There was considerable intercourse between Marseilles and Scotland.
The Scots custom of eating grey peas with oil on Carlin’ Sunday is
taken from the Provençal custom of eating chick-peas on Palm Sunday;
and the traditional reason, the arrival on that day, in famine-time,
of a ship laden with pulse, is the same at Leith as at Marseilles.
In the next reign, that of James II, about 1450, another Firlot
appeared. It was to be ‘a general Mett, according to the Pint and Quart
formerly given to the Burgh of Stirling for an universal standard,
whereof each Firlot to contain eighteen Pints ... and that none use
another measure.’
Which of the Stirling pints was the Standard? The smaller pint of 41
Scots ounces of water, or the Jug, the larger pint, of 55 ounces?
In this case it was certainly the larger pint; for 18 pints of this
standard are very nearly equal to a firlot containing a Rhineland cubic
foot of water, 1000 Troy ounces = 1886 cubic inches. Except the slight
difference between Amsterdam and Scots Troy weight, this firlot was
62-1/2 lb. Scots, just as the English cubic foot was 62-1/2 lb.
averdepois. It was 18 pints of 104·2 cubic inches = 1875·6 cubic inches
= 54 Imperial pints or 6·76 Imperial gallons. This corresponds very
closely to the Himt or cubic Rhineland-foot measure of North Germany,
actually = 6·85 gallons.
This was a corn-firlot, and I recognise in it the firlot mixed up with
the wine-firlot and only rescued by its stated dimensions corresponding
to a capacity so different from the calculated contents of the latter.
The dimensions given correspond to a capacity of 1809 cubic inches, a
considerable divergence, but the old custom of ordering the gauge of
bushel-measures in inches either whole or with simple fractions often
caused considerable divergence from the calculated standard of capacity.
Progress through the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland reveals to us
more firlots, with the same anxiety which has been seen in English
statutes for unity of standards, with the same attempts to conceal their
plurality beneath plausible wording. Under James VI (and I of England)
the Parliaments were anxious ‘that the measure and firlot of Linlithgow
should be the only firlot for all his Majesty’s liedges.’ It was
therefore ordered that the Pint of Stirling be 2 lb. 9 oz. Trois of
clear water, and the Firlot of Linlithgow 19 pints.
It has been seen that the Act of James I which ordered the wine-firlot
to be 41 lb. in 2 gallons of 20 lb. 8 oz. also stated that it was to
contain 2 gallons and a pint; thus making it in one line 16 pints (of 41
ounces), in another 17 pints. The Act of James II ordered the firlot
(presumably a corn-firlot) to be 18 pints, of 55 ounces. And then the
Act of James VI made the firlot 19 pints, of 41 ounces = 48-3/4 lb.
Scots or 53 English pounds. This capacity corresponds approximately to
the Schepel of Oldenburg, now = 50 lb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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