Definition
In old Scots law, petty theft. Pykerie denoted minor or small-scale stealing, distinguished from the graver forms of theft that carried more severe criminal consequences under Scots law. The term belongs to a category of historic Scottish criminal law vocabulary that had no direct equivalent in English common law.
Why It Matters in Research
Pykerie is a term of purely antiquarian significance. It will not appear in any modern legal instrument, statute, or judicial opinion. Researchers encounter it almost exclusively when working through pre-Union Scots criminal records, early Scottish criminal law digests, or comparative legal histories of larceny-related offenses.
The primary source reference across all dictionary entries is Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland (cited variously as volume 2, pages 43 or 48 depending on edition). Researchers tracing the term to primary sources should consult Robert Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland from A.D. MCCCCLXXXVIII to A.D. MDCXXIV (1833), which remains the standard documentary collection for pre-modern Scots criminal procedure and is the work the historical dictionaries are citing. Discrepancies in page numbers between Black's first and second editions are a minor editorial artifact and not substantively significant.
Pykerie does not appear to have generated a formal threshold distinguishing it from aggravated theft in surviving records — the qualifier "petty" is consistent across all dictionary sources, but the term should not be assumed to correspond precisely to any modern legal distinction (such as misdemeanor theft thresholds) without direct verification in the primary Pitcairn material. Researchers should treat it as a descriptive vernacular category rather than a technically defined legal offense with codified elements.
The term has no relevance to English, Welsh, Irish, or American legal traditions. It should not be read as cognate to any English law concept of petty larceny, though the social function was similar: distinguishing minor theft from more seriously prosecuted stealing.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: pykerie means petty theft in old Scots law, and all three cite Pitcairn as the sole authority. This is a case where the historical dictionaries offer uniform, minimal treatment — the entry exists to gloss an encountered term, not to explain a living legal concept.
None of the historical sources elaborate on how pykerie related to the broader architecture of Scots criminal law, what penalties attached, or how it was distinguished procedurally from graver theft. The dictionaries treat it as a vocabulary item rather than a substantive doctrine. Researchers should not expect more analytical depth from any of the standard historical references on this term; the Pitcairn primary source will need to do that work.
The first-edition Black's entry as captured in the source material appears to open with text from an entirely different definition (relating to impediments to marriage under Roman law), which is a pagination or extraction artifact and not part of the pykerie entry itself.
Jurisdictional Note
Scots law only. Pykerie has no recognized counterpart in English common law or any American jurisdiction. It is relevant solely to historical research into pre-modern Scottish criminal practice.