Sc. Also 8 kaird. [Lowland Sc. a. Gaelic ceard ‘artificer in metal, tinker, blackguard’ = Irish ceard m. artist, artificer, metal-worker, tinker:—OIr. cerd (cert) smith, artificer, artist, composer, poet. The same word as Ir. ceard f. art, trade, business, function:—OIr. cerd art, craft, handicraft, Manx keird craft, trade, Welsh cerdd art, craft, now esp. musical art, minstrelsy.
(The Sc. thus shows a degraded use of an important Celtic word; cogn. with L. cerdo handicraftsman, cobbler; also Gr. κέρδεα ‘cunning arts,’ κερδώ wily one, cunning fox.)]
A travelling tinker; a gipsy, tramp, vagrant.
1663. Spalding, Troub. Chas. I. (1792), I. 243. Forbes … nicknamed Kaird, because when he was a boy he served a kaird.
1787. Burns, To J. Smith. Yill an’ whisky gie to cairds.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xlix. This fellow had been originally a tinkler or caird, many of whom stroll about these districts.
Hence Cairdman sb.
a. 1800[?]. Knt. & Sheph. Dau., ix. in Child, Ballads, IV. 474/2. A cairdman’s daughter Should never be a true-love o mine.
