cottier

cottier. In its most distinctive sense this meant a labourer paid in land rather than cash. The cottier received from a farmer a cabin, a small plot of land sufficient to raise potatoes for a family, and in some cases limited grazing or turf‐cutting rights. His rent, though calculated in money terms, was set against days worked at an agreed wage. In the decades preceding the Famine, these contracts provided the cheap manpower on which depended the whole system of capital‐poor but labour‐intensive tillage farming. The term was also used more loosely, to refer to any holder of a small plot of land, or to any occupier of a cabin.