heritage attour the commone lauch, and namely in oucht at rynyt the said schir Thomas or his wyfe in sic manner There is nothing in all this to suggest that Erskine was taking an unprecedented or unfamiliar step. The language is assured and confident, and makes use of legal phraseology: contract vernay and lauchfull ayre, ' ayrez of hir body, richt of heretage', "lauchful actornay',of richt and of lauch, fee and heretage', confirmacioune' and commone lauch. It is exactly what we should expect of a language in which it was commonplace to express legal concepts and plead legal points How, it may be asked, had this come about? Scots has a long history before its emergence in the relatively clear light of literature and government and legal record, a history that can be derived from materials such as place-names and charters. It was the first and in many cases erhaps the only language of the bulk of the people who inhabited what in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the central parts of the kingdom of the Scots, Lothian and the eastern littoral. 57 It has been observed The Old English or Middle English linguistic tradition amongst lowland Scots was deeply and conservatively entrenched by the later middle ages and much less affected than the equivalent English tradition by the experience of many generations of speaking and writing French... For every case where English usage adheres to Old English(e.g. writ) while Scots usage prefers Latin or French(e.g. brieve there must be nine or ten where the reverse is true-such as judgement/doom, mortga ge/wadset, homage/mane(n )t58 If legislation, brieves and charters were drawn up in Latin, they had nonetheless to be communicated and proclaimed to the people whose lives the documents were to affect. Michael Clanchy has shown how in England public matters such as legislation, papal communications and royal writs might be proclaimed in both their written Latin and in a vernacular translation. 9 Here was the means, it may be suggested, by which Scots developed a technical legal terminology. Charters were to be seen and heard (visuris vel audituris); legislation such as that of 1318 was to be read and proclaimed publicly in the king's courts and in other places where the people were accustomed to gather 60 brieves were to be read to the court before cases began. 61 There is no full-scale history of the Scots language. Authoritative but short overviews are provided by David Murison in The New Companion to Scottish Culture, pp. 298-300, and by Mairi Robinson in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, pp 572-4. An interesting popularand polemicalaccount is Billy Kay, Scots: The Mither Tongue, 2nd edn.Darvel, 1993 ). Note also, however, Geoffrey Barrows discussion of the lost idhealtachd of easterm Scotland in his Scotland and Its Neighbours in the Middle Ages(London and Rio grane 1992)pp.105-26 n Pragmatic Literacy, East and West, 1200-1330, ed R. Britnell(Boydell, 1991), atp. 14/ Scotland, 1200-1330 G w.S. Barrow, The Pattern of Non-Literary Manuscript Production and Survival M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2nd edn., (London, 1993),pp 264 preamble to the 1318 legis lation(RRS, v, p. 405), wh ich is addressed to justiciars sheriffs and burgh officials (Stars For this see Regiam Majestatem, book I, ch. 10(APS, L p 601); QuoniamAttachiamenta, ed T.D. Fergus ociety, Edinburgh, 1996),p. 219heritage attour the commone lauch, and namely in oucht at rynyt the said schir Thomas or his wyfe in sic manner. There is nothing in all this to suggest that Erskine was taking an unprecedented or unfamiliar step. The language is assured and confident, and makes use of legal phraseology: ‘contract’, ‘verray and lauchfull ayre’, ‘ayrez of hir body’, ‘richt of heretage’, ‘lauchful actornay’, ‘of richt and of lauch’, ‘fee and heretage’, ‘confirmacioune’ and ‘commone lauch’. It is exactly what we should expect of a language in which it was commonplace to express legal concepts and plead legal points. How, it may be asked, had this come about? Scots has a long history before its emergence in the relatively clear light of literature and government and legal record, a history that can be derived from materials such as place-names and charters. It was the first and in many cases perhaps the only language of the bulk of the people who inhabited what in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the central parts of the kingdom of the Scots, Lothian and the eastern littoral.57 It has been observed: The Old English or Middle English linguistic tradition amongst lowland Scots was deeply and conservatively entrenched by the later middle ages and much less affected than the equivalent English tradition by the experience of many generations of speaking and writing French. … For every case where English usage adheres to Old English (e.g. ‘writ’) while Scots usage prefers Latin or French (e.g. ‘brieve’) there must be nine or ten where the reverse is true - such as judgement/doom, mortgage/wadset, homage/manre(n)t.58 If legislation, brieves and charters were drawn up in Latin, they had nonetheless to be communicated and proclaimed to the people whose lives the documents were to affect. Michael Clanchy has shown how in England public matters such as legislation, papal communications and royal writs might be proclaimed in both their written Latin and in a vernacular translation.59 Here was the means, it may be suggested, by which Scots developed a technical legal terminology. Charters were to be seen and heard (visuris vel audituris); legislation such as that of 1318 was to be read and proclaimed publicly in the king’s courts and in other places where the people were accustomed to gather;60 brieves were to be read to the court before cases began.61 57 There is no full-scale history of the Scots language. Authoritative but short overviews are provided by David Murison in The New Companion to Scottish Culture, pp. 298-300, and by Mairi Robinson in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, pp. 572-4. An interesting popular and polemical account is Billy Kay, Scots: The Mither Tongue, 2nd edn. (Darvel, 1993). Note also, however, Geoffrey Barrow’s discussion of ‘the lost Gàidhealtachd’ of eastern Scotland in his Scotland and Its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London and Rio Grande, 1992), pp. 105-26. 58 G.W.S. Barrow, ‘The Pattern of Non-Literary Manuscript Production and Survival in Scotland, 1200-1330’, in Pragmatic Literacy, East and West, 1200-1330, ed. R. Britnell (Boydell, 1997), at p. 141. 59 M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2nd edn., (London, 1993), pp. 264- 66. 60 This is the formula in the preamble to the 1318 legislation (RRS, v, p. 405), which is addressed to justiciars, sheriffs and burgh officials. 61 For this see Regiam Majestatem, book I, ch. 10 (APS, i, p. 601); Quoniam Attachiamenta, ed. T.D. Fergus (Stair Society, Edinburgh, 1996), p. 219