The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE FIRST OF THE IMPROVERS 195
III
In the end the degree of success to Burrel's credit is
not great, judging from the accounts of later investigators.
The common pasture remained undivided ; but he had
resigned himself to that. Enclosures, however, went no
further forward, save in the case of the head-dykes separating
the arable land from the pasture, and these Mr. Headrick
dismisses as ' useless.' For the rest, the farms remained
undivided and in joint tenancy, despite the project of 1772,
or reverted to this condition by the breakdown of the en-
closing scheme. There was indeed little of the alluring
about this scheme, in view of the immediate and prospective
increase of rent. At the beginning of the nineteenth century
the only tenant in the island who had a self-contained farm
of hiU and dale, apart, for his own, was Mr. Crawford of
Machrie, who had also introduced black-faced sheep with
but even his farm appears to have
an Argyllshire shepherd ;
been unfenced, for 'all the sheep and cattle of the island'
intruded upon his grazing, because he kept it in good condition.
Mr. Hamilton of ' Glenluig ' (Glenlaogh) was another
who had introduced superior sheep, but he had to put them
on the common. Otherwise the system already described
was in full operation, turning out its two and threefold crops
of barley, oats, and pease, while the more prolific potato had
become the staple food of the people. And very good
potatoes, too, in the opinion of Mr. Headrick. The offer
by Burrel of additional soums for every acre of waste land
brought under cultivation can scarcely have accomplished
much, since every one continued to crowd as many cattle
on the pasture as he could, some who held no land at all,
others greedily overstepping a fair allowance, and the cattle
wizened and poor through scarcity of feed.
Thus it is written in 1807 :
' Small as this rent is for such
an extensive island, it is believed that part of it is extracted
from other sources than the produce of the land ; and that