thirlage and gowpen and bannock and sucken

4. Sucken. This is a rich word which connects back to "soken" and "soke" and to the ancient rights of "sac and soc." It can refer to: (1) the lands astricted to a mill, as in the quotation from Erskine in the previous essay, or (2) the population of such lands, (3) the duty and liability of tenants within a district astrict to a mill or even (4) the meal ground at such a mill. The flexibility of meanings of sucken and thirl suggests that the central social reality in view is the payment of multure for having one's grain ground, and that the various participants in the transaction might use these words slightly differently. If the land on which the grain was grown was astricted to a particular mill, it was insucken land; outsucken multures were paid by those who wanted their grain ground, but whose land was not thirled land. Thus, with the different definitions of sucken we might have, from 1641: "Sex bollis of moulter or sucking quhilkis perteinet to the Carmelite freires of the said burcht." Or, from 1711: "All and haill the lands of Hardhaugh and Chimieshill with ye multures suckens sequells and knaveship thereof.

5. Erskine's definition speaks further of multure as "the quantity of grain or meal payable to the proprietor of the mill, or to the multurer his tackman." A multurer is a person (usually a miller, or a miller's servant or agent) to whom multure is payable. Consistent with the broad definition of sucken, a multurer may also be a person who pays toll for having corn ground at a mill. A tackman is one who looks after horses or cattle which are grazed on tack. From 1885 we have, "With constables, tackmen, and pinders we are familiar." A pinder (a word which I didn't know before today) is "an officer of a manor, having the duty of impounding stray beasts."*

[*The words pound, impound, pen, pynd, and pinder are all related]

From 1523: "Than cometh the pynder & taketh hym & putteth hym in the pynfolde." Or, from Daniel DeFoe in 1769: "[At Nottingham] they have..two more [officers] called Pinders, one for the Fields, and the other for the Meadows." While the word tack has a stunning variety of meanings, one of them is "pasture for cattle let on hire." From 1804: "A tack, grass or clover for horses and cattle, hired by the week, month, or quarter."

6. Sequels. We know that the term has something to do with followers, and indeed this is its oldest usage, going back to the 15th century. Originally it meant "a train of followers" or a "band of adherents," but in Scottish law sequels are, in thirlage, the "small allowances of meal, or of manufactured victual, or of money composition, made to the servants at the dominant mill for their real or implied trouble in grinding the victual of the servient lands" (Bell, Dictionary of the law of Scotland, s. v.).

7. The additional terms provided in Erskine's definition are that these sequels are further called "knaveship, bannock and lock or gowpen." The term knaveship, having to do with sequels, was first used in the 16th century. John Skene's 1609 definition, though hard to follow, is: "Ane free man or ane free halder, sall gif for multure at the milne...of tuentie bolles, ane firlt (as knawship)." Ersking defines it elsewhere: "The sequels are the small parcels of corn or meal given as a fee to the servant, over and above what is paid to the multurer." Bannock is a small quantity of meal sufficient to make a bannock, which is usually unleavened, of large size, round or oval in form and flattish. A gowpen is "the two hands placed together so as to form a bowl. Hence, usually, as much as can be contained in the hands so placed." A gowpen is a "double handful." It can also refer to a fist or grip. "Hold me fast, let me not go, Or from your goupen break." Finally, the word lock connotes a small quantity of meal, corn, or flax. Erskine gives the impression that the sequel was known "lock and gowpen" and not that lock and gowpen were two separate sequels.

What is fascinating about these sequels is that there are three (or maybe four) words to describe a paltry quantity. The words look at the quantity from different angles, such as how much could be held within two hands or how much would make a loaf of bread, but it is remarkable that there is only one term for the big quantity--multure--but three or four for the smaller. Is that also replicated in other areas of human experience? What would account for it? Perhaps a certain fastidiousness, a sense that every last morsel of the grain must be accounted for, encouraged the development of all these terms.

Conclusion

The legal issues with thirlages are more complex than I have indicated in these two essays but, fortunately, I won't try to present that law here. May it suffice for our purposes that we have learned about 10 new terms in these two essays, terms which have some flexibility to them, but find their home in the world of thirlage and payment of multure. But figurative uses allure. Instead of saying all the time, "I have paid my dues," when we mean to emphasize that it is our turn to "cash in" on some benefits of our position, we might just say, "I have paid the multure," or "I am enthralled to my thirlage no longer." Maybe we would thereby be encouraged to develop a more visual way of speaking.

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