The firlot was a

dry measure Dry or dryness most often refers to: * Lack of rainfall, which may refer to ** Arid regions **Drought * Dry or dry area, relating to legal prohibition of selling, serving, or imbibing alcoholic beverages * Dry humor, deadpan * Dryness (medica ...

used in Scotland. For centuries it was the primary measure for all grains sold in the country. In the Scottish system a firlot was equal to 4

peck A peck is an imperial and United States customary unit of dry volume, equivalent to 8 dry quarts or 16 dry pints. An imperial peck is equivalent to 9.09218 liters and a US customary peck is equivalent to 8.80976754172 liters. Four pecks ma ...

s, and the

boll Boll may refer to: *Boll (surname) * Boll, an obsolete Scottish measure of volume * BOLL, a protein in humans * 7873 Böll, a main-belt asteroid * Boll case, a 1958 International Court of Justice case * Boll KG, Uwe Boll's personal production com ...

was equal to 4 firlots. The first attempt of the

Parliament of Scotland In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

to define the firlot was in 1426. They set it as 1,200 Scottish cubic inches or 19.98 litres, but effectively the exact volume continued to be defined by local custom and varied across the country. Over the years the common definition seems to have increased. By an act of the Parliament of Scotland of 1617, the commissioners' firlot of

Linlithgow Linlithgow ( ; ; ) is a town in West Lothian, Scotland. It was historically West Lothian's county town, reflected in the county's historical name of Linlithgowshire. An ancient town, it lies in the Central Belt on a historic route between Edi ...

was made the standard for the whole of Scotland, but, in fact, two units were defined for different commodities. The first, which “contained 21 pints and a

mutchkin ''Disambiguation: a "mutchkin" can also refer a close-fitting Scottish cap''. The mutchkin () was a Scottish unit of liquid volume measurement that was in use from at least 1661 (and possibly as early as the 15th century) until the late 19th cent ...

of the

water of Leith The Water of Leith (Scottish Gaelic: ''Uisge Lìte'') is the main river flowing through central Edinburgh, Scotland, that starts in the Pentlands Hills and flows into the port of Leith and then into the sea via the Firth of Forth. Name The ...

,” (approximately 35 litres) was for

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

pea Pea (''pisum'' in Latin) is a pulse or fodder crop, but the word often refers to the seed or sometimes the pod of this flowering plant species. Peas are eaten as a vegetable. Carl Linnaeus gave the species the scientific name ''Pisum sativum' ...

se, beans,

rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is grown principally in an area from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia. It is much more tolerant of cold weather and poor soil than o ...

, and white salt, commodities which had been sold by striken, or level measure. The second firlot, which contained 31 pints of water, about 50 litres, was for

oats The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural). Oats appear to have been domesticated as a secondary crop, as their seed ...

barley Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikele ...

and

malt Malt is any cereal grain that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and then stopped from germinating further by drying with hot air, a process known as "malting". Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, ...

, which had been sold by heaped measure. The pint mentioned is the Scottish Sterling jug. The measure became less common in 1696 when laws were passed requiring all oatmeal to be sold by weight rather than measure. It finally disappeared with the introduction of

Imperial unit The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed thr ...

s by the

Weights and Measures Act 1824 Weights and Measures Acts are acts of the British Parliament determining the regulation of weights and measures. It also refers to similar royal and parliamentary acts of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and the medieval Welsh states. ...

( 5 Geo. 4. c. 74).

References

{{reflist Units of volume Obsolete Scottish units of measurement

See also

References