Finding true origins can be a little taxing
THANK you to Dennis who emailed to ask of the origin and true meaning of the expression ‘to get off Scot/ Scott free’. I imagine that there are very few of us who have not heard, or used for that matter, the expression ‘to get off Scot free’.
It’s still in popular use with some 75-80% of us familiar with the term, but who is Scott or are we really discussing Scots as in the citizens of Scotland and why did they ‘get off free’? For that matter, what was actually free?
Well, as you would already know if a regular reader of this column, if a phrase is popular, then there is a good chance that more than one group has put their hand up to claim to be the original source.
So in searching out proof of which group was earliest and, therefore, originators of the expression, I came across the story of Mr Dred Scott.
Americans claim loudly that this story accounts for the origin of the idiom.
Mr Scott was born into slavery in the state of Virginia in the USA in the year of 1799. A very determined man, in a number of very well-publicised (at least in the North) court cases, he attempted, via the Supreme Court of the USA, to be declared a ‘free man’.
The cases famously and sadly failed, but happily for Mr Scott, his ‘owners’, the Blow family could see how earnestly he longed for freedom and declared him a ‘free man’ in his sixtieth year.
Americans are quite sure that ‘their’ Dred Scott was the point of origin for the expression … but there are others.
Would the Scots then be successful in their claim that they originated the term?
Well, yes … and no! The Scots claimed that the term was created in recognition of their … ‘carefulness’ with their money. In other words, they claimed if anyone could get it for free, then a Scot would. It would then be Scot free. They came up with an advertising campaign in the midsixties …
‘It might not be Scot free, but it will be close!’ The mid-sixties would be far too recent.
However, the Scots were involved. As our good friends the Vikings came down and settled into life in Scotland, they brought with them many Norse 2 words. One of these was ‘skat’. Now a ‘skat’ was determined by the ‘storting’, the people’s parliament and was the imposition of taxes which allowed the storting to buy items and services for the benefit of the people – roads, water, marketplaces, food and housing for the poor and more.
In simple terms, a skat was a tax and it wasn’t very long before the
locals thought it was called a ‘Scot’ and was a means of separating a Scotsman from his possessions. (Women did not pay tax … oh for the old days hey girls?) All of this was being recorded in books dating back to the 10th century … medieval times!
Shortly thereafter scots (taxes) applied to all manner of things: church scots, timber scots, clay scots, liquor scots. If you failed to pay any or all of these scots / taxes, you were said to be getting off ‘scot free’ … but there were severe penalties. Just to add confusion, it was often given a capital ‘S’ which only further reinforced links to Scottish people.
History records that some enterprising individual forged a document entitled ‘Writ of Edward the Confessor’ in which the document entitled the bearer to live his life ‘scot free’ and it is recorded over the forged signature of Edward.
Now the forged document bore no date, but given that Edward died at
the Battle of Hastings in 1066, it must be assumed to have been created and in use before then. It was clearly well before the American origin claim. I cannot help but wonder if this enterprising forger and his document got away with the ruse?
Thereafter it pops up in many titles: 1567 in John Maplet’s ‘Green Forest’, a natural history book; the 1588 novel by Robert Greene ‘the Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia’ and on until it’s common language.
There we go Dennis … we’d all like to live ‘scot free’ as in tax free, but taxes are slyly woven into every corner of the cloth that is 21st century life … but we can dream!
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© Sue-belinda Meehan - suebelinda.meehan@outlook.com.au