for the eighteenth century and later, C. G. Brown, Religion and
Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh, 1997 edn).
26. M. Lynch, G. DesBrisay and M. G. H. Pittock, ‘The faith of the people’, in
E. P. Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen Before 1800: A New
History (East Linton, 2002), p. 301.
27. Todd, ‘Church and religion’, pp. 116–18.
28. R. Mitchison and L. Leneman, Sin in the City: Sexuality and Social Control in
Urban Scotland, 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 19–39.
29. G. Parker, ‘The “kirk by law established” and the origins of “the taming of
Scotland”: St Andrews, 1559–1600’, in L. Leneman (ed.), Perspectives in Scottish
Social History (Aberdeen, 1988), p. 5.
30. J. Goodare, ‘Introduction’, in J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witch-hunt in Context
(Manchester, 2002), p. 4; S. Macdonald, The Witches of Fife: Witch-hunting in a
Scottish Shire, 1560–1710 (East Linton, 2002), pp. 172–3.
31. Houston, Social Change, pp. 186–7; P. Cadell, ‘The Reverend John Brand and
the Bo’ness of the 1690s’, in G. Cruickshank (ed.), A Sense of Place: Studies in
Scottish Local History (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 7.
32. Harrison, ‘Justices’, p. 48.
33. Mitchison and Leneman, Girls, p. 92.
34. C. G. Brown, ‘Religion’, in L. Abrams, E. Gordon, D. Simonton and E. J. Yeo
(eds), Gender in Scottish History since 1700 (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 88; Macdonald,
Witches, pp. 155–7; G. DesBrisay, ‘Twisted by defi nition: women under godly
discipline in seventeenth-century Scottish towns’, in Brown and Ferguson,
Twisted Sisters, p. 138.
35. Todd, ‘Church and religion’, p. 117.
36. DesBrisay, ‘Twisted’, pp. 141–2.
37. C. A. Whatley, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 239, 269.
38. Dingwall, Late 17th-Century Edinburgh, p. 247.
39. K. J. Cullen, ‘Famine in Scotland in the 1690s: causes and consequence’, unpub-
lished Ph.D. (University of Dundee, 2004), p. 168.
40. See, for example, Revd W. M. Inglis, Annals of an Angus Parish (Dundee, 1888);
D. Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (East Linton, [1972] 1997 edn), p. 25.
41. Houston, Social Change, pp. 195–6.
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214 Christopher A. Whatley
42. D. A. Symonds, Weep Not for Me: Women, Ballads, and Infanticide in Early
Modern Scotland (University Park, PA, 1997), pp. 92–4, 127–38.
43. Houston, Social Change, p. 194.
44. Mitchison and Leneman, Girls in Trouble, pp. 15–17, 33–7.
45. C. G. Brown, The People in the Pews: Religion and Society in Scotland since 1780
(Edinburgh, 1993), p. 7.
46. Houston and Whyte, ‘Introduction’, pp. 34–5.
47. See C. Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival: Festive misrule in medieval England
(Manchester, 2001); P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot,
1978), pp. 178–204.
48. Houston, Social Change, pp. 48–54.
49. Mitchison and Leneman, Girls in Trouble, pp. 73–8.
50. R. Mitchison and L. Leneman, Sexuality and Social Control: Scotland, 1660–1760
(Oxford, 1989), p. 142.
51. Parker, ‘“Kirk By Law Established”’, pp. 14–19.
52. Brown, Up Helly-AA, pp. 65–71.
53. F. Watson, ‘Rights and responsibilities: wood-management as seen through
baron court records’, in T. C. Smout (ed.), Scottish Woodland History (Edinburgh,
1997), p. 102.
54. Buchan, Ballad, pp. 21–7; see also A. B. Barty, The History of Dunblane (Stirling,
1994), pp. 142–6.
55. M. H. B. Sanderson, Scottish Rural Society in the 16th Century (Edinburgh, 1982),
pp. 169–71; Buchan, Ballad, pp. 39–40.
