Also 6 lare. [f. LAIR sb.2]
1. intr. To stick or sink in mire or bog.
a. 1572. Knox, Hist. Ref., Wks. (1846), I. 86. Some Scottismen … not knowing the ground lared, and lost thair horse.
a. 1575. Diurn. Occurr. (Bannatyne Club), 252. In the quhilk passage ane of thair greit peices of ordinance larit.
1785. Burns, Winter Nt., iii. Silly sheep, wha … thro’ the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle.
1805. State, Leslie of Powis, 74 (Jam.). His cattle sometimes laired in the waggle.
1880. in Antrim & Down Gloss.
1897. Crockett, Lads’ Love, xxix. 290. I feared o’ lairin’ in the moss mysel’.
fig. 1859. Cairns, in Life (1895), 438. The subject [origin of Evil] is the deepest bog in which the human mind can lair.
2. trans. To cause or allow to sink in mire or a morass. Also refl.
c. 1560. A. Scott, Poems (S. T. S.), xx. 46. Thow wald not rest but raik, And lair thee in þe myre.
a. 1578. Lindesay (Pitscottie), Chron. Scot. (S.T.S.), I. 405. They come to ane place callit the Solloun mose … and thair in lairit and mischeiffit thair horse.
1722. Ramsay, Three Bonnets, IV. 76. But past relief lar’d in a midding, He’s now oblig’d to do her bidding.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol. (1875), II. III. xliv. 510. In Scotland … Cattle venturing on a ‘quaking moss,’ are often mired or ‘laired.’
1875. W. M‘Ilwraith, Guide to Wigtownshire, 76. Watery flows, in which sheep and cattle sometimes lair themselves.
1894. Crockett, Raiders (ed. 3), 213. They say that King Robert … laired and bogged a hale army of the English there.
fig. a. 1810. Tannahill, Poems (1846), 83. Some … polemic wight … Wha lairs himself in controversy.
