Definition
In old Scots law, a colpindach was a young bovine animal — specifically a cow or heifer of one to two years of age. The term appears in early Scottish legal texts as a unit of value or a form of render (payment in kind), reflecting an era when livestock functioned as practical currency in feudal and customary obligations. In later Scots usage, the term was supplanted by "cowdash" (also rendered "cowdach" or "quoyach").
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow historical term with no continuing legal life. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in early Scots legal materials — feudal charters, customary law texts, and glossaries of archaic Scottish legal vocabulary. Its significance is terminological rather than doctrinal: a researcher reading a medieval or early modern Scottish document who encounters "colpindach" needs to recognize it as a livestock descriptor tied to renders or dues, not a term of art with procedural or substantive legal weight.
The variant spellings present a practical research trap. Burrill records "cowdach" and "quoyach" as later equivalents; Black's uses "cowdash." A keyword search on any single spelling will miss cognate appearances in primary sources. Researchers working in early Scots land records, baron court books, or rental rolls should search across all attested variants.
Burrill's entry, though partially corrupted in the surviving text (a passage appears garbled mid-sentence, likely a transcription or typesetting error in the source edition), preserves the additional gloss from Skene — the sixteenth-century Scots jurist Sir John Skene — who identified the word as Irish in origin and glossed it as meaning "foot-follower." This etymological note has no direct legal consequence but is useful for researchers tracing the word's movement between Gaelic customary practice and Scots written law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — agree on the core definition: a young beast or cow, one to two years of age, in old Scots law. The entries are substantially identical across Black's editions, suggesting no independent research between the two editions on this term.
Burrill adds material value. His entry attributes the etymology to Skene and supplies the later variant spellings "cowdach" and "quoyach," giving researchers a richer orthographic trail. The mid-entry textual corruption in Burrill ("that though the money did answer numero... et pondere") appears to be an intrusion from an adjacent entry, likely a compositing error in the original print edition; researchers should not attempt to reconcile that language with the colpindach definition.
None of the historical dictionaries contextualize the term within the broader system of Scots customary renders or explain the specific legal instruments in which it would appear. For that context, researchers must go to primary Scots sources or to Skene's own works, particularly his glossary appended to the Regiam Majestatem.