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Stirling Local History Society

16 Jan 1520 – Town Council order that stray pigs are to be confiscated!

Pigs were a perennial problem in medieval and early modern towns. They wandered about, made a mess and sometimes attacked people and it could be very difficult to keep them under control.

These were not today’s overweight monsters. They were lean and agile animals and they were often merely penned, perhaps under the forestairs of the houses which were sometimes known as ‘swine cruives’ (pig pens).

If these pens had been secure and the pigs kept in them, they would just have been a bit messy. But they were evidently not secure and sometimes people let them out, to wander the streets scavenging for scraps, getting into other people’s yards and gardens where they would root and dig. And sometimes, they attacked people, too.

Stirling’s burgh council, like the authorities in many other towns, legislated again and again to try to solve the problems.

On 16 Jan 1520 they resolved that any pig found wandering the streets should be forfeit and the owner fined. Only two years later, in 1522, a man was before the council for keeping both a cow and a sow which were ‘common dyke breakers’. In 1545 the act was repeated, this time allowing anyone to kill stray pigs without penalty. And on 16th Nov 1680 the burgh council again complained of people who were allowing pigs to stray contrary to the former acts.

But it was all to no avail, the animals continued to stray and do damage. People complained and nothing changed.

It is difficult to judge the scale of the problem. A complaint of about 100 pigs being taken across the Forth in 1525 probably arose because the proper market dues had not been paid; these would not have been ‘residents’. 

The Council Minutes for Stirling survive from late 1519 – just a few weeks before the first legislation about pigs. There are published Extracts from the Records of the Royal Burgh of Stirling (in two volumes) down to 1752; it is important to recall that, though a very judicious selection, these volumes are Extracts only. The full surviving record, right down to the very recent, is held in Stirling Council Archives.

Of course, stray pigs were just one of the issues they dealt with. The range is vast – and, sometimes, they did actually resolve something. Certainly, if you are interested in Stirling’s history, the council minutes are one of the key places to search.  It is easy enough to check the published Extracts; members of the Archives staff or members of Stirling Local History Society may be able to help with locating information about specific topics in the manuscripts.
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