Yet another Act of James VI (1616) finds the Linlithgow standard of the Firlot to be true and to contain ‘twentie are pincts and ane mutchkin of just Sterline Jug and measure,’ but, in order to put an end to heaped measure, it orders a new firlot for malt, barley and oats, containing 31 pints Stirling Jug, and that the pint weigh 3 lb. 7 oz. Trois of the running water of the Water of Leith. Thus different Acts order firlots of 16, 17, 18, 19, 21-1/4, 31, pints; sometimes the pint is to be 41 ounces Scots, sometimes 55 ounces, and sometimes it is not mentioned which.
The firlot of 21-1/4 pints was probably an imported measure found to contain that number of pints; 21-1/4 × 104·2 gives 2214 cubic inches, = 7·98 Imperial gallons, for its capacity, a measure coinciding very closely with the Anker, which varies between 7·83 gallons in Oldenburg and 8 gallons in Lubeck (and 7·95 gallons in the Cape Colony). The Boll of 4 firlots = 4 bushels was equal to the Lubeck Ohm; and the term Anker was used in Scotland for the potato-firlot.
This firlot of 21-1/4 pints became the Edinburgh firlot; and it happens to coincide almost exactly with the Imperial bushel. It being fixed at 21-1/4 Stirling pints (of 104·2 c.i.) when 20-1/2 pints would have made it 2136 c.i., almost exactly the old English bushel (2150 c.i.), shows that it was not influenced by the latter; it was clearly an independent measure imported by trade. Its series was quaternary:
Boll (of 4 firlots) = 4 Imperial bushels. Firlot = 1 „ „ Peck = 2 „ gallons. Lippy (or forpit) = 4 „ pints.
The lippy, as its sixteenth, came to mean a sixteenth generally. The word is a diminutive of the O.E. ‘leap,’ a basket, e.g. ‘seed-lip.’
The barley and oats firlot of 31 pints = 3230 cubic inches is the real Linlithgow firlot. It was the Edinburgh firlot increased to contain the same weight of malt, bear (barley) and oats as that contained of wheat.[32] Its capacity was 11·6 gallons, and its Boll contained 46-1/2 gallons or 5·8 bushels. It was probably a Boll of about this capacity the dimensions of which, giving a capacity of about 43 gallons, were roughly stated in the Act of 1410 as those of the wine-boll.
It was a common custom formerly to measure corn by the shallow bushel, striked for wheat, heaped for lighter corn. The oats firlot of 31 pints was ordered to end the practice of giving ‘three straiked for two heaped measures [which] do exceed and are not just.’