Page 58 - Spring2009

Portfolio, “that is helpful to the brain and to the preparation that she fears will one day be utterly abandoned: “A good
whole body, throughout childhood and adoles- miller knows just what samples of grain to select, just how long the process
cence, and that is oatmeal. Oats are the most of drying in the kiln requires, just how to set the stones for the correct
nutritious of cereals, being richer than any other shelling and grinding of the cleaned and dried oats. The method of kiln-
in fats, organic phosphorus and lecithins. . . . drying is somewhat more arduous than the modern method of mechanical
At one time it was the mainstay of the Scottish drying, but it is to the kiln that we owe the delectable flavor of the best
peasants’ diet and produced a big-boned, well- oatmeal.”
developed and mentally energetic race, but it is At one time, water-driven oat mills with stone grinders dotted the
so no longer, having given way to less useful and Scottish landscape at intervals of about every eight miles. McNeill contin-
economic foods, and in the case of children in ues, “In meal from the local mills, as in château wines, there are constant
the large towns. . . to tea and [wheat] bread with minor differences in taste, due in part to the quality and age of the grain,
dripping, margarine or jam.” and in part to the temperature and time taken in the kiln. Country folk
The sting of Samuel Johnson’s oft-repeated with a natural palate always appreciated the fact that the age-old primitive
witticism scorning the Scot’s preference for structure of the local mills provided an agreeable variation in the flavour
horse-fodder is mitigated by another of his own of the meal. Far too much of the meal in the market today [1920s] is mass-
admiring observations during a milled by a process which affects
visit to Scotland about the oat- adversely both its flavour and nutri-
heavy diet. “Such food makes men tive qualities. That is why so many
strong like horses, and purges the children do not enjoy the porridge
brain of pedantry.” as their parents did. . .”
McNeill marks the progres- “The best oatmeal is well-rip-
sion of grain preferences among ened on the stalk, dried by sunshine
the Scots in the last several cen- and, if necessary, in the gentle
turies wherein ancient barley gave warmth of a small kiln, and ground
way to the supremacy of oats, between two honest mill-stones.
which in its turn, during the most Some sort of virtue disappears
recent hundred years is “threat- with rapid drying, while high-speed
ened by wheaten flour, the victory milling between opposed surfaces
of which would be regarded by of steel may possibly add a trace of
many as a national disaster.” iron to our diet, but cannot achieve
“Up until the middle of the the effect of a little fine sandstone
last [nineteenth] century,” la- dust.” 3
mented Lord Boyd Orr, director Before, during and after the
of the Rowett Nutrition Institute at advent of the water-driven mill,
Aberdeen in the early 1920s, “the with which the Scots had experi-
people of Scotland were eating mented perhaps as early as 700
natural foodstuffs. With the in- AD, farmwives milled their oats
troduction of machinery, this has by hand with the use of a quern, “a
been changed. . . . Natural foods hand-mill composed of two circular
have been changed into artificial stones with a hole in the centre of
foodstuffs, with the very best the upper one, through which it
substances purified away that the is fed corn [grain], and a wooden
Almighty put there to keep us in Hearty Scotish fisherfolk. Note the size of the handle. The meal falls from all sides
upper arms on the fisherman.
perfect health.” on to a wide tray, and by means of
As these comments reveal, a wooden spindle can be ground
the Scots themselves were well aware of the coarse or fine at will…” The ancient quern worked so efficiently that it
detrimental changes that modern agriculture had continued in common use through the nineteenth century and even
and food processing were wreaking on their well into the twentieth.
long-venerated primary foodstuff. McNeill often Farmers who grew their own oats but sent them to the local mill to be
turns to the details of careful oat milling and threshed, winnowed and ground into meal also received in return a bag of
56 Wise Traditions SPRING 2009