Definition
In old Scots law, to draw or track; specifically, to pursue a suspected wrongdoer by following footprints or other physical traces left on the ground. The term describes both the act of tracking itself and the lawful pursuit conducted by men and dogs in chase of a robber or malefactor. The verb trassare encompassed both the dog's physical act of following a scent or track and the accompanying human pursuit authorized by law.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow, archaic term confined almost entirely to early Scots legal sources. Researchers encountering trassare in historical documents should understand it as procedural language governing the right of hot pursuit — a recognized legal mechanism in early Scots law for apprehending thieves and criminals caught in the immediate aftermath of an offense. The term appears in the context of the Regiam Majestatem, the foundational compilation of early Scots law, and signals proximity to provisions governing theft, hue and cry, and the duties (and protections) of those participating in lawful chase. Anyone who obstructed the pursuit — hindering the dog, the men, or both — committed an offense under the framework the term inhabits.
Researchers should be alert to several navigational points. First, trassare does not appear in English common law sources; it is specifically a Scots legal term and will not be found in Coke, Bracton, or the standard English law dictionaries in the way parallel hue-and-cry terminology will be. Second, the Latin formulation in Burrill draws from Old French tracer (to track), so variant spellings and cognate forms — trassans, trassantem — will appear in Latin legal texts where the gerund or participial forms are used. Third, the passage quoted in Burrill is drawn from Regiam Majestatem, Book 4, making that source the primary textual anchor for any deeper research. Corpus researchers connecting this term to broader themes of pursuit, criminal apprehension, or early Scots procedure should follow the thread toward the Regiam Majestatem provisions on theft and reset, as well as related material on the law of the chase and bludwite.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source providing a substantive entry for this term, and its treatment is brief but precise. Burrill correctly identifies the Latin origin (from Old French tracer), situates the term in old Scots law, and supplies the operative legal formula from Regiam Majestatem. The quoted passage is instructive: it frames trassare not merely as a descriptive act but as a protected legal activity — one that third parties were affirmatively prohibited from obstructing. This framing reveals that the term carried procedural weight, not merely descriptive meaning.
No other major historical law dictionaries — Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's Law Dictionary, or Black's early editions — appear to carry this term, reflecting its narrow geographic and temporal scope. Burrill's coverage is therefore not supplemented elsewhere in the standard Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition, and researchers should treat the Regiam Majestatem text itself as the primary authority rather than relying on secondary dictionary synthesis.