56. Smout, History, pp. 123–6.
57. Whatley, Scottish Society, pp. 145–7.
58. Bigwood, ‘Courts of Argyll’, pp. 34–5.
59. See, for example, S. Clark and J. S. Donnelly (eds), Irish Peasants: Violence &
Political Unrest, 1780–1914 (Dublin, 1983).
60. K. M. Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603–1715
(Houndmills, 1992), p. 34.
61. See T. M. Devine, ‘Unrest and stability in rural Ireland and Scotland, 1760–
1840’, in Mitchison and Roebuck, Economy and Society, pp. 126–31.
62. M. Stewart, ‘“A sober and peaceable deportment”: the court and council books
of Dumfries, 1561–1661’, in A. Gardener-Medwin and J. H. Williams (eds),
A Day Festival: Essays on the Music, Poetry and History of Scotland and England
Previously Unpublished (Aberdeen, 1990), pp. 146–7; Whatley, Scottish Society, p.
151.
63. Mitchison and Leneman, Sin in the City, pp. 52–3, 72–4.
64. Houston, Social Change, pp. 198–9.
65. Bigwood, ‘Courts of Argyll’, pp. 32–3.
66. K. G. Simpson, ‘The legacy of fl yting’, Studies in Scottish Literature, XXVI (1991),
503–14.
67. J. Harrison, ‘Women and the branks in Stirling, c. 1600–c. 1730’, Scottish
Economic & Social History, 18:2 (1998), 114–31; M. F. Graham, ‘Women and
the church courts in Reformation-era Scotland’, in E. Ewan and M. M. Meikle
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Order and Disorder 215
(eds), Women in Scotland, c. 1100–c. 1750 (East Linton, 1999), pp. 189–92; L.
Martin, ‘The devil and the domestic: witchcraft, quarrels and women’s work in
Scotland’, in Goodare, Scottish Witch-hunt, p. 85.
68. Kilday, Women, p. 63; Symonds, Weep Not for Me, p. 83.
69. I am indebted to David Barrie for this information, drawn from his forthcoming
book on the development of policing in Scotland.
70. A. M. Smith, The Nine Trades of Dundee (Dundee, 1995); PKCA, PE 67/22,
Index, Glovers Incorporation of Perth
71. Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 382.
72. Dundee Archive and Record Centre, Dundee Town Council Minute Books,
XIII, 1793–1805, 23 October 1794.
73. Whatley, Scottish Society, pp. 162–4.
74. Scots Magazine, June 1801.
75. G. Penny, Traditions of Perth (Perth, 1836, Coupar Angus, 1986 edn), pp. 96–8.
76. L. Leneman, Living in Atholl, 1685–1785 (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 162; Whatley,
Scottish Society, p. 159.
77. Macinnes, Clanship, pp. 32–7.
78. See, for example, F. Wilkins, The Smuggling Story of Two Firths (Kidderminster,
1993).
79. P. W. J. Riley, The English Ministers and Scotland, 1707–1727 (London, 1964),
p. 135; on Sussex, see C. Winslow, ‘Sussex smugglers’, in D. Hay, P. Linebaugh,
J. G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and C. Winslow (eds), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime
and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1975), pp. 119–66; Brown,
Up Hell-AA, pp. 71–5.
80. C. A. Whatley, ‘How tame were the Scottish Lowlanders during the eighteenth
century?’, in T. M. Devine (ed.), Confl ict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700–
1850 (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 13.
81. Kilday, Women, p. 98.
82. Whatley, Scottish Society, pp. 195–6; Stevenson, Beggars Benison, pp. 122–4.
83. B. Lenman, The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689–1746 (London, 1980), p. 232;
Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 379; Bigwood, ‘Courts of Argyll’, p. 36; T. M. Devine,
Clanship to Crofters’ War (Manchester, 1994), pp. 119–34.
