Forms: 6– birling, 7– birlin, 8 birline, bierlin, 9 berlin, birlinn, biorlinn. [Gaelic birlinn, bierlinn.] A large barge, or rowing boat, used by the chieftains of the Western Islands of Scotland.
1595. in Tytler, Hist. Scot. (1864), IV. 236. Running their galleys, boats and birlings into a little harbour.
a. 1639. Spottiswood, Hist. Ch. Scot., VI. (1677), 468. With a number of Birlings (so they call the little vessels those Isles-men use).
1792–9. Statist. Acc. Scot., VI. 292. He … kept always a bierlin or galley in this place with 12 or 20 armed men, ready for any enterprise.
1815. Scott, Guy M., xl. A place where their berlins and galleys, as they ca’d them, used to lie.
1873. Burton, Hist. Scot., VI. lxv. 39. No single chief should keep more than one birling.
1883. Stewart, Nether Lochaber, lxi. 398. Receiving in return an eight-oared birlinn.
