Forms: α. 4–5 forray, (5 ferray), 5 forra, 5–7 forrey, (5 forey), 6–7 forreie, 9 foray. β. 6 forrow. [See next vb.]

1

  1.  A hostile or predatory incursion or inroad, a raid. † In, of foray: on a foray.

2

  Revived in the 19th c. by Sir Walter Scott.

3

1375.  Barbour, Bruce, II. 281. Sum sall [wend] to the forray.

4

c. 1400–20.  Judicium (Roxb.), 7. Some at ayll howse I fande: and som of ferray.

5

c. 1470.  Henry the Minstrel, Wallace, IX. 463.

        Thir four hundreth …
A forray kest, and sessit mekill gud.

6

c. 1540.  trans. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camd., No. 29), 16. Sending out his horsmen all abroade, by whom the forrow was so mainteyned every waye, without resistance.

7

1633.  T. Stafford, Pacata Hibernia, I. xiii. 82. Had not our Horse been over-wearied with their long forrey before they came to fight, and our Foot tyred and out of breath to come up, there had not one man escaped aliue.

8

1813.  Scott, Trierm., I. ii.

        He had been pricking against the Scot,
The foray was long, and the skirmish hot.

9

1865.  Livingstone, Zambesi, xxiii. 471. The continual forays of Mariano had spread ruin and desolation on our south-east as far as Mount Clarendon.

10

  transf. and fig.  1822.  W. Irving, Braceb. Hall, xxv. Having the true baronial spirit of the good old feudal times, they [the rooks] are apt now and then to issue forth from their castles on a foray, and to lay the plebeian fields of the neighbouring country under contribution.

11

1850.  D. G. Mitchell, Rever. of Bachelor (1852), 258. Forbid those earnest forays over the borders of NOW, and on what spoils would the soul live?

12

  † 2.  Booty taken in a foray; prey. Also pl.

13

c. 1400.  Destr. Troy, 6426. Þat neuer of forray art full.

14

c. 1425.  Wyntoun, Cron., VIII. xl. 264. Þai na gret Forrais made.

15

1598.  Grenewey, Tacitus’ Ann., II. vii. (1622), 148. He reduced the Legions which knew not what worke and labour meant, but desirous to hunt after pillage and forreies, to the ancient discipline of seruice.

16

  † 3.  The advance-guard of an army.

17

c. 1425.  Wyntoun, Cron., VIII. xl. 136.

          Willame of Dowglas, þat þan was
Ordanyd in Forray for to pas.

18

c. 1470.  Henry the Minstrel, Wallace, IX. 468.

        The forray tuk the pray, and past the playn,
Towart the park.

19

1535.  Stewart, Cron. Scot., I. 339.

        Neirby in sicht the forrow to reskew,
Gif that thai preis with pricking thame persew.

20

1577–87.  Holinshed, Chron., III. 1216/2. The forreie was a little troubled with a fortie or fiftie Scots horssemen.

21