Also 7 fosteridge. [f. as prec. + -AGE.]
1. The action, also the office or charge, of fostering or bringing up (another’s child).
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, I. (1634), 182. Some one or other adjoyning to this Lake, had the charge and fosteridge of this childe, who being perchance but some base and obscure creature, the mother might thereby hope the better to cover her dishonor and breach of vow.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, xxvii. Thou art already envied of many of our tribe, for having had the fosterage of the young Chief, which is a thing usually given to the best of the clan.
1882. J. Payne, 1001 Nts., I. 161. O my son, for the sake of my fosterage of thee and my service to thee, spare this young lady, for indeed she has done nothing deserving of death.
b. The condition of being a foster-child.
1867. Pearson, Hist. Eng., I. 114. The relation was not regarded as mercenary; it was rather a sort of clientship or fosterage; the gesith seem to have lived with their lord, and were for ever dishonoured if they came back beaten under any odds from the field on which he had fallen.
1872. E. W. Robertson, Historical Essays, 157. Placed upon a footing with the foster-child during his fosterage, the pupil in his pupillage.
2. The custom of putting (a child) under the care of a foster-mother; esp. the now obsolete custom amongst the Irish and Scottish nobility of giving over their children to a tenant to be nursed and brought up.
1775. Johnson, West. Islands, Wks. X. 484. There still remains in the Islands, though it is passing fast away, the custom of fosterage. A Laird, a man of wealth and eminence, sends his child, either male or femail, to a tacksman, or tenannt, to be fostered.
1875. Maine, Hist. Inst., viii. 241. This was Fosterage, the giving and taking of children for nurture.
1893. Joyce, Short Hist. Irel., 85. One of the leading features of Irish social life was fosterage, which prevailed from the remotest period. It ws practised by persons of all classes, but more especially by those in the higher ranks.
attrib. 1881. The Leisure Hour, XXX. April, 226/1. The parts of the island where the fosterage ties had most strength, and lingered longest, were the north-west of Ulster, where the eastern and western Gael met, and the extreme south-west of Munster.
1893. Joyce, Short Hist. Irel., 86. For the neglect of any of these there was a fine of two-thirds of the fosterage fee.
3. The action of encouraging or helping forward.
1816. Keatinge, Trav. (1817), I. 125. How comes it then that so little progress has been made in a branch of human morals so important; one which calls for the statesman’s fosterage, the patriot’s countenance?
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. II. (1863), 262. Under her fosterage our evil habits throve apace: she put away, and hid, and lied for us, till we became the most irregular and untidy generation that ever trod the floor of a school-room.
1834. Tait’s Mag., I. 848/2. Its [a conspiracy’s] fosterage and management, Richmond described very graphically:—‘The Magistrates of Glasgow were not let into the secret.’
1867. Quarterly Review, CXXII. April, 430. Such fables have long ago been discarded from our histories; yet though they have rightly ceased to retain the prestige of reality and truth, they must ever command a large amount of interest, on the score of the field which some of them offer for comparative philologists, of the illustrations which others supply of the period when they passed for truth, and of the scope afforded by one and all to the fosterage of the imaginative faculty.
