Definition
An archaic Anglo-French legal term meaning to mow or cut. Appearing in early English legal records and pleadings, the term is drawn from the Latin *secare* (to cut) and surfaces in the phrase *en temps de sier blees* — in harvest time, or literally, in the time of mowing grain. The term has no operative legal meaning in modern law and is encountered only in the context of reading and interpreting old English legal documents, particularly those concerning agricultural tenure, customary services, and the seasonal obligations owed by villeins or tenants to their lords.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A systems integrator; also, a cutter or someone who practises self-injury.
Historical common usage: Not recorded in Webster's 1913 as a distinct entry; the word does not appear to have had significant currency in standard 19th-century English.
The modern English senses of "sier" — a technology integrator or a person who cuts — share nothing functionally with the legal term beyond the superficial connection to cutting. A researcher encountering "sier" in an old legal manuscript should not import either modern meaning. The legal term is a discrete piece of Anglo-French vocabulary, intelligible only in the agrarian and tenurial context of medieval English law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records — particularly manorial rolls, custumals, and treatises on villeinage and agricultural custom — may encounter *sier* or the phrase *sier blees* in passages describing the seasonal labor services owed by tenants. Such obligations were frequently catalogued with precision: plowing services (*arage*), mowing services (*sier*), reaping, and carting each corresponded to distinct legal duties and, in disputes, distinct legal consequences.
The primary research trap is misreading the term as a proper name, a scribal error, or an unrelated word. Because Anglo-French legal vocabulary regularly appears in untranslated or partially translated passages within otherwise Latin or Middle English documents, the term can easily be passed over or misidentified. Burrill's remains one of the few legal reference works to flag it explicitly.
Researchers consulting Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (the source Burrill cites) will find broader coverage of Anglo-French agrarian vocabulary, which is necessary context for any sustained work in this area.
This term connects directly to the Law Mind corpus materials on feudal tenure, villeinage, and customary agricultural obligations. It is also relevant to the study of how seasonal time was legally structured — harvest obligations were time-bounded, and the phrase *en temps de sier blees* functioned almost as a term of art for a recognized period within the agricultural calendar that triggered specific legal duties.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole coverage among the Law Mind shelf sources. The entry is brief but sufficient: it identifies the Anglo-French origin, the Latin root, and the operative legal phrase, and directs the reader to Kelham for further context. No other standard historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus — including Bouvier, Black, or Jacob — indexes this term, reflecting its highly specialized and archaic character.
Researchers should not expect broad coverage here. The term belongs to a category of Anglo-French technical vocabulary that was already receding from active legal use by the time the major English legal dictionaries were being compiled in the 18th and 19th centuries. Burrill's inclusion of it reflects that work's unusually thorough attention to early and archaic sources.