See also Canadian band The Cottars.
A cottar, cottier or cottars, is the Scots term for a peasant farmer formerly in the Scottish highlands. Cotters occupied cottages and cultivated small plots of land. The word cotter is often employed to translate the cotarius of Domesday Book, a class whose exact status has been the subject of some discussion, and is still a matter of doubt. According to Domesday, the cotarii were comparatively few, numbering less than seven thousand, and were scattered unevenly throughout England, being principally in the southern counties; they were occupied either in cultivating a small plot of land, or in working on the holdings of the villani. Like the villani, among whom they were frequently classed, their economic condition may be described as free in relation to every one except their lord.
A cottar or cottier is also a term for a tenant renting land from a farmer or landlord.
The medieval German equivalent of the Scottish cotter is the Kossäte (also Gärtner (gardener)). The term Kossäte is derived from Low German and translates "who sits in a cottage".[1][2]
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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