84. Whatley, Scottish Society, pp. 154–6.
85. See Thompson, Customs, chs II and III.
86. See Watson, ‘Rights’, p. 109.
87. Whatley, Scottish Society, p. 158; Buchan, Ballad, pp. 180–4.
88. C. A. Whatley, ‘Roots of 1790s radicalism: reviewing the economic and social
background’, in Harris, Scotland, pp. 36–43.
89. R. A. Houston, ‘Coal, class and culture: labour relations in a Scottish mining
community, 1650–1750’, Social History, 8:1 (January 1983), 1–18.
90. Macdonald, Witches, p. 185; C. A. Whatley, The Scottish Salt Industry, 1570–
1850 (Aberdeen, 1987), pp. 112–13.
91. Brown, ‘Religion’, pp. 88–9; Houston, Social Change, p. 180.
92. D. Stevenson, The Beggar’s Benison: Sex Clubs of Enlightenment Scotland and their
Rituals (East Linton, 2001).
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216 Christopher A. Whatley
93. Brown, Social History, p. 73; Houston, Social Change, pp. 183–5.
94. Houston, Social Change, p. 184; Inglis, Annals, pp. 142–3; Barty, History, p. 148.
95. Dundee Archive and Record Centre, Church of Scotland Records, Dundee
Kirk Session, CH2/12/1218/7, 10 August 1796.
96. Houston, Social Change, pp. 168–9.
97. Kilday, Women, pp. 134–46.
98. Wilson, Annals, pp. 56, 65.
99. Penny, Traditions, p. 15.
100. Whatley, ‘Labour’, p. 383.
101. C. A. Whatley, ‘Royal day, people’s day: the monarch’s birthday in Scotland, c.
1660–1860’, in R. Mason and N. Macdougall (eds), People and Power in Scotland
(Edinburgh, 1992), p. 178
102. See B. Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700–
1880 (London, 1982), p. 168.
103. Whatley, Scottish Society, p. 161; Penny, Traditions, p. 111; Kilday, Women, pp.
88–90.
104. For a discussion about how such events might be interpreted, see C. Humphrey,
The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England (Manchester, 2001),
pp. 1–37.
105. Penny, Traditions, pp. 61–3, 97–8; 102–3.
106. Whatley, Scottish Society, p. 194.
107. Whatley, Scots, pp. 200–1; Houston, Social Change, pp. 305–9.
108. Cadell, ‘Reverend John Brand’, p. 14.
109. Brown, Up Helly-AA, p. 78.
110. D. Underdown, ‘Regional cultures? local variations in popular culture during
the early modern period’, in T. Harris (ed.), Popular Culture in England, c.
1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 1995), p. 37.
111. Burnett, Riot, pp. 87–93; R. S. Fittis, Sports and Pastimes of Scotland (Paisley,
1891), pp. 163–70.
112. Penny, Traditions, p. 115.
113. K. R. Bogle, Scotland’s Common Ridings (Stroud, 2002), chs 2 and 4; R. S. Craig
and A. Laing, The Hawick Tradition of 1514 (Hawick, 1898), pp. 163–4.
114. Wilson, Annals, pp. 129–30.
115. Whatley, ‘Labour’, pp. 364–5.
116. C. Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas
(Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 145–55, 157.
117. R. K. Donovan, ‘Voices of distrust: the expression of anti-Catholic feeling
in Scotland, 1778–1781’, Innes Review, XXX (1979), 62–76; Scots Magazine,
December 1778, pp. 684–5.
118. Whatley, Scottish Society, pp. 167–8; Houston, Social Change, p. 213.
119. C. G. Brown, ‘Protest in the pews. Interpreting Presbyterianism and society in
fracture during the Scottish economic revolution’, in Devine, Confl ict, p. 99.
120. Whatley, Scottish Society, p. 169; Kilday, Women, pp. 119–24
121.
D. McClure (ed.), Ayrshire in the Age of Improvement
(Ayr, 2002), pp. 121, 136–7.
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Chapter 8
Sensory Experiences: Smells, Sounds and Touch*
Elizabeth Foyster
INTRODUCTION
‘Ours is a nearly sense-less profession’, George H. Roeder wrote over a
decade ago, describing how historians have neglected to study the fi ve
senses of smell, hearing, touch, sight and taste.
