Sc. Law. Also 7–8 sowm. [f. prec.] trans. To estimate the amount of (pasture) in terms of the ‘soums’ it can support.
1679. Stair, Decisions, 23 Jan. (Dunlop), II. 679. Where divers heritors have a common pasturage in one commontie, no part whereof is ever plowed, the said common pasturage may be Soumed and Roumed.
1793. Statist. Acc. Scot., VI. 93. Where there are several small tenants upon one farm, the farm is (what they call) soumed.
1838. W. Bell, Dict. Law Scot., 932. Strictly speaking, to sowm the common, is to ascertain the several sowms it may hold; and to rowm it, is to portion it out amongst the dominant proprietors.
Hence Souming vbl. sb.
Chiefly in the phr. souming and rouming: see ROOM v.2 1 b. Also concr., the amount of stock that one person may send to a common pasture.
1681. Stair, Instit., II. vii. § 14 (1693), 289. It is accustomed in some places, to regulat common Pasturage by Souming and Rouming, which is the determining of the several Soums it may hold by particular Proportion of every Room of the Dominant Tenement.
1754. Erskine, Princ. Sc. Law (1809), 221. Which proportions may be fixed by an action of souming and rouming.
1799. J. Robertson, Agric. Perth, 524. The souming of cattle is not so much attended to as it ought to be.
a. 1856. G. Outram, Lyrics (1874), 43. She sune made her fu’ purse a toom ane, By raising a Process o’ Soumin’ an’ Roumin’.
1884. Spectator, 17 May, 642/2. The constable and another man at either side of the gateway see that only the proper souming [that is, head of stock] has been brought to the grazing.
1889. Scott. Leader, 17 May, 5. His clients had sufficient stock, according to their present souming, to stock the land applied for.
