LANGUAGE

SCOTS LANGUAGE dsl.ac.uk

The Dictionary of the Scots Language is an essential resource to bookmark when using early Scottish documents. Many words in Scots often have different meanings to their English equivalents – a ‘football’, for example, was a monetary payment made to trade incorporations when signing up!

PALAEOGRAPHY www.scottishhandwriting.com

The further back in time you go with Scottish documents, the harder they are to read, with various forms of handwriting styles adopted through the centuries, such as the almost impenetrable ‘secretary hand’. The Scottish Handwriting site provides a free tutorial on how to decipher such documents.

GOOGLE BOOKS books.google.co.uk

Several Scots Law dictionaries are on Google Books, providing translations for legal terms found in historical documents, from land registration to criminal and civil law, and more. Hugh Barclay’s A Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland is a good starter.