LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 University of California. 
 
 BOUGHT WITH FUND GIVEN BY 
 
 SCOTTISH SOCIETIES OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Class |V1 IS 
 
 
 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/dictionaryoflowlOOmackrich 
 
A DICTIONARY 
 
 LOWLAND SCOTCH. 
 
^be Blbovv Series, 
 
 A New Series of Books of Reference for Library or 
 Private Use. 
 
 Edited by G. May and Charles G. Leland. 
 
 SOBRIQUETS AND NICKNAMES. 
 
 A Dictionary. By Alfred R. Frey. With an Index arranged 
 by true names. Large post 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. ; half 
 bound, QS. 
 
 " The first work that has been devoted to the explanation and deri- 
 vation of the numberless witty and sometimes abusive appellations . . . 
 it deserves the heartiest praise." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " Invaluable as a storehouse of out-of-the-way memorabilia in history, 
 politics, poetry, music, war, dress, satire, fashion — in fact, as a most 
 carefully indexed de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, this dictionary 
 is unique." — Morning Advertiser. 
 
 LOWLAND SCOTCH. 
 
 A Dictionary. By Charles Mackay, LL.D. With a Chapter 
 on the Poetry, Humour, and Literary History of the Scot- 
 tish Language, and an Appendix of Scottish Proverbs. 
 
 ARGOT AND SLANG. 
 
 A New French and English Dictionary of the Cant Words, 
 Quaint Expressions, Slang Terms, and Flash Phrases 
 used in the High and Low Life of Old and New Paris. 
 By A. Barr^re, Officier de I'Instruction Publique, Pro- 
 fessor R.M. Academy, Woolwich. 
 
 The work treats of the cant of thieves ; the jargon of Parisian roughs ; 
 the military, naval, parliamentary, academical, legal, and freemasons' 
 slang ; of that of the workshop, the studio, the stage, the boulevards, 
 the demi-monde. 
 
 [.Preparing. 
 
 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 A Dictionary of Modern Words and Phrases colloquially used 
 in the United States. By Charles G. Leland. 
 
 [Preparing. 
 
 Others to follow. 
 
With the Pubhshers* 
 ^ . Cottipliments. 
 
 A DICTIONARY 
 
 OF 
 
 LOWLAND SCOTCH 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ON THE POETRY, HUMOUR, AND 
 LITERARY HISTORY OF THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE 
 
 AND AN 
 
 APPENDIX OF SCOTTISH PROVERBS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "lost BEAUTIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," 
 
 "the GAELIC ETYMOLOGY OF THE LANGUAGES OF WESTERN EUROPE," 
 
 A GLOSSARY OF THE OBSCURE WORDS AND PHRASES IN SHAKSPEARE AND 
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES," ETC. ETC. 
 
 ^ OF THF 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO. 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.G. 
 
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND Ca 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The original intention of the Editor of this work was to make 
 it a guide to the better comprehension by English readers 
 of the immortal works of Robert Burns and Walter Scott, 
 and of the beautiful Scottish poetry to be found in the ancient 
 and modern ballads and songs of the "North Countrie," — and 
 not only to the English but to all other admirers of Scottish 
 literature, where it differs from that of England, and to present 
 to them in accessible and convenient form such words as are 
 more poetical and humorous in the Scottish language than in 
 the English, or are altogether wanting in the latter. The 
 design gradually extended itself as the compiler proceeded 
 with his task, until it came to include large numbers of words 
 derived from the Gaelic or Keltic, with which Dr. Jamieson, 
 the author of the best and most copious Scottish Dictionary 
 hitherto published, was very imperfectly or scarcely at all 
 acquainted. 
 
