Definition
A historical Scottish unit of measure of capacity, used primarily for dry goods such as grain and meal. The firlot was a fixed local measure, though its precise volume varied depending on the commodity being measured and the locality. The legal dictionaries uniformly cite Spelman's Glossary for the proposition that the firlot equaled two gallons and a pint, though this figure does not capture the full historical complexity of the unit.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A measure of capacity, once used for corn and similar goods, equal to four pecks.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A dry measure formerly used in Scotland; the fourth part of a boll of grain or meal. The Linlithgow wheat firlot was to the imperial bushel as 998 to 1000; the barley firlot as 1,456 to 1,000.
Editorial note: The legal dictionaries collapse the firlot to a single fixed value — two gallons and a pint — tracing uniformly to Spelman. The common-language sources reveal that the firlot was in practice a variable measure: its size differed by commodity (wheat versus barley) and by locality, and its relationship to other units (the boll, the peck, the bushel) shifted accordingly. A researcher relying solely on the legal dictionary figure may misread historical Scottish documents where the applicable firlot standard was not the one Spelman recorded.
Why It Matters in Research
The firlot appears in the Law Mind corpus almost exclusively in historical Scottish legal documents — charters, conveyances, leases, and rent rolls — where quantities of grain, meal, or other dry commodities are specified as rents in kind or as purchase prices. Several research traps are worth flagging.
First, the single-value definition in the legal dictionaries (two gallons and a pint) is a simplification. Scottish practice recognized different firlot standards for different grains, and local standards varied by burgh. The Linlithgow standard, codified by Scottish Parliament, was not universal. A document from Aberdeen or Edinburgh may have used a firlot of materially different size than one from Linlithgow.
Second, the firlot's relationship to larger and smaller units matters for interpreting quantities. The firlot was one-quarter of a boll and was itself divided into four pecks — making it a middle unit in a nested hierarchy (chalder → boll → firlot → peck → lippie). Any historical document expressing quantities in bolls, pecks, or lippies requires understanding how the firlot anchors the conversion chain.
Third, after the Union with England and the progressive standardization of weights and measures, references to the firlot in legal documents become anachronistic and may signal either deliberate retention of a local standard or simple copying of older lease forms. Dating such documents requires attention to when Scottish local measures were displaced by imperial standards, which occurred gradually through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Fourth, the firlot appears in corpus materials not just as a measure but as a rent unit — "two firlots of bear" or "three firlots of oatmeal" — in which case the legal significance is the obligation created, not merely the quantity.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries produce the same definition in nearly identical language, all tracing to Spelman's Glossary (Glossarium Archaiologicum). The agreement across Black's (both editions), Bouvier, Burrill, and Rapalje & Lawrence reflects not independent verification but a shared chain of citation — each drawing from Spelman without independent inquiry into Scottish practice. This is a case where the historical legal dictionaries are less useful than the common-language sources. Webster's 1913, drawing on Brande & Cox's Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art, provides the more analytically complete account: the firlot as a fourth of a boll, with specific ratios to the imperial bushel that differ by commodity. No historical legal dictionary captures this variability or the firlot's structural position within the Scottish system of dry measure. Researchers should treat the legal dictionary figure as a rough approximation useful for orienting oneself, not as a reliable conversion factor for specific historical calculations.
Jurisdictional Note
The firlot is exclusively a Scottish measure and appears only in Scots law contexts. It has no counterpart in English, Welsh, or Irish legal practice. After the Weights and Measures Act 1824 established imperial standards across Great Britain, local Scottish measures including the firlot were progressively displaced, though they persisted in private documents and older lease forms well into the nineteenth century.