How Older Scots wrote about fornication, from Lyndsay to the kirk session

What was the Older Scots word for fornication?

The Older Scots word was fornicatioun, with variant spellings fornicacioun and furnicatioun. The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) lists it as a noun meaning simply "fornication", and traces it to Middle English forms from about 1300, via Old French, from Latin fornicatio ^[1]. It is therefore the same borrowing that English made, arriving in the north of the island by the same route.

The spelling shows how Scots differed from English in the period. The "-ioun" ending is a characteristic Older Scots way of writing words of Latin origin, and spelling was not fixed in the way it later became. DOST, the historical dictionary that covers the language of Scotland from its earliest records to 1700, deals with this by gathering variant spellings under a single headword ^[4]. The entry for fornication is a good illustration, since it records the form with an initial "fur-" alongside the learned one ^[1].

The word did not stand alone. In the earliest Scottish records it travelled with its relatives: adultery, uncleanness, filthiness, abomination. This is the same company the word keeps in English Bibles and in English law, which is why Scottish and English usage looks so similar on the page. The English side of the story, including the Latin origin, is told in the article on the meaning and origin of fornication.

Older Scots is not a dialect of modern English but an earlier stage of a language with its own literature, law and administration. The point matters for this subject: when a Scottish burgh clerk wrote about fornicatioun in 1556 he was using a word that belonged to the clerk's own language, not a borrowing from his southern neighbours.

'Fornicatioun' in Older Scots sources

Date	Source	Spelling or phrase	Where recorded
c. 1490	Irland manuscript	fornicatioun (entry gives no quoted text)	Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue [1]
c. 1552	David Lyndsay, Monarche	'adultery, fornicacoun' in a confession of sins	Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue [1]
1556	Edinburgh burgh records	'vncouthe fornicatioun' listed with 'foull abhominatioun'	Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue [1]
1589	Edinburgh burgh records	'Adultre or furnicatioun'	Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue [1]
20 March 1594-95	Royal letter to Glasgow	'the filthie vice of fornicatioun'	British History Online [5]
1786	Robert Burns, The Holy Fair	houghmagandie, glossed 'immorality'	Kilmarnock edition, University of Toronto [9]

Where does it appear in early Scots texts?

It appears in poetry, in burgh records and in royal letters from about 1490 onwards. DOST gives four dated citations for the headword: a manuscript reference of about 1490, a passage by David Lyndsay of about 1552, an Edinburgh burgh record of 1556 and another of 1589, together with one further quotation whose source and date the entry does not give ^[1]. The 1490 citation is listed from the Irland manuscript but without a quoted text, so it can be used only as a date ^[1].

Lyndsay's lines come from his long poem the Monarche, and the dictionary quotes a confession of sins that includes "adultery, fornicacoun" ^[1]. The pairing is the conventional one in religious writing, and it shows that for a Scottish poet of the 1550s the two words belonged together as a pair of sins, much as they do in the King James Bible of 1611, discussed in the article on fornication versus adultery.

The Edinburgh burgh records are a different kind of evidence. The 1556 citation lists "foull abhominatioun" alongside "vncouthe fornicatioun", and the 1589 one pairs "Adultre or furnicatioun" ^[1]. A further, undated quotation in the same entry records a burgh being "grittumlie defylet with the vyce of fornicatioun" ^[1]. These are phrases from council and court records, which means that by the later sixteenth century the word was a working term of town government, not only of the pulpit.

A royal letter of 20 March 1594-95 shows the same vocabulary at national level. It commissioned the provost, bailies and kirk session of Glasgow to act as judges under the statutes of 1567 against what it called "the filthie vice of fornicatioun", and said the sin was widespread in the city and parish ^[5]. The act of the Scottish Parliament of 15 December 1567 on which it relied set escalating penalties: for a first offence a fine of £40 or eight days' imprisonment on bread and small drink, followed by two hours' public display in the market place; for a second, a larger fine (100 merks) or longer imprisonment, with the heads of both offenders shaved; and for a third, a fine of £100 or longer imprisonment, ducking in a pool and permanent banishment ^[5]. The legal side is covered in the article on whether fornication is illegal in the UK. The date on which these penalties were formally repealed has not been verified.

What vocabulary did kirk session records use?

Kirk session records used a mixture of Scots, Latin-derived legal terms and the phrases of church discipline, with "antenuptial fornication" as the standard name for sex before marriage. The kirk session was the lowest court of the Church of Scotland, and after the Reformation of 1560 it heard cases of fornication, adultery, illegitimacy, Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness and slander ^[6][7]. A guide from the Scottish Indexes site lists "antenuptial fornication" among the offences handled, together with adultery, paternity and irregular marriage ^[6].

The sanctions were public. The same guide lists fines, rebukes, the wearing of sackcloth, the cutty stool or stool of repentance, loss of church privileges and, in the last resort, excommunication ^[6]. A family-history article explains that from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century offenders were often made to sit on the penitent's stool in front of the congregation, and that from the early 1800s rebukes were increasingly given privately to the session alone ^[7]. Couples who confessed were normally fined, rebuked, often over several visits, and then absolved ^[7].

The parish registers gave children of unmarried parents their own descriptive terms. An entry in the Old Parish Registers might call a child "natural born", "born in uncleanness" or "begotten in fornication" ^[6]. These phrases are the Scottish counterparts of the English terms discussed in the article on the words for children born out of wedlock. By the 1850s the vocabulary had become more clinical: a Crieff entry cited in the press describes a child as "illigitimate", while the mother was "solemnly admonished of her sin" and then "restored to the privileges of the church" ^[8].

