Bothy Ballads

Great play has been made in recent years about Scotland's role in the slave industry. With much of our infrastructure and major buildings being funded by what were often euphemistically referred to as tobacco barons who had in fact made their fortunes in the three way trade where ships set out from European ports to Africa's west coast. There they bought people in exchange for goods and loaded them into the ships. They then crossed the Atlantic, and once in the America's those Africans who had survived the journey were off loaded and put to work as slaves. The ships then returned to Europe with goods such as sugar, coffee and tobacco.
What is often overlooked is the agricultural slavery which, it could be argued, existed in Scotland until the middle of the last century.
The image above is of a farm bothy or chaumer. Somewhat romanticised nowadays, these buildings provided basic accommodation for single farm workers in the North East of Scotland up until the middle of the last century when the feeing system became unfashionable and employment law began to take effect.
Farm workers were rarely employed on any permanent basis and often lived a nomadic life. They were hired on a temporary basis at a feeing market, usually held every 6 months in May and November. On accepting the fee, the farm servant would be bound to the farmer as an indentured labourer for the next six months or a year.
Quite a hard life I think.