kain or cain
poultry or animals paid by a feuar to a superior as part of a feu-duty, or more often poultry, eggs, butter and such things (even goose-feathers) paid by a tenant to a landlord as rent.
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”
kindly tenants
this refers to a highly unusual form of tenancy, in which ‘kindly tenants’ held their tenancies for a low or ‘favourable’ rent (which included paying no rent at all). It seems that, unlike normal tenants, it was understood that that kindly tenants could be succeeded in their holdings by their heirs. They were also called ‘rentallers’.
kirk session
a court within the presbyterian church, consisting of the parish minister and elders of the parish. For more detailed information, see the Knowledge base article on Kirk Sessions. See also presbytery.
kist
chest; trunk; packing case; coffin.
knaveship
was one of several forms of sequel; in this case, it was a quantity of grain due to the servants of a mill (who did the actual milling) by those who were bound to have their corn ground at that mill, but like all these sequels it varied according to the particular custom of the mill; see astriction, lock and gowpen, sucken, thirlage.