 "Broad Scotch," says Dr. Adolphus Wagner, the erudite 
 and sympathetic editor of the Poems of Robert Burns, pub- 
 lished in Leipzig, in 1835, "is literally broadened, — i.e., a 
 language or dialect very worn off, and blotted, whose original 
 stamp often is unknowable, because the idea is not always 
 to be guessed at." This strange mistake is not confined to 
 the Grermans, but prevails to a large extent among English- 
 men, who are of opinion that Scotch is a provincial dialect of 
 
 1 -010° 
 
vi Preface, 
 
 the English, — like that of Lancashire or Yorkshire, — and not 
 entitled to be called a language. The truth is, that English 
 and Lowland Scotch were originally the same, but that the 
 literary and social influences of London as the real metropolis 
 of both countries, especially after the transfer of the royal 
 family of Stuart from Edinburgh to London, at the commence- 
 ment of the seventeenth century, favoured the infusion of a 
 Latin element into current English, which the Scotch were 
 slow to adopt. 
 
 In the year 1870, the author contributed two papers to 
 Blackwood^ s Magazine on " The Poetry and Humour of the 
 Scottish Language." Those papers are here reprinted with 
 such copious additions as have extended the work to more 
 than treble its original dimensions. The whole has under- 
 gone careful revision and emendation, and will, it is hoped, 
 be found to contain not only characteristic specimens of the 
 peculiar humour, but of the abounding poetical genius of the 
 ancient and modem authors who have adorned the literature 
 of Scotland from the days of Barbour, Douglas, and Mont- 
 gomery to those of Allan Ramsay, Robert Bums, and Walter 
 Scott, and down to our own times. 
 
 November 1887. 
 
INTEODUCTION 
 
 THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE AND ITS 
 LITERARY HISTORY. 
 
 The Lowland Scottish language is not a mere dialect, as many- 
 English people believe ; but a true language, differing some- 
 times from modern English in pronunciation, and more fre- 
 quently in the possession of many beautiful words, which have 
 ceased to be English, and in the use of inflexions unknown to 
 literary and spoken English since the days of the author of 
 Piers Ploughman and Chaucer. In fact, Scotch is for the 
 most part old English. The English and Scotch languages 
 are both mainly derived from various branches of the Teu- 
 tonic; and five hundred years ago, may be correctly described 
 as having been Anglo-Teutonic and Scoto -Teutonic. Time has 
 replaced the Anglo-Teutonic by the modern English, but has 
 spared the Scoto-Teutonic, which still remains a living speech. 
 Though the children of one mother, the two have lived apart, 
 received different educations, developed themselves under dis- 
 similar circumstances, and received accretions from indepen- 
 dent and unrelated sources. The English, as far as it remains 
 an Anglo-Teutonic tongue, is derived from the Dutch or 
 Flemish, with a large intermixture of Latin and French. The 
 Scotch is indebted more immediately to the Dutch and Flemish 
 spoken in Holland and Belgium, both for its fundamental and 
 most characteristic words, and for its inflexion and grammar. 
 
viii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 The English bristles with consonants. The Scotch is as 
 spangled with vowels as a meadow with daisies in the month 
 of May. English, though perhaps the most muscular and 
 copious language in the world, is harsh and sibilant; while 
 the Scotch, with its beautiful terminational diminutives, is 
 almost as soft as the Italian. English songs, like those of 
 Moore and Campbell,^ however excellent they may be as 
 poetical compositions, are, for these reasons, not so available 
 for musical purposes as the songs of Scotland. An English- 
 man, if he sings of a "pretty little girl," uses words deficient 
 in euphony, and suggests comedy rather than sentiment ; but 
 when a Scotsman sings of a "bonnie wee lassie," he employs 
 words that are much softer than their English equivalents, 
 express a tenderer and more romantic idea, and are infinitely 
 better adapted to the art of the composer and the larynx of 
 the singer. And the phrase is but a sample of many thou- 
 sands of words that make the Scottish language more musical 
 than its English sister. 
 
 The word Teutonic is in these pages used advisedly instead 
 of " Saxon " or Anglo-Saxon. The word " Saxon " is never 
 applied in Germany to the German or High Dutch, or to any 
 of the languages that sprang out of it, known as Low Dutch. 
 Even in the little kingdom of Saxony itself, the language 
 spoken by the people is always called Deutsch (or German), 
 and never Saxon. The compound word Anglo-Saxon is purely 
 an invention of English writers at a comparatively late period, 
 and is neither justified by Philology nor History. 
 
