[Partly ad. med.L. cotārius, f. cota cot; partly a later formation from COT sb.1 + -AR3, -ER1.]
1. Sometimes used to translate med.L. cotārius, applied in Domesday Book to a villein who occupied a cot or cottage with an attached piece of land (usually 5 acres) held by service of labor (with or without payment in produce or money).
Cotarius probably represented the OE. cotsǽta or cotset, cotsetla, and cotman, or at least, with the bordarius, included these. The distinction between the cotarius and the bordarius, bordar, or bordman, has not been satisfactorily determined; when both are mentioned together the bordarii are usually named before the cotarii, and the latter are much less numerous. In some cases, also, Domesday seems to distinguish coscez and cotarii: thus under the manor of Haseberie, Wiltshire, there are ‘xiii coscez, and ii cotar’.’ In Ellis’s Abstract of Population in Domesday (II. 435–6), Devonshire has bordarii 4847 … coscez 70, cotarii 19 … servi 3294, villani 8070.
[c. 1086. Domesday Bk., Middlesex, St. Peter’s (Du Cange). Unus Cotarius de 5 acris qui reddunt per annum 40 .sol. pro hortis suis.]
1809. Bawdwen, trans. Domesday Bk., 135. Ilbert has now there 4 ploughs, and sixty small Burgesses and sixteen cottars, [etc.].
1874. Green, Short Hist., v. 238. The cottar, the bordar, and the labourer were bound to aid in the work of the home-farm.
2. Sc. A peasant who occupies a cot-house or cottage belonging to a farm (sometimes with a plot of land attached), for which he has (or had) to give or provide labor on the farm, at a fixed rate, when required. b. A peasant, esp. in the Highlands, who occupies a cottage and rents a small plot of land under a form of tenure similar to that of the Irish cottier.
1552. Abp. Hamilton, Catech., 98. Quhay … puttis thair cottaris to ouir sair labouris.
1640–1. Kirkcudbr. War-Comm. Min. Bk. (1855), 53. The yeoman or cottar shall pey foure merks, for ilk failzie.
1679. Royal Procl., in Lond. Gaz., No. 1406/2. We hereby Require and Command all the Heretors and Masters of the said Shire of Fiffe and Kinrosse, to bring their Tenants, Cottars and Servants.
1754. Erskine, Princ. Sc. Law (1809), 41. They have power to judge in questions of highways … to call out the tenants with their cottars and servants, to perform six days work yearly for upholding them.
1785. Burns (title), The Cotter’s Saturday Night. Ibid. (1786), Twa Dogs, 72. A cotter howkin’ in a sheugh, Wi’ dirty stanes biggin’ a dyke, Baring a quarry, and sic like.
1808–79. Jamieson, Dict., Cottar, cotter, Persons of this description possess a house and small garden, or small piece of land, the rent of which they are bound to pay, either to a landlord or a farmer, by labour for a certain number of days, or at certain seasons…. The service itself is still called bondage.
1884. Mrq. Lorne, in Pall Mall Gaz., 10 May, 1/2. The crofter is a man having any small holding of land, and paying, in proportion to its size, from £1 to £30 of rent. A cottar is a man who as a rule has no land, and inhabits a hovel built by himself, paying perhaps five or ten shillings to the crofter for the use of a ‘rig’ or two of potatoes. He is the ‘con-acre’ man of Irish rural non-economy.
3. Irish. = COTTIER 2.
1791. Bentham, Panopt., I. 234. Among the Irish cottars … one room is the only receptacle for man, wife, children, dog and swine.
1863. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., II. i. 118. The farmers and labourers are merged into one class, like the miserable cotters of Ireland.
1883. S. C. Hall, Retrospect, II. 310. Picture the Irish cotter of fifty or sixty years ago.
4. attrib. and Comb.
a. 1796. Burns, Her Daddie Forbad, ii. A vera gude tocher, a cotter-man’s dochter.
1805. Forsyth, Beauties Scotl., I. 507. A considerable extent of ground is annually manured in this county by what is called the cottar dung.
1808. Jamieson, s.v. Cottar, Hence cotterman, cotterfouk, contemptuously cotter-bodies.
1815. Scott, Guy M., viii. ‘Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar houses.’
1818. Edin. Mag., Aug., 127 (Jam.). The residence of the farmer … is flanked by a cluster of villages; these constitute the cottar-town; the inhabitants are vassals to the farmer.
1861. G. H. K., Vacat. Tour, 157. A brighter specimen of cotter prosperity in the north.
1868. Peard, Water-Farm., xiii. 129. The smallest of conceivable cottar water-farms.