Paternity disputes show the legal vocabulary at work. If the alleged father denied the charge, the case could go up to the presbytery, and a deadlock could be settled by an oath of purgation, which if refused could lead to excommunication ^[6][7]. The First Book of Discipline of 1560 set out the rules for excommunication, including barring children from baptism until the parents repented ^[6]. The kirk had no criminal jurisdiction, so suspected crimes went to the civil courts, and a formal act of 1707 later set out the procedures ^[6][7].

Which Scots words survive in Burns's poetry?

The best-known Scots word for the consequences of sex outside marriage is houghmagandie, which Robert Burns used in The Holy Fair, printed in the Kilmarnock edition of 1786. The University of Toronto's copy of that edition glosses the word as "immorality" and shows it in the last stanza, where the poet remarks that many a deed begun that day "may end in houghmagandie / Some ither day" ^[9]. The poem is a satire on the open-air communion season, in which religious gatherings were also social occasions.

Burns knew the kirk's discipline at first hand. His poem Holy Willie's Prayer, written in 1785 and first printed anonymously, probably in 1789 although some sources say 1799, attacks the hypocrisy of William Fisher, a Mauchline kirk elder, who had complained about Burns's friend Gavin Hamilton ^[10]. In it the speaker confesses to "fleshly lust" in the voice of a man who believes himself chosen ^[3]. Burns himself came under the session's discipline in 1786. In a letter of July that year he wrote that he was about to humble himself in public at Mauchline church, but that he was "indulged so far as to appear in my own seat"; a nineteenth-century lecture on church discipline adds that he never had to sit on the Mauchline repentance stool ^[11]. The exact wording of the session's minute was not checked here.

The poems matter for a language article because they preserve Scots words that official records tend to flatten. Where the burgh clerk wrote fornicatioun, the poet could use a word with humour and edge. The Scottish National Dictionary entries for houghmagandie and the cutty stool exist online, but at the time of checking they could not be displayed because of an error on the site, so no definitions are taken from them here. The Toronto glossary is the source used for houghmagandie.

The Burns material also guards against a simple picture. The kirk's discipline was serious and real, yet it was also mocked in print by one of its own parishioners. The contrast between the solemn Latin-derived word and the playful Scots one is part of the vocabulary of the subject.

Where can researchers find these records today?

Researchers can search the vocabulary in the online Dictionaries of the Scots Language and the discipline itself in the National Records of Scotland. DOST, compiled between 1921 and 2002 and first published online in 2004, runs to 12 printed volumes and about 48,500 entries with over 580,000 quotations, and its contents are part of the DSL website ^[4]. The headword fornicatioun can be looked up there directly ^[1].

For the archives, the National Records of Scotland catalogues the kirk session records as series CH2, which it lists as covering 1569 to 2006 ^[2]. NRS is the official place of deposit for kirk session records that are over 50 years old and no longer in use, while some congregational records remain in local archives under its charge and superintendence, and the Scottish Archive Network catalogue helps locate them ^[2]. The page does not say that 1569 is the earliest surviving record.

Many of these minutes are also online. ScotlandsPeople, the online research service of NRS, has released kirk session minutes running from 1559 to 1900, more than a million pages in all ^[8]. The Old Parish Registers, which record baptisms, marriages and burials, cover 1553 to 1855, when civil registration began on 1 January 1855 ^[2].

Anyone using the records should remember that they are the church's account of people who were summoned, and that the language is the language of discipline. They show what the kirk called these matters, not necessarily what the people involved called them. The English legal and moral background to the same vocabulary is set out in the article on Blackstone's Commentaries and fornication.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue?

It is the historical dictionary of the language of Scotland from its earliest records up to 1700. It was compiled between 1921 and 2002, printed in 12 volumes with about 48,500 entries and published online in 2004 as part of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language ^[4]. Its entry on fornicatioun gives dated quotations from about 1490 ^[1].

What was the 'cutty stool'?

It was the stool of repentance on which offenders sat in church to be rebuked before the congregation. A guide to kirk session discipline lists the cutty stool, or stool of repentance, among the sanctions for offences such as antenuptial fornication ^[6]. From the early 1800s rebukes were more often given in private to the session ^[7].

What does 'houghmagandie' mean?

It is a Scots word for immorality, especially sexual immorality. Robert Burns used it in The Holy Fair in 1786, and the glossary of the Kilmarnock edition at the University of Toronto defines it as "immorality" ^[9]. The Scottish National Dictionary entry could not be displayed when checked.

Are kirk session records open to the public?

Yes, the older ones are. NRS is the place of deposit for kirk session records over 50 years old that are no longer in use, and ScotlandsPeople has released minutes from 1559 to 1900 online ^[2][8]. Some congregational records remain in local archives ^[2].

What did the Scottish act of 1567 provide?

It set escalating penalties for fornication: a fine or imprisonment and public display in the market place for a first offence, a larger fine or imprisonment and head-shaving for a second, and for a third a fine, ducking in a pool and permanent banishment ^[5]. A royal letter of 1594-95 gave Glasgow's magistrates and kirk session power to enforce it ^[5].

Who was Holy Willie?

He was William Fisher (1737-1809), a kirk elder from Mauchline, Ayrshire, whom Burns satirised in Holy Willie's Prayer for his hypocrisy ^[10]. The poem was written in 1785 and first printed anonymously, probably in 1789 although some sources say 1799 ^[10]. It was aimed at Fisher's complaint against Burns's friend Gavin Hamilton ^[10].