Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1976 (SND Vol. X).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
BINAGE, n. Also binnage, bindage. Services due by a tenant to his laird or a cottar to a farmer as part of his rent, = Bondage.Abd. 1749 Abd. Estate (S.C.) 103–5:
To 25 person for binage who was sharing after 2 o'clock till night. . . . To 6 person for bindage ⅓ of the day shearing. . . . To 6 persons for binnage. Abd. 1896 J. Ogilvie J. Cruickshank:
As late as the middle of the present century several of Lord Fife's tenants had to send a certain number of harvest hands, for a day or more, to assist in the harvest on the home farm. This was known as ‘binage’.
[Variant of *beenage, ne.Sc. form of Eng. boonage, id. (see P.L.D. § 128). For the first element see been- in Been-hook, Been-plough and Boon, n. But there has been formal confusion in some cases with the synonymous Bondage, of different orig., and some of the forms are not clearly assignable to one or other word.]
