Bauk (field) facts for kids

The balk (also called back or bauk in Scots, or leum-iochd in Scottish Gaelic) was a strip of land in a corn field. This land was often left unploughed or fallow. It played a role in old farming traditions and also served as a boundary.

What Was a Balk?

Imagine a field of wheat ready for harvest. A balk was a narrow strip of land within or next to it that wasn't ploughed. Sometimes, it was left to rest, meaning nothing was grown on it for a season. This helped the soil recover.

Balks and Harvest Fun

Harvest time was exciting, especially in the last field. Farmers would compete to avoid being the last one to cut their sheaf of corn. Being the last meant you were left with the "cailleach" (pronounced kulyach), which was a special name for the last sheaf. It was also called the "gobhar bhacach," meaning the "goat of the balk."

If a reaper came across a balk, they would be happy. It meant they had less corn to cut! There was an old saying: "better a balk in autumn, than a sheaf the more." This meant it was better to have a small unploughed strip than to be the last to finish harvesting.

Some people in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire understood this saying differently. In the old "run-rig" system, land was divided into strips. A farmer who got a balk with their strip was considered lucky. The grass on the balk was very valuable, especially for fodder (animal food).

Balks in Literature

The famous writer Walter Scott mentioned balks in his 1818 novel, Heart of Midlothian. He described a balk as "an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn."

Another book, Gregor's Folk-lore of North East Scotland (1881), also talked about them. It said that even in large cultivated fields, the land wasn't always neat. Fields could be twisted or zig-zag shaped. They were often cut up by "baaks" where stones and weeds were gathered.

Balks as Boundaries

Balks were also useful as natural boundaries. They helped separate the land of different neighbours. In 1799, George Robertson wrote about agriculture in Perth. He noted that "Large slices of land are left unploughed, as boundaries between the alternate ridges of neighbours."

Robertson also mentioned that these "earthen boundaries" were "wearing fast out" in his area. This shows that balks were becoming less common in parts of Lowland Scotland by the late 1700s. However, the word "balk" was still used in north-east Scotland in the 1920s. By then, it often referred to a path between fields, showing how its meaning changed over time.