[33] “The latter part of the season is often very wet; and the corn, particularly oats, suffer very much. June and August are the months which have least rain. September and October are frequently very wet: during these months, not only a greater quantity of rain falls, but it is more constant, accompanied by a cold and cloudy atmosphere, which is very unfavourable either to the ripening of grain, or drying it after it is cut. In July and August a good deal of rain falls; but it is in heavy showers, and the intervals are fine, the sun shining clear and bright often for several days together.”--_Garnett’s Tour_, vol. i. p. 24. [34] Buchanan’s _Travels in the Hebrides_, p. 154. [35] “In larger farms belonging to gentlemen of the clan, where there are any number of women employed in harvest-work, they all keep time together by several barbarous tones of the voice, and stoop and rise together as regularly as a rank of soldiers when they ground their arms. Sometimes they are incited to their work by the sound of a bagpipe, and by either of these they proceed with great alacrity, it being disgraceful for any one to be out of time with the sickle.” This custom of using music to enable a number of common workers to keep time, seems to have been in vogue in many operations in the Highlands. We quote the following graphic account of the process of fulling given by Burt in the same letter that contains the above quotation, (vol. ii. p. 48.) “They use the same tone, or a piper, when they thicken the newly-woven plaiding, instead of a fulling-mill. This is done by six or eight women sitting upon the ground, near some river or rivulet, in two opposite ranks, with the wet cloth between them; their coats are tucked up, and with their naked feet they strike one against another’s, keeping exact time as above mentioned. And among numbers of men, employed in any work that requires strength and joint labour (as the launching a large boat, or the like), they must have the piper to regulate their time, as well as usky to keep up their spirits in the performance; for pay they often have little, or none at all.”--Burt’s _Letters_. [36] 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. [37] Buchanan’s _Hebrides_, p. 156. [38] Logan’s _Gael_, vol. ii. p. 97. [39] _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 7. [40] Burt’s _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 96. [41] _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 97.