1884 in Scotland

Incumbents

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – John Blair Balfour
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Asher

Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Glencorse
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Moncreiff

Events

• 26 January – Scotland beat Ireland 5-0 in the first match of the first British Home Championship in Association football.
• 15 March – Scotland beat England 1-0 in their second match of the British Home Championship.
• 29 March – Scotland beat Wales 4-1 to win the first British Home Championship.
• 28 April – Napier Commission delivers the Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry Into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
• 12 June – Pier terminal opened at Rothesay, Bute.
• 1 July – First International Forestry Exhibition opens at Donaldson's Hospital, Edinburgh, during which an electric railway is demonstrated.
• 17 July – Barque Vicksburg of Leith goes aground on Muckle Skerry in the Pentland Skerries with the loss of nine lives; twelve are saved by the island's lighthouse keepers.
• Autumn – Origin of St Johnstone F.C. in Perth.
• 2 November – Fourteen people are killed when some of the audience at the Star Theatre, Glasgow, panic following a false fire alarm.
• 11 November – Blackford Hill is acquired by the city of Edinburgh.
• 18 November – Crofters War: Royal Marines and police arrive in naval ships at Uig, Skye, following an unsuccessful attempt to evict tenants engaging in a rent strike against Major William Fraser, owner of the Kilmuir Estate and Uig Tower.
• 1 December – Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway opens to passengers.
• 6 December – Representation of the People Act 1884 extends the franchise to many crofters.
• Teacher's Highland Cream blended whisky registered.

Births

• 11 February – Joseph Westwood, Labour MP and Secretary of State for Scotland
• 24 February – William Theodore Heard, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic church
• 22 May – Wilhelmina Hay Abbott, suffragist and feminist
• 28 August – Peter Fraser, Labour prime minister of New Zealand

Deaths

• 26 February – Alexander Wood, physician, inventor of the first true hypodermic syringe
• 30 November – Sir Alexander Grant, 10th Baronet, Principal of the University of Edinburgh
• 20 December – William Lindsay Alexander, church leader
• Anthony Inglis, shipbuilder

The arts

• Publication of Songs of the North by Harold Boulton and Anne MacLeod including the first known version of "The Skye Boat Song".