Sc. Obs. Also bonnage. [app. variant of BOONAGE, perh. confused with bondage.] Services rendered by a tenant to his landlord as part of rent.
1791. Statist. Acc. Scotl., I. 433. Bonnage is an obligation on the part of the tenant to cut down the proprietor’s corn. This duty he must perform when called on.
1794. Donaldson, Agric. Surv. Kincard., 213 (Jam.). Another set of payments consisted in services, emphatically called Bonage (from bondage). These were exacted in seed-time, in ploughing and harrowing the proprietor’s land … in harvest, in cutting down his crop.
1861. C. Innes, Sk. Scotch Hist., iii. 384. A lease of a half-merk land of Port Loch Tay, with steelbow and ‘bonage,’ according to custom.
