Sc. [f. BONDAGE sb. 1 c + -ER.] One who performs bondage-service; spec. in recent times, in the south of Scotland and Northumberland, a female out-worker, whom the occupier of a cot-house on a farm, and generally also each ‘hind’ or married farm-worker occupying a ‘hind’s house,’ undertakes, as a condition of his tenancy, to supply from his own family, or else to engage, board, and lodge, to do regular field-labor on the farm.
[Not in Jamieson, 1808–25.]
1837. Howitt, Rur. Life, II. iv. (1862), 119. These female bands in the fields … I heard these women called Bondagers.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, II. 386. The first class of ploughmen were each bound to supply a field-worker for the farm during the year … these latter have long been designated by the odious name of bondagers.
1853. Johnston, Nat. Hist. E. Bord., I. 106. The row of bondagers on the haugh with the light rattle of their hoes.
1855. A. Somerville, Autobiog., 6. When we lived in Springfield, the house rent was paid by finding one shearer for the harvest … also an outfield worker winter and summer for the farmer…. [The latter] called the ‘bondager’ was paid ten-pence per day.
1869. Pall Mall Gaz., 3 Aug., 12/2.
