Definition
An obsolete term from old Scots law meaning a warder — that is, a keeper, guardian, or custodian, typically one charged with the custody or safekeeping of a person or place. The term appears in historical Scottish criminal proceedings and has no surviving legal usage in modern law.
Why It Matters in Research
Garytour is a term a researcher will encounter only in pre-modern Scottish legal records, specifically in criminal trial materials. Its sole documented context in the historical dictionaries is a citation to Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, a primary source collection covering Scottish criminal proceedings from the late medieval and early modern periods. Researchers working with that corpus — or with Scottish legal history more broadly — should understand that garytour is a functional equivalent of "warder" and should cross-reference entries for wardenship, custody, and related concepts when tracing the role of custodians in early Scots criminal procedure. The term will not appear in English common law sources, civilian sources, or any modern Scottish statutory materials. Do not attempt to read modern custodial or penal concepts back into historical uses of this word.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions), Bouvier's Law Dictionary, and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: garytour means warder in old Scots law, and all four sources point to the same single citation — Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, Part 1, page 8. The consistency across dictionaries is notable, though it also signals that none of the compilers had access to any broader evidentiary base; all four entries are essentially copying from a single source. Burrill's entry is the most expansive, but only because it runs garytour directly into the adjacent entries for gasachio and gasindus without a full break — the garytour definition itself is no more developed than in the other dictionaries. No historical dictionary offers any elaboration on the duties, appointment, or legal status of a garytour beyond the bare equivalence to "warder." Researchers should treat this term as a hapax legomenon of the legal dictionary tradition: attested once, reproduced faithfully, but never substantially analyzed.
Jurisdictional Note
Garytour is exclusively a term of old Scots law. It has no counterpart in English common law, civilian legal systems, or any modern jurisdiction. Research use is confined to historical Scottish legal materials.