Burgh
Burgh (pronounced
burruh) represents an
autonomous corporate entity, usually a
town, and has been in use in
Scotland since at least the
12th century. Recognition of burgh status has now, however, little more than ceremonial value.
The titular head of a burgh is called a
Provost. Most
royal burghs retain the title for ceremonial purposes, with the notable exception of the
Scottish cities.
Burghs had rights to representation in the
Parliament of Scotland. Under the
Acts of Union of 1707 many became
parliamentary burghs, represented in the
Parliament of Great Britain.
Under the
Reform Acts of 1832, 32 years after the merger of the Parliament of Great Britain into the
Parliament of the United Kingdom, the boundaries of burghs for parliamentary
elections ceased to be necessarily their boundaries for other purposes.
When Scottish
county councils were created under the
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 burghs were already important in the
local government of Scotland. County councils and burgh councils were both abolished under the
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, which created a new system of
regions and districts and
island council areas.
There are several types of burgh, including;
*
Royal burgh*
Burgh of regality *
Burgh of barony*
Parliamentary burgh*
Police burghAs used in this article, the
word burgh is derived from
Scots language and refers to corporate entities whose is peculiar to Scotland. (Scottish
law was protected and preserved as distinct from laws of
England under the
Acts of Union of 1707.) Pronunciation is the same as for the
English word
borough, which is a near
cognate of the Scots word.
The word has cognates, or near cognates, in other
Germanic languages. For example,
burg in
German, and
borg in both
Danish and
Swedish; the equivalent word is also to be found in
Frisian,
Dutch,
Norwegian, and
Icelandic.
The Scots language
burgh and the English language
borough are derived from the
Old English language word
burh (whose dative singular and nominative/accusative plural form
byrig sometimes underlies modern place-names, and which had dialectal variants including
burg; it was also sometimes confused with
beorh,
beorg, 'mound, hill', on which see Hall 2001, 69-70). The
Old English word was originally used for a fortified town or proto-
castle (eg at
Dover Castle or
Burgh Castle) and was related to the verb
beorgan (cf. Dutch and German
bergen), meaning "to keep, save, make secure". In
German Burg means
castle, though so many towns grew up around castles that it almost came to mean
city, and is incorporated into many
placenames, such as
Hamburg and
Strasbourg),
A number of other
European languages have cognate words which were borrowed from the
Germanic languages during the
Middle Ages, including
brog in
Irish,
bwr or
bwrc, meaning "wall, rampart" in
Welsh,
bourg in
French,
borgo in
Italian, and
burgo in
Spanish (hence the place-name
Burgos).
The most obviously derivative words are
burgher in English and
Bürger in German (both literally
citizen, with connotations of
middle-class in English and other
Germanic languages). Also related are the words
bourgeois and
belfry (both from the
French), and
burglar; more distantly, it is related to words meaning
hill or
mountain in a number of languages (
cf. the second element of
iceberg).
Burgh is commonly used as a
suffix in place names, in Scotland and other countries to which Scots
emigrated:
*
Edinburgh *
Fraserburgh *
Helensburgh *
Jedburgh *
Leverburgh *
Maryburgh *
Musselburgh *
Newburgh *
Roxburgh *
Williamsburgh (Scotland and the United States)
*
Kingsburgh (Scotland and South Africa)
*
Pittsburgh,
United States*
Edinburgh, Indiana, United States
And as a placename on its own, in the
West Germanic countries:
*
Burgh, Renfrewshire, Scotland
*
Burgh (Netherlands) - a town in the
Netherlands in the municipality of
Schouwen-Duiveland.
*
Burgh, Suffolk, England
*
Burgh by Sands, Cumbria, England (
pronounced Bruff by Sands)
*
Burgh Castle, Norfolk, England
*
Burgh le Marsh, Lincolnshire, England
*
Burgh on Bain, Lincolnshire, England
*
Burgh Island, Devon, England
*
Burgh Next Aylsham, Norfolk, England
*
Burgh St Margaret, Norfolk, England
*
Burgh St Peter, Suffolk, England
*
List of burghs in Scotland*
List of Royal Burghs*
Five Burghs*
Borough*Hall, Alaric,
'Old MacDonald had a Fyrm, eo, eo, y: Two Marginal Developments of < eo > in Old and Middle English', Quaestio: Selected Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2 (2001), 60-90.
