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”

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Jo Ju

jus relictae

‘the right of the relict’ (the widow). It is the share of the moveable goods of a marriage to which a widow was entitled on the death of her husband. If there were no surviving children the jus relictae was one-half of the husband’s moveable goods. If there were children, one-third would go to them as the bairns’ pairt or legitim, one-third was the jus relictae and the remaining one-third would be the dead’s part which the deceased could bequeath. Widowers were given the same rights, jus relicti, in 1881. See also terce for the widow’s rights in heritables.

justice ayres

an alternative name for the periodic circuits or tours made by the justiciar throughout the country for the purpose of administering justice in criminal cases, carried out by the High Court of Justiciary.