The Scots never grew very much wheat but made bread from barley and oats. There is a story of an Englishman who chided a Scotsman for eating "oaten" bread. "In England," he said, "we feed oats to horses." The Scot rejoined, "That’s why you have fine horses in England and we have great men in Scotland."

While the barons usually lived well, this was not always true of the tenant farmers, who had a hard time between paying the rent, feeding and clothing their families and equipping themselves with weapons of war. When the king called the baron and the baron called his vassals, the tenant must furnish his own arms and food supply for war. The plight of the serf, who was like a slave to be bought and sold, was much worse.

Meat was reserved mostly for the baron’s table. George Wallace in "Ancient Peerages" asserts that possibly two-thirds of the Scots lived on "boiled water thickened with pease-meal or oatmeal; a pudding denominated either brose or porridge." The word "pease" as used by the Scots meant peas (we presume the variety we call English peas). Peas were a staple food crop and could even be ground into meal for bread. The introduction of potatoes from America in later times gave a more varied diet for the poor.

During our stay in Scotland we decided the food of the ten.ants and serfs in ancient times might not have been so bad as we had thought. flistory indicates that broth and porridge were important elements in their daily diet. We found the broth delicious and nourishing and oat porridge a real breakfast delight. The meat, on the other hand, was poorly prepared. Possibly the goodwives in the cottages in ancient times were better cooks than the hirelings in the castles and handed down the present recipes for plain foods.

Farm tools and methods of cultivation in medieval times were of the crudest sort. There was nearly always a scarcity of trees in Scotland and attempts at planting in those days except around the castles, met with poor results. Laws were passed against stealing green wood or peeling bark from trees. In