Meil

Six lispunds, the bulk weight of the Orkney grain trade.

Six lispunds, also written meall or meale, and the unit in which grain moved in bulk. Above it sat the last at twenty-four meils, and below it the lispund and the mark.

Its more interesting use was as a measure of value. Old Orkney apprising reckoned livestock in meils of grain: a sufficient cow or ox at ten meils, a fattened ox at fifteen, a wether at four, a goose at two, and a capon at one. Grain was the currency, and an animal was quoted as so much of it.

Two chains in the sources do not agree. One gives twenty-four meils to the last and another appears to give two, and the modern weights offered — seventy-two pounds by one account, eleven stone four by another — cannot both follow from six lispunds.

That is the condition of the whole Orkney system rather than a fault in any one writer: the units were real and used daily, and nobody with authority ever wrote down what they were.