1
When we survey research
conducted into the senses by historians of Scotland, the same observation
could certainly be made today. Yet, we neglect the senses to our peril, since
the senses were a crucial part of the everyday. The senses shaped everyday
experiences, could act as triggers to memory and provoked powerful emo-
tions. Being alert to the senses gives the historian a key to understanding the
worlds of our predecessors, and in particular, to their culture. To take just
one example for our period, the senses were central to Scottish witchcraft
beliefs and practice. The ‘evil eye’ of the witch was thought to cause harm to
those she gazed upon (sight); witches kissed the devil before he left his mark
on their private parts, while witch-fi nders pricked suspected witches to see
whether they were insensible to pain (touch); and the presence of the Devil
could be detected by the foul smell of sulphur he was believed to exude.
2
Ideas about the senses could be both nationally and regionally distinctive. To
continue our examination of the magical world, the Scots, and Highlanders
in particular, were legendary for their possession of ‘second sight’: the ability
to be able to see into the future.
3
So why, if they were important, have historians failed to examine the
senses for so long? Part of the reason may lie with the nature of our sources:
there is a limit to the extent to which we can recapture the sensory experiences
of the past. As one writer has put it, succinctly, ‘written down, shit does not
smell’.
4
There will always remain an important difference between the lived
experience and the written record. Furthermore, as with many aspects of
every day life, it could take ‘outsiders’, or visitors to Scotland to note the
sensory experiences that Scots themselves took so much for granted that they
never bothered to record. Writing about smell in the past, one archaeologist
has made the useful distinction between ‘acute and dynamic smells (that carry
new information and infl uence human decisions) and chronic or static smells
(a constant and unavoidable part of the cultural landscape)’.
5
We have far
more evidence of the former than the latter. But as this chapter will show, this
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218 Elizabeth Foyster
does not mean we should agree with the assumption made by Patrick Süskind
in his novel, Perfume, that smell was part of a sensory domain that ‘leaves no
traces in history’.
6
Instead, it is from the traces that we can begin to piece
together the meanings that our early modern predecessors gave to the senses.
The changing sights of early modern Scotland were commented upon and
are examined in many parts of this volume, while new tastes are discussed in
Stana Nenadic’s chapter on ‘Necessities’ during her consideration of chang-
ing diet. This chapter will focus upon sound, smell and touch. Whereas
historians of our period have paid attention to music, it is the many other
sounds that Scots heard that will be analysed here. In this chapter the sensory
landscape of everyday life will be examined initially, followed by a discussion
of how the interpretation of the senses could provoke debate and ending with
a consideration of how the senses played a part in everyday relationships.
SENSORY WORLDS
Smells and sounds were an inescapable feature of life in early modern
Scotland. For the inhabitants of Scottish towns, they marked out both
space and time. So distinctive were the smells and sounds of many early
modern trades, such as those produced by tanners, dyers, butchers, bakers
and brewers, and as town authorities became increasingly strict about where
these trades could be located, so concentrated, that if an early modern Scot
had been led round a town blind-folded, he would know where he was by
what he smelt and heard.
Within towns the sound of bells signalled the passing of time.
7
The
authorities in Aberdeen ruled that church bells should be rung in the town
at fi ve in the morning and nine in the evening, and that notice of the start and
end of the day should be given by the town’s drummers who were directed
to go through the streets an hour beforehand.
8
The sound of bells struc-
tured the everyday experiences of people from an early age, as bells would
be rung as lessons began and fi nished within schools.
9
Since regulations for
street cleaning always stipulated the times of day when this was to be carried
out, smells and their removal also signalled the transitions between day and
night, work and leisure.
10
Additional attempts to clear the streets of waste
could be announced by the town drummer, who in April 1637 was ordered
to march through the streets of Aberdeen, charging its citizens to remove the
middens outside their homes. Such was the special nature of Sunday, that
Edinburgh’s regulations stated that ‘nuisances’ (the collective term given to
all waste) were ‘on no pretence’ to be laid out or collected on the Sabbath.