 ^ Neither of these was an Englishman. And it is curious to note 
 that no Englishman since the time of Charles II. has ever rendered 
 himself very famous as a song-writer, with the sole exceptions of 
 Charles Dibdin and Barry Cornwall, whose songs are by no means 
 of the highest merit ; while Scotsmen and Irishmen who have written 
 excellent songs, both in their own language and in English, are to be 
 counted by the score — or the hundred. 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 Philology, even in the advanced period in which we now 
 live, is, at the best, but a blind and groping science. It has 
 made but little real progress since the invention of printing, 
 having been anticipated mainly by shallow scioKsts, who based 
 etymology upon fanciful guesses and vague resemblances. 
 A by no means unfair specimen of the class accounted for the 
 vulgar word '* sparrow-grass," a corruption of asparagus; by 
 " sparrow " and '^ grass," on the assumption that the herb was 
 a species of grass to which sparrows were particularly partial. 
 
 Many of the etymologies which English literature owes to 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson, his predecessors and successors, in the lexi- 
 cographic industry, are frequently as ludicrously ill-founded. 
 
 The name of the Southern portion of Great Britain has been 
 derived from a supposed German tribe, who with the Jutes 
 and Saxons invaded the island after the departure of the 
 Romans. It happens, however, that there is no real founda- 
 tion for the confident statement that the name of " Angles " 
 was ever borne by or known to any German tribes. The 
 invaders of the east coast of Britain, both North and South, 
 came from the opposite coast of the continent, principally from 
 Denmark, Holland, and Belgium, and brought their laws and 
 language along with them. The true origin of the word 
 " Angles " is the Keltic or Gaelic an, the definite article, and 
 gaidheil (in which the dh are not pronounced), which signifies 
 the "Gael" or the Celts; whence An-gael, and not Angle. 
 The erroneous interpretation, still too firmly fixed in the 
 minds of both the learned and the unlearned to be easily 
 eradicated, was strengthened by a punning compliment paid 
 by Pope Gregory the Great to a party of British youth of 
 both sexes who were carried into slavery in Rome, and which 
 is recorded in Hume's " History of England." " Struck with 
 the beauty of their fair complexion and blooming counte- 
 nances," says the historian, " Gregory asked to what country 
 they belonged, and being told they were Angles^ he replied 
 
Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 that they ought more properly to be denominated Angels, as 
 it would be a pity that the Prince of Darkness should enjoy 
 so fair a prey, and that so beautiful a frontispiece should cover 
 a mind so destitute of internal graces and righteousness." 
 
 The epithet " Anglo-Saxon," now so frequently applied to 
 the natives of South Britain, is of recent origin, and was 
 not known in the golden age of English literature, when 
 Shakspeare and Spenser flourished, nor until the second half 
 of the eighteenth century. Great Britain was known to the 
 Romans as Anglia centuries before the Saxons, or that section 
 of them erroneously supposed to have been called Angles, 
 established themselves in any part of the country. It was 
 not until the Hanoverian family of the Georges had given 
 three sovereigns to the country that courtly writers began to 
 talk of the Anglo-Saxon origin of the people, and that the 
 epithet finally became synonymous with "Enghsh." It is 
 true that in the time of the Romans a small portion of the 
 eastern coast of Anglia, immediately opposite Belgium and 
 Holland, was called *' the Saxon shore." The name was given 
 to it from the fact that successive swarms of Flemish, Dutch, 
 and Danish pirates had succeeded in forming settlements on the 
 littoral, though they had never been able to penetrate into the 
 interior of the country. The Gael, or Celts, called these pirates 
 Sassenach, as the Southern English are called to this day by 
 the Gaelic and Keltic-speaking people of Wales, Ireland, and 
 Scotland. The word did not originally signify a German or 
 native of Saxony, but a robber. 
 
 The Scottish people, though they do