Word of the week

• clarty adj. filthy, muddy
• laird n. the owner of an estate; a landed proprietor
• laldie n. a beating, punishment; gie it laldie do something vigorously
• mind v. remember, recollect; remind

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laird n. the owner of an estate; a landed proprietor

“laird n. the owner of an estate; a landed proprietor”

19th March 2007

laird n. the owner of an estate; a landed proprietor

Laird and lord share a common ancestor in Old English hlaford. Both forms occur in the earliest written records of Scots, but over time the forms and meanings have diverged so that laird now usually refers to 'a landed proprietor'. Like the word 'provost', the Scottish term 'laird' is generally recognised furth of Scotland. Discussions of the TV series Monarch of the Glen in the Liverpool Daily Post (2004) made reference to 'the new Laird of Glenbogle' without translating the term, and the Derby Evening Telegraph helpfully informed readers in January 2006 that 'laird is a title which can be given to Scottish landowner'.

Historically, a Scottish laird was often a landowner who was a baron or freeholder, though from an early date this term was applied only to the 'smaller barons' or smaller landowners generally, as opposed to the greater or titled barons or 'lords'. This distinction between lords and lairds is illustrated by the following quotation from John Leslie's History of Scotland (1596): 'This king divydes the kingdome in baronies, ouer quhilkes (over which) he settis lordis and lardis'. Both also appear in James Hogg's short story, The Bridal of Polmood (1820): 'The acts of cruelty and injustice which every petty lord and laird exercises in his own domain, are beyond all sufferance'.

Other kinds of lairds also existed - an 'Abbey laird', for instance, was a bankrupt, the name arising from the practice of debtors taking sanctuary from their creditors in the precincts of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, a privilege abolished in 1880. Lairds have also diversified. In Meera Syal's novel, Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999), we read that 'Suman ... married a Scottish Punjabi laird, part of some strange aristocratic Indian clan who would divide their time between international business travel and shooting anything with hooves in the mountains'.