Forms: 1– byre; also 6 bire, 6–9 byer, 8 byar. [OE. býre, found only in vocabularies and hence of doubtful gender and declension; but perh.:—OTeut. type *bûrjo(m, deriv. of *bûro(m, OE. búr, cottage, dwelling, ‘bower,’ f. *bŭ- to dwell: see BOWER. Not the same word as ON. bý-r, bœ-r, Icel. bær str. masc. ‘farm house,’ etc. (in which the final r is merely the nom. ending:—*bûi-z, *bôi-z); although from the same root.]
1. A cow-house. Perh. in OE. times, more generally, ‘a shed.’ To muck the byre (Sc.): to take out the dung and cleanse the byre.
a. 800. Corpus Gl., Wr.-Wülcker, 32. Magalia, byre.
c. 1050. Supp. Ælfric’s Gloss. ibid., 185. Magalia, uel capanna, byre, uel sceapheorden.
c. 1440. Gaw. & Gol., i. 3 (Jam.). The king farith with his folk our firthis and fellis, Withoutin beilding of blis, of bern, or of byre.
1521. in Archæol., XVII. 203. Ther is a bire made for oxen.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., III. 420. Bayth hall and chalmer, bakhous, barne and byre.
1570. Levins, Manip., 143. A Byre, cowhouse, bouile.
1724. Ramsay, Tea-t. Misc. (1733), I. 76. I ha’ a good ha’ house, a barn and a byer.
a. 1775. Jacobite Song, ‘The mucking o’ Geordie’s byre.’
1805. Wordsw., Prel., VIII. (1851), 169. Long ere heat of noon, From byre or field the kine were brought.
1847. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. III. (1858), 440. He had beeves in the byre, he had flocks in the fold.
¶ Misused (from a mistaken notion as to the etymology) to english the Icelandic bær (ON. bœr, býr): ‘A farmyard and buildings, including the farm-house,’ called in Scotland a ‘farm-toun.’
1863. Baring-Gould, Iceland, 137. He set about erecting a byre with a great hall one hundred feet long.
2. attrib., as in byre-door, -dung, -loft, -man, -woman; and in comb., as byre-mucker, one who ‘mucks’ or cleanses a byre; byrewards adv., towards the byre.
1883. Gd. Words, Aug., 495/2. From the *byre door, he watched the birds.
1833. Act 3 & 4 Will. IV., xlvi. § 3. Stable and *byre dung.
1822. Bewick, Mem., 19. I always took up my abode for the night in the *byer-loft.
1814. Edinb. Corresp., 4 June (Jam.). Mr. Heriot’s byreman … was found … dreadfully bruised.
1790. Burns, Lett. to Dr. Moore, 14 July. As ill-spelt as country John’s billet-doux, or as unsightly a scrawl as Betty *Byremucker’s answer to it.
1880. Mrs. C. Reade, Brown Hand & White, I. Prol. 30. The goat and kid now being driven *byrewards by a boy.
1820. Scott, Monast., xxviii. ‘There is na ane fit to do a turn but the *byre-woman and myself.’
