Definition
In Scots law, the matter of charge or ground of accusation against a person accused of a crime. Dittay is functionally equivalent to an indictment — the formal statement of criminal charges upon which a trial proceeds. The phrase taking up dittay refers to the preliminary process of gathering informations and presentments of crime in preparation for prosecution. Articles or points of dittay corresponded to the individual counts or charges within a single accusation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An indictment; a charge.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded. The term does not appear in Webster's 1913, reflecting its status as Scots legal terminology with no foothold in general English usage.
The Wiktionary gloss is accurate as far as it goes, but it understates the term's technical specificity. In practice, dittay was not merely synonymous with "charge" in the loose sense — it referred to the formal documentary and procedural ground of criminal prosecution in Scots practice, with its own procedural vocabulary (articles of dittay, taking up dittay) that had no direct English common law counterpart.
Common Confusion
Dittay is sometimes loosely equated with the English indictment, and the functional parallel is real. However, Scots criminal procedure operated on distinct principles from English common law, and dittay carried procedural connotations specific to that system. Researchers reading across jurisdictions should not assume that English indictment doctrine — grand jury requirements, specific common law pleading rules — maps cleanly onto historical Scots dittay practice. The terms describe analogous instruments in different procedural frameworks.
Why It Matters in Research
Dittay is an archaic Scots law term with no living presence in modern legal systems. It appears almost exclusively in historical sources — Scottish criminal trial records, early institutional writers, and state trials collections — and researchers are most likely to encounter it in primary source documents rather than modern scholarship.
Several navigational points warrant attention:
First, the term surfaces with some frequency in the State Trials collections (How. St. Trials), making it relevant to researchers working through those records on Scottish prosecutions. Burrill's quotation — "Accusit be dittay openly read in judgment" — reflects the older Scots vernacular spelling and phrasing that appears in trial transcripts. Variant spellings (dittay, ditay, ditté) are possible in manuscript and early print sources.
Second, the phrase articles or points of dittay functions like modern counts in an indictment. When reading historical Scots criminal records, researchers should recognize that a reference to "the articles" or "points" of a dittay is referring to the specific charges enumerated within the broader accusation — not to legislative articles or separate instruments.
Third, taking up dittay describes a procedural stage — the gathering of information preparatory to formal prosecution — that is distinct from the dittay itself. Conflating the two in reading historical records will produce a misunderstanding of where a proceeding stood at any given point.
Fourth, the institutional sources cited by the historical dictionaries (Skene, de Verb. Signif.; Forbes' Institutes; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials) are the primary scholarly frameworks for this term. Researchers who need to go beyond dictionary definitions should consult those works directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionaries surveyed are largely in agreement. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's offer nearly identical brief entries, tracing the definition to Skene's de Verborum Significatione and Bell's Dictionary. Both describe the term as a civil law technical term used in Scots practice — a characterization that reflects the civilian influence on Scots law generally, though the term's application was firmly in the criminal sphere.
Burrill's is the most substantive entry and the most useful for researchers. It situates dittay within actual source material (Forbes' Institutes, Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, State Trials) and clarifies that articles or points of dittay were equivalent to an indictment. Burrill also provides a contemporary quotation demonstrating actual usage, which the other dictionaries omit.
None of the historical dictionaries explain the procedural machinery surrounding dittay in any depth — how charges were framed, what formal requirements attached to the document, or how it compared to cognate instruments in other civilian-influenced systems. Researchers requiring that level of detail must go to the institutional writers the dictionaries cite.
Jurisdictional Note
Dittay is exclusively a Scots law term. It has no application in English common law, and it does not appear in American legal practice. Its relevance today is confined to historical research into Scottish criminal procedure, particularly from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.