Tiend noun the tenth part of anything; a toll, tax, levy or tithe
‘… the room stinking of butchery and the word “tiend” written on the wall above him … A tithe to hell it meant …’ (Written in my own Heart’s Blood)
Tiend (tenth) - there are various spellings - is a common word in Scots, derived ultimately from Old English. Many citations for the word are recorded, with the earliest examples dating from the fourteenth century.
In addition to its adjectival use (simply as an ordinal number), tiend/teind is also used as a noun, meaning ‘the tenth part of something’, as in this legal text from 1575, describing who has possession of stranded whales: ‘Gif ony quhaill [whale] is fund within the flude or sea mark, the samin sall pertene to the kind as eschete [possession], swa that the baron sall have his part thairof … reservand the teind to the king as eschete’.
Tiend is also equivalent to English ‘tithe’. There are numerous illustrations of this meaning, including one from Sir David Lyndsay’s The Monarche (1552), which suggests that King David of Scotland was overly generous in his religious foundations: ‘Dauid of Scotland kyng … did founde … Fyftene abbayis, with temporal landis, Withouttin teindis and offerandis; Be quhose holy simplicite He left the crown in pouerte’.
After the reformation, James VI annexed the tiends, granting them to various secular owners (known variously as Titulars or as Lords of Erection), who were supposed to use them for ‘competent provision for the clergy’. Sometimes the tiend was transferred from landowner to tenant as an extra charge. Lands liable to such payments were thus teindable. Tiends could also be applied to possessions such as livestock or even boats, as in this Shetland record from 1743: ‘Every Boat in Dunrossness, Sandwick and Cunningburgh that goes to Sea to fish pays 2 £5 Scots of tiend …’ And tiend could be extended to mean any kind of tax, as in these lines from the ballad Tam Lin (recorded in 1792): ‘Pleasant is the fairy land, But an eerie tale to tell, Ay at the end of seven years We pay a tiend to hell.’