A ploughgate was the Scottish equivalent in the south and east of the country. Even more so than in England, the variable land quality in Scotland led to ploughgates of varying sizes, although the area was notionally understood as 100 Scots acres. Many sources say that four ploughgates made up a daugh, but in other places it would have appeared to have been the equivalent of one daugh exactly. As in the Danelaw, ploughgates were subdivided into oxgangs, again usually by eighths.
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Oxen, through the Scottish Gaelic word damh or dabh, also provided the root of the land measurement 'daugh'. Skene in Celtic Scotland says: : "in the eastern district there is a uniform system of land denomination consisting of 'dabhachs', 'ploughgates' and 'oxgangs', each 'dabhach' consisting of four 'ploughgates' and each 'ploughgate' containing eight 'oxgangs'. :"As soon as we cross the great chain of mountains [the Grampian Mountains] separating the eastern from the western waters, we find a different system equally uniform. The 'ploughgates' and 'oxgangs' disappear, and in their place we find 'dabhachs' and 'pennylands'.
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Scottish land measurements tended to be based on how much livestock they could support. This was particularly important in a country where fertility would vary widely. In the east a davoch would be a portion of land that could support 60 cattle or oxen. MacBain reckoned the davoch to be “either one or four ploughgates, according to locality and land”.
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Skene in Celtic Scotland says: :"As soon as we cross the great chain of mountains separating the eastern from the western waters, we find a different system equally uniform. The ‘ploughgates’ and ‘oxgangs’ disappear, and in their place we find ‘dabhachs’ and ‘pennylands’. The portion of land termed a ‘dabhach’ is here also called a ‘tirung’ or ‘ounceland’, and each ‘dabhach’ contains 20 pennylands." The Rev.
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68 The agreement concerns Walter's brother Theobald, who was the plaintiff.Clanchy From Memory to Written Record pp. 68–73 Within a few years, the practice of recording feet of fines had spread widely, and even to Scotland, as in 1198 an agreement between William de Bruce of Annandale and Adam of Carlisle over eight ploughgates in Lockerbie, Scotland was filed with the English treasury, recorded with those from Northumberland. While early fines could be made in the Exchequer, after the early 14th century, fines were always made in the Court of Common Pleas.
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Her garden gives pleasure only to the gods, and Alcinous tends to mortals. Based on Homer's description of the Garden, known from The Odyssey, Rose Standish Nichols compared the gardens of the Homeric Age to kitchen gardens, "characterized by an extreme simplicity": > And without the courtyard, hard by the door, is a great garden of four > ploughgates, and hedge runs round on either side. And there grow tall trees > blossoming, pear trees and pomegranates, and apple trees with bright fruit, > and sweet figs, and olives in their bloom. The fruit of these trees never > perisheth, neither faileth, winter or summer, enduring through all the year.
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