waith n. a piece of property which is found ownerless

Waith is related to the word waif, which started out as a legal term with the same meaning, but is now more often used to conjure images of Dickensian orphans. In medieval Scotland, waith referred to lost or stranded goods or animals which became the property of the local overlord or the king, if no one claimed them within a certain period. Historical documents concerning land ownership and the transfer of deeds frequently specify that any local waith automatically devolves to the land-owner. In one of the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland in 1606, a grant is made of the “erldome of Dunbar … togidder with all privileges … appertening thairto … wrak (goods washed up from the sea) wair (goods in general) waith and all utheris liberteis”. Given that waith could often be valuable, various official documents make reference to what should become of it. The word is frequently found in records relating to Orkney and Shetland, and an early seventeenth-century legal document states that “na persone … sall (shall) hyde … wrak or ony kynd of waith bot sall … delait (report) the same to thar (their) bailies”. The phrase “wrack and waith” is used as a collective term that originally referred to all manner of lost or ownerless goods and animals, including goods washed up from the sea. In later use, it more usually denotes flotsam and jetsam in particular. References to “wrack and waith” continue into the modern Scots period. In the records of the court of session, a document from 1868 mention of “Rights to all wreck and waith cast on the shore”. A more comprehensive example occurs in an article in the Scots Magazine from 1896: “Seals and whales and sea-birds, drowned men and broken ships, all the ‘waithe and wrack’ of the waters”.

waith