Definition
In Scots law, a payment of poultry or other livestock owed by a tenant (vassal) to a landlord (superior), reserved in a lease as the whole or part of the rent. Kain is a species of rent in kind — the tenant discharges the rental obligation not in money but by delivering fowls or animals to the superior at fixed intervals as specified in the lease. The obligation ran with the feudal tenure and was enforceable as a condition of the holding.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname of Irish origin, a variant of Kane.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Poultry, etc., required by the lease to be paid in kind by a tenant to his landlord."
Webster's 1913 correctly captures the legal sense, suggesting the term had not yet faded from legal-adjacent usage by the early twentieth century. The modern common usage — a personal name — shares nothing with the legal meaning. A researcher encountering "kain" in a historical Scottish instrument should treat it as a rental obligation, not a proper name.
Why It Matters in Research
Kain is a term of narrow but specific operation: it appears almost exclusively in pre-modern Scottish feudal instruments — tacks (leases), feu charters, and estate records — and has no meaningful presence in English common law sources or American legal materials. Researchers working with Scottish legal history, agricultural tenancy records, or Scots institutional writers (Erskine, Bell) will encounter it as a reddendum clause specifying the tenant's in-kind obligations.
Two research traps are worth noting. First, kain can appear alongside other archaic Scots rent-in-kind terms — grassum, carriages, services, and customs — and failure to identify each term separately will produce an incomplete picture of the total rent burden. Second, Burrill's note that kain may share roots with the English phrase "payment in kind" is historically suggestive, but researchers should not use that connection to import English common law rent doctrine into a Scots feudal context; the two systems differ materially in their treatment of tenure and reddendum obligations.
Because kain is a Scots feudal term, primary sources will be in Scots institutional writing and estate records rather than in reported case law accessible through standard English-language legal databases. Erskine's Institutes and Bell's Dictionary are the authoritative secondary anchors.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core definition — a Scots feudal payment of poultry or livestock delivered by a tenant to a superior under the terms of a lease — with minor variation in completeness.
Black's first edition contains a truncated entry that omits the word "poultry" at the start, rendering the definition momentarily unclear (the word appears to have been cut in typesetting). The second edition corrects this. Both editions cite Bell's Dictionary as sole authority. Bouvier is the most complete, citing Erskine's Institutes (II.10.32) and Ross's Lectures as authority, and identifying the Latin root canum — used in ancient grants to denote fowls or animals owed to the superior — as the term's derivation. Burrill echoes the canum derivation and adds the observation that kain may be etymologically connected to "payment in kind," though Burrill is careful to frame this as a possibility rather than settled etymology.
None of the historical dictionaries address the procedural mechanisms for enforcing kain obligations or what remedies a superior held upon default — researchers requiring that level of detail must go directly to Erskine and Bell.
Jurisdictional Note
Kain is a term of Scots law only. It has no equivalent in English common law and no application in American jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to historical Scottish feudal tenure and agricultural leasing practice.