11
The passing seasons had a place on this olfactory calendar. In the summer
months, Scottish burghs tended to multiply the numbers of orders for the
removal of waste, as rising temperatures increased the fear of disease from
rotting matter, while cities such as Edinburgh faced extra problems when
streams and nearby lochs dried up, preventing the removal of sewage.
12
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Smells, Sounds and Touch 219
Sounds and smells also marked the passage of individual time, and seem
to have played a particularly important role at the end of the life cycle. There
were many sounds that were believed to be the omens of death, including:
humming in the ear; the crowing of a cock; the howling of a dog; and in the
Shetlands the song of the common quail, which was known locally as the
‘dead-shak’.
13
The odour of death and decay was a key consideration in the
location of burial grounds, and hence played a part within the topography of
the Scottish town. A seventeenth-century clergyman noted that Greyfriars
graveyard was positioned outside Edinburgh’s city walls so that its citizens
would ‘thereby lose the scents which must needs attend such places’.
14
In
the Highlands the dead were carried to burial accompanied by the wails of
women, whose cries and praises for the deceased were called the coronach.
15
In Lowland towns, such as Dunbar and Bo’ness, the town’s bell-man would go
through the streets announcing the death, inviting citizens to the funeral, and
then walk alongside the funeral procession ringing his bell.
16
Touch, the most
intimate of the senses, and the one closely associated by contemporaries with
the body and sexuality, could also bear signifi cance for life-cycle rituals. The
Figure 8.1 Detail of the tomb of William Baxter, Old Parish Church, Duffus, Moray,
1762. This recessed panel on the top of a table tomb shows many of the symbols associated
with death. As well as an hourglass (demonstrating life’s brevity), a skull and crossed
bones and the tools of a gravedigger, there are two ‘deid’ (dead) bells, which would be rung
at funerals. Sounds had strong associations with stages in the life-cycle, and played an
important part in the rituals that accompanied them. Source: © Royal Commission on the
Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland; C/23405/12 (www.scran.ac.uk).
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220 Elizabeth Foyster
poet Robert Burns and Mary Campbell were one famous couple who practised
handfasting, in which they kissed the thumbs of their right hands and then held
them together, or held their hands across a stream to signify betrothal and mar-
riage.
17
Like sounds and smells, touch could also serve as a useful information
provider. In October 1666 when four widows in South Ronaldsay, Orkney,
became suspicious that their husbands had not died of natural causes, but had
been murdered, all those who were known to the men were ordered to touch
their exhumed bodies. If they had been killed, it was believed that the mur-
derer’s touch would cause the corpses to bleed. In this case nothing happened,
but the ordeal was repeated in other Scottish criminal trials.
18
Sounds and smells varied between Scottish towns and contributed to
civic identity as each town offered a distinctive mix of everyday sensory
experiences. The sound of every church bell was unique, and burgh authori-
ties deployed sounds for different purposes. Edinburgh’s special place as the
seat of government and royalty, for example, was emphasised through the
burgh’s directions to its drummers. When parliament sat the city’s drum-
mers were paid extra for their additional duties, and when the king entered
the city, new drummers had to be found to mark the occasion.
19
The diverse
sounds of Scottish accents, as Bob Harris shows in this volume, could be an
indicator of place. ‘The tone of voice, the cadence and manner of speaking in
this town’, an Inveresk minister visiting Aberdeen in 1765 noted, ‘is so dif-
ferent from that in the south country.’ The explanation for this difference in
vocal sound was temperament, he thought;
The sharp notes they use, and the high key in which they speak, may possible [sic]
be owing to the vivacity of the people in this northern region. They are certainly
brisk, lively and acute far above the people in other parts of Scotland.
