Firlot
Modern equivalent
Approx. 36 litres for wheat; larger for oats and barley
A quarter of a Scots boll, and the everyday working measure of the Scottish grain market.
The firlot stood to the boll as the peck stood to the bushel in England, though the two systems did not align neatly. Its physical standard was held by the burgh of Linlithgow, and separate standards existed for wheat and for oats because the two commodities were measured in different firlots entirely. Scotland’s burghs each guarded a master measure of some kind, so that Linlithgow held the firlot, Stirling the jug for liquids, Edinburgh the ell and Lanark the stone: an arrangement that distributed authority rather neatly across the country.