Definition
Running lands is a term from Scots law referring to agricultural land in which alternating ridges of a field are owned by different proprietors. Rather than a single owner holding a contiguous tract, ownership alternates strip by strip across the field — one ridge belonging to one landowner, the next to another, and so on in sequence. The arrangement produced a patchwork of interleaved ownership across shared cultivation ground.
The term is specific to the traditional Scottish system of landholding and farming organization. It does not correspond to a recognized category in English common law or American property law.
Common Confusion
"Running lands" should not be confused with the phrase "running with the land," which appears in covenant and easement law to describe obligations or rights that bind successors in title to property. The two concepts are unrelated. "Running lands" describes a pattern of ownership; "running with the land" describes the transmissibility of a legal burden or benefit through successive ownership. Researchers encountering "running lands" in a historical Scots law context and "running with the land" in a general property context are working with entirely distinct doctrines.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in historical Scots law materials. Researchers working in Scottish legal history, agricultural land tenure, or comparative property law are the primary audience likely to encounter it. Because the term has no English common law equivalent, it will not appear in English treatises or American case law, and searching general Anglo-American property sources will return no useful results.
The alternating-ridge structure described by running lands relates to the broader historical phenomenon of runrig tenure in Scotland — a system of communal or divided agricultural landholding that was progressively consolidated and abolished through enclosure legislation from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Bouvier cites Bell's Dictionary as authority, indicating the term had reached formal legal recognition in Scottish legal lexicography by the early nineteenth century. Researchers tracing Scottish land consolidation, enclosure history, or the legal treatment of fragmented agricultural holdings should pursue Scottish legal sources directly rather than relying on Anglo-American property law databases.
There is no modern equivalent in Scottish or British property law. Running lands as a tenure type was largely extinguished by consolidation and improvement schemes. Its appearance in a legal document would almost certainly indicate a historical instrument — a deed, disposition, or boundary dispute — predating modern cadastral surveying and land registration.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus that addresses this term, and its entry is brief: "In Scotch Law. Lands where the ridges of a field belong alternately to different proprietors. Bell, Dict." The entry traces to Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, the standard Scottish legal reference of the era, confirming this as an authentic term of art in Scots legal practice rather than a colloquial description.
Bouvier's inclusion of this term in an American law dictionary reflects the encyclopedic scope characteristic of nineteenth-century legal lexicography — his dictionary routinely catalogued civil law, canon law, and Scots law terms even when they had no direct American application. The entry should therefore be read as informational rather than as a signal that running lands had any practical relevance to American legal disputes.
No other major historical dictionaries in the common law tradition — not Black's, not Stroud's Judicial Dictionary — are likely to address this term, as it belongs exclusively to the Scottish legal tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
Running lands is a term of Scots law only. It has no equivalent in English common law, American property law, or other common law jurisdictions. Research must be directed to Scottish legal sources, including Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, historical title records in the National Records of Scotland, and scholarship on Scottish runrig and open-field systems.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Real Covenants — Running with the Land (Horizontal and Vertical Privity), The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — relevant only for researchers who need to distinguish running lands from the "running with the land" doctrine in covenant law.