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Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1965 (SND Vol. VI).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

LEET, n.¹ Also leit, leat. [lit]

1. A stack of peats or ‡coal of certain dimensions varying at different times and places (ne.Sc., Lth. 1960); a section of a peat-stack (Uls. 1953 Traynor). Cf. 2.Mry. 1732 E. D. Dunbar Social Life (1865) 93:
Sixty loads of peats or therby … for makeing up a leet of peats, fourteen foots square, carried up seven foots high, and rooffed in to fourteen foot from top to bottom.Sc. 1748 Caled. Mercury (21 April):
Payment yearly of … 14 Poultry, half a Mart, and a Wedder and a half, with a Leat of Peats.Gsw. 1762 Burgh Rec. Gsw. (1912) 97:
6d. sterling for each leet of coalls to be putt out of the coal pitts [estimated by the editor to be about twelve loads].Abd. 1795 Stat. Acc.¹ VI. 8:
A leat of peats, measuring 24 feet in length, 12 in breadth at the bottom and 3 at the top and twelve feet high, will cost the consumer in town upwards of £5.Abd. 1845 Stat. Acc.² XII. 205:
Peat-casters in the season are paid by the leat of forty cart-loads, at from 17s. to £1 per leat, including the labour of spreading and setting the peats.Abd.⁵ 1928:
In certain parts there are still certain bonnage services due by the tenants to the laird and one man remarked, “I've jeest driven a leet o' peats for the laird.”

Hence leet-peats, peats delivered in leets as part of a farm-tenant's rent to his landlord. Now hist.Kcd. 1705 Urie Court Bk. (S.H.S.) 113:
Noe tennent lead ther leet peets in the night tyme.n.Sc. 1764 W. Fraser Chiefs of Grant (1883) II. 441:
I am determin'd to oblige the tenants to pay their leet-peets very regularly.Bnff. 1795 Stat. Acc.¹ XIII. 398:
Leet-peats, as they are called (measuring 8 feet in length, 12 broad, and 12 high), must be payed in kind when demanded.Abd. 1833 Hatton Estate MSS.:
Twenty feet of leet peats at present deliverable by the Tenants.Abd. 1926 Trans. Bch. Field Club XIII. 85:
In many parts of Aberdeenshire a substantial part of the rent was paid in kind, “in cain hens, leet peats and in days in the moss and in hairst.”

2. A section of a sow or oblong stack of grain or beans (see quots.) (Lth., wm.Sc. 1960). A somewhat sim. usage occurs in Eng. dial. Comb. leet-stack, the stack or sow itself (Lnk. 1960).Sc. 1802 Farmer's Mag. (Feb.) 83:
Barley, oats, peas, beans, mowed by the naked scythe; and all, except clean beans, raked into heaps, and stacked loose, in vast sows, without leats.Sc. 1814 J. Sinclair Gen. Report Agric. Scot. I. 398:
Yet oblong stacks, provincially called sows, are to be seen occasionally; and these are sometimes built with contiguous interruptions at regular distances, called leets, for the convenience of taking then down in parts, without disturbing the remainder.Lnk. 1948 Scotsman (10 Nov.):
19 Leets Oats (Yielder), 12 Dass Wheat and 12 Leets Wheat (squarehead Master), 25 Leets Mashlam.