fiars or fiars prices
prices of grain which were fixed for each county by its sheriff and a jury of locals every February; a ‘fiar’ could also be someone who held lands in which someone else possessed a liferent.
Your Scottish Archives Glossary
The Your Scottish Archives Glossary defines archaic words and phrases, mostly Scots law terminology, commonly found in documents and records in Scotland’s archives. If you think a word or phrase should be added to the glossary, or an existing entry could be defined better, please contact us at your@scottisharchives.org.uk.
You can also use the Dictionary of the Scots Language as a further resource at https://dsl.ac.uk/ for Scots words and phrases (including legal terminology).
To find a term within the glossary, click on the initial letter of the word you are looking for, then select the relevant syllable segment displayed below.
Example: to find the term “roup” select section “R” then sub-section “Ro”
file
a collection of related records stored together; traditionally a paper file contains multiple documents related to the same function or activity, an electronic file similarly contains related items and may be called a folder.
finding aid
a means of helping users (and staff) to find relevant archival items: typically a finding aid is a compiled document about a fonds or collection which provides contextual information (such as an administrative history and scope and contents note) along with a list of series and/or items (with reference code, date and description) arranged to show their relationship to each other.
fire and sword
letters of. These were an order to a sheriff by the Privy Council to muster the assistance of the men of his county to dispossess tenants who had illegally retained possession of lands; enforcing decrees of removing.
firlot
a measure of capacity which depended on what it was being used to measure; as far as grain was concerned, it was the fourth part of a boll.