1584 R. Scot Discouerie Witchcraft To Rdrs. sig. Biij The witches..their hagging, their riding in the aire.

1584 R. Scot Discouerie Witchcraft ii. iv. 25 He would spie vnto what place his wife went to hagging.

1612 R. Ch. Olde Thrift newly Revived i. 3 Some Woodwards, Baylifes, and Tenants of Woods..will..for fashion sake preserue the Spring reasonably well for one yeare or two after the fall and hagging of them.

1728 P. Walker Some Remarkable Passages Life A. Peden (ed. 3) 127 If these form'd divided Parties of Dissenters, had the sword of discipline in their hands, it would be odd hagging and hashing they would make, and seldom hit upon the right lith or joint.

1827 T. Hamilton Youth & Manhood Cyril Thornton III. xiii. 293 There's a lang scaur frae yer gab to the corner o' yer ee, just as if ye had gotten a claut wi' the haggin' knife.

1886 R. E. G. Cole Gloss. Words S.-W. Lincs. 60 They do the hagging (i.e. cut the underwood) in the winter, and the oak-pilling in the spring.

1896 S. R. Crockett Gray Man xviii. 148 I..swung it about my head, as you showed me in the hagging down of trees.

1988 O. Wood West Cumberland Coal 1600–1982/3 iii. 95 By 1810 men at Broughton Moor were being paid 2s. 9d. per ton for hagging and trailing.

1892 Edinb. Evening News 23 July A species of sweating among miners is called ‘hagging’.

1894 Gloss. Terms Evid. Royal Comm. Labour 46/2 in Parl. Papers 1893–4 (C. 7063–VC) XXXVIII. 411 Hag principle, term used to denote the system under which a skilled miner employs an unskilled man, paying him, say, 4s. per day, when, possibly, he might have earned 7s. or 8s. if working for himself. This process is called hagging. Crudely put, the hag principle is the ‘sweating system’.

1968 P. W. Thrush Dict. Mining, Mineral, & Related Terms (U.S. Dept. Interior, Bureau of Mines) at Hag principle The system under which the skilled minor employs an unskilled helper. Hagging implies sweating.