Page:Annals of Duddingston and Portobello.pdf/51

18 man of energy and enterprise, availed himself of the general anxiety to have this state of matters remedied, and undertook to clean the streets and closes of the fulzie with which they were littered. He had it carried off regularly to his Prestonfield estate, where he began to enclose and drain, with the result that in the course of a few years it became one of the finest properties in the county.

About sixty or seventy years afterwards, when ithe Barony of Duddingston had come into the hands of the Abercorn family, a similar course of treatment was applied to the district of country between Wester Duddingston and Easter Duddingston seawards - excluding, perhaps, the stretch of sand downs between the high road and the sea. The soil here, which was light and sandy, consisting of a brownish-coloured earth, seldom more than sixteen inches deep and sometimes not even that, was incapable of bearing year by year heavy crops. But by artificial manuring, draining, and irrigation, with the application of modern improvements, we have it on good authority that "there is not a more highly cultivated parish in Scotland, nor one which resembles more the rich champaign of England in its general aspect.”

The Earl of Abercorn who, about the year 1751, did so much to stimulate the agricultural prosperity of the parish, had a home farm attached to his park till the end of last century, and we believe the interest he evinced in its success did much to encourage the farmers in the neighbourhood. We learn from the account of a celebrated criminal trial which took place in 1788, where William Brodie, one of the members of the Edinburgh Town Council, was condemned for complicity in the robbing of the Excise Office, that the coulter of a plough which the burglars used for prizing open the doors was stolen from the Earl’s farm at Duddingston.

Prior to 1746, the tenants possessed their land in "run-ridge” or ‘‘run-dale,” the peculiarity of which was that the land was divided into long narrow strips, separated from each other by green ridges of turf popularly known as "balks.” This system arose from the practice of joint cultivation by the natives of a village, each holding consisting of a number of these strips. In addition to this, the villagers had the right to the commons, upon which they pastured their cattle.

There appear to have been of old two commons, one for Easter and another for Wester Duddingston. The common of the