BAWBEE, the Scottish name for a half-penny or other small coin, and hence used of money generally. A writer in 1573, quoted in Tytler's History of Scotland, speaks of "a coin called a bawbee, • • • which is in value English one penny and a quarter." The most plausible conjecture is that the word is a corruption from the name of one Sillebawby, master of the mint from which the coin was first issued about 1541.