20
Thus, sound was thought to have the potential to refl ect mood and emotion,
as well as shape it. By varying across space, sound could also bind people
together by creating speech and acoustic communities. As David Garrioch
has put it, ‘the familiar soundscape helped create a sense of belonging: it
was part of the “feel” of a particular city, town or neighbourhood, a key
component of people’s sense of place’.
21
Contrasts were frequently drawn
between Edinburgh and Glasgow by visitors, which suggest that they smelt
quite different. It was the smell of the inhabitants of Edinburgh that was
thought particularly repugnant. One Cheshire gentleman, travelling to
the capital in 1636, found the smells so powerful that they also affected
his sense of taste; ‘the sluttishness and nastiness of this people is such . . .
their houses, and halls, and kitchens, have such a noisome taste, a savour,
and that so strong, as it doth offend you so soon as you come within their
wall’.
22
In the eighteenth century the smells of Edinburgh continued to
provoke comment. Joseph Taylor, travelling to the city in 1705, wrote that
‘in a morning the scent was so offensive, that we were forc’t to hold our
Noses as we past the streets’; Wesley visiting in May 1761 wondered ‘how
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Smells, Sounds and Touch 221
long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, the chief street of it, stink worse
than a common sewer?’; and in 1773 James Boswell repeated the observa-
tion that ‘walking the streets of Edinburgh at night was pretty perilous,
and a good deal odiferous’
23
. The condemnation of Edinburgh on olfactory
grounds differs from the praise afforded to Glasgow: ‘For pleasantness
of sight, sweetness of air, and delightfulness of its gardens and orchards’,
Glasgow ‘surpasseth all other places’ noted one visitor to Scotland in
1669.
24
A century later, there was appreciation of how Glasgow’s markets
for fi sh and meat were ‘constantly kept sweet and neat’ by the channels of
water that ran from them.
25
Rural society had its own smells. These could be pleasant. Martin Martin,
travelling to the Isle of Harris at the end of the seventeenth century, noted
the ‘most fragrant smell’ of the fi elds of clover and daisies.
26
But the rural
economy meant that it was more often unwelcome smells that met the visitor.
The fertility of the soil was enhanced using a variety of human and animal
manure, lime from shells and seaweed, each producing a distinctive aroma.
27
Rural trades were well known for their smell. Kelp was burnt to manufac-
ture potash, and the curing of fi sh, especially the strong smelling herring and
salmon was essential to their preservation. The maxim ‘you are what you
eat’ was certainly current at this time: an eighteenth-century reporter to the
Statistical Account noted that those who lived around Lochcarron, Wester
Ross, ate so much herring that ‘their breath smelled strongly of fi sh’.
28
Spices
were added to meat, especially in the winter months to disguise its rotting
smell and aromatic herbs, such as fennel, thyme, mint, anise, juniper and
cranberries were routinely used to fl avour whisky.
29
The English satirised
the Scots by suggesting that the poor often stank of garlic.
30
Such a strongly
smelling diet was certainly not to everyone’s taste, and was too much for
both Boswell and Samuel Johnson, who loathed a Highland habit of eating
cheese, ‘which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea’
at breakfast.
31
Cooking smells mixed with those of the fuels that were used in
stoves and on the hearths of Scottish homes. In Lowland areas this could be
coal, but in the Highlands and Islands peat predominated. ‘In some places’,
Johnson noted of peat, ‘it has an offensive smell’, which because chimneys
of cottages could not be placed directly above fi res lest rainwater extin-
guished them, tended to linger.
32
A more widely appreciated smell was that
of Scots pine, the roots of which Highlanders lit to serve as candles in their
homes.
33
Of course, many aspects of Scottish domestic life were shared in
common, and in the early modern period we should not exaggerate the dis-
tinction between the smells and sounds of urban and rural life. The citizens
of Aberdeen were troubled in August 1654, for example, by a great number
of pigs who were roaming through the streets, uncovering corpses in the
graveyard, mixing in dunghills and gutters, and were said to have raised an
‘infectious and intolerable smell’.
34
Similarly, the sounds of rural life were
not confi ned to the countryside. The noise of horses’ hooves, sheep, cows
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