The fishery supported village populations with a commitment to the sea and only tenuous connection to the land. Several of the Argyll burghs, such as Campbeltown, Tarbert, Inveraray and Lochgilphead, had particularly heavy rates of migration to the Lowland towns, a pattern which reflected their capacity to pull in migrants from surrounding rural districts and then channel them south. This was therefore a regional society where a money economy was now in place which was likely to lead to an erosion of peasant culture and values.
