Product Code Database
Cotter, cottier, cottar, Kosatter or Kötter is a term for a peasant farmer. Cotters occupied and cultivated small . A cottar or cottier is also a term for a tenant who was renting land from a farmer or landlord.
Highland Cottars (including on the islands, such as Mull) were affected by the Industrial Revolution. Landowners realized that they could make more money from sheep, whose wool was spun and processed into textiles for export, than crops. The landowners raised rents to unaffordable prices or evicted entire villages in what became known as the Highland Clearances. This resulted in the mass exodus of peasants and cotters, leading to an influx of former cotters into industrial centres, such as a burgeoning Glasgow.
Cottars were often idealised in Scottish pastoral poetry of the 18th century, such as "The Cotter's Saturday Night" by Robert Burns and "The Farmer's Ingle" by Robert Fergusson.
The farmsteads of Kötter were generally sited on the edge of a village or were sub-divisions of an old farm. Because the return on their land was frequently insufficient to sustain their livelihood, they usually supplemented their income with a craft or trade, or by working as ( Tagelöhner) on bigger farms or at manor houses. They usually had a plot of land between an eighth and a half an oxgang ( Hufe); they had few cattle and no more than one horse.
In most cases, the cottage or Kate had a small vegetable garden that also provided a secondary source of income. Most Kätner had another main occupation. They were e. g. teachers, craftsmen or, if their land was sufficient, farmers. Their land was beyond the fields ( Flur) allocated to the full-time farmers or . The Kötter usually had a small share in the common land.
In the social agricultural hierarchycf. e.g. August Haxthausen and Alexander Padberg: Die ländliche Verfassung in den Provinzen Ost- und Westpreußen. 1st vol., Königsberg, 1839, pp. 337 ff. ( online). a Kötter ranked below the full-time farmer or Vollbauer, but above the Büdner, who just owned a house and garden and earned his living as a tradesman, and above the various categories of day labourer (the Inste and the Tagelöhner).
Around the middle of the 15th century, encouraged by a form of primogeniture known as the Anerbenrecht and by the rapid population growth, the Kötter were divided into Erbkötter and Markkötter. The former, who normally arose as a result of the division of land, always had a house and garden within the village, or within a farming community, something which was considered essential for reasons of protection and mutual assistance. Now, land that could be farmed, no matter how poor, was cleared elsewhere in the parish; often miles away from the village or nearest settlement, and in its middle, a so-called Markkotten was built which was allocated to the Markkötter where he had to live. The Markkötter was not really given an inheritance proper and he ranked below the Erbkötter. Unlike the heirs or old farmers ( Altbauern), none of this group inherited the family farm. Both groups of Kötter - the Erbkötter and Markkötter - were still higher in the social hierarchy than the Heuerling, who were, legally and economically, more dependent on the owners of their cottages.
The cottier existed at subsistence level because of high rents and the competition for land and labour. The more prosperous cottier worked for his landlord and received cash after rent and other expenses were deducted. There was no incentive to improve a land holding, as any such improvement usually prompted a rent increase.
During the early decades of the nineteenth century, the situation for cottiers worsened considerably as the population continued to expand. This way of life was brought abruptly to a close by the effects of the potato blight, which resulted in death by starvation and disease of many peasants, with consequent depopulation, of the Great Famine of 1845–49. After the Famine, the cottier class almost completely disappeared. A Dictionary of Irish History, D.J.Hickey & J.E.Doherty, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980. Pp. 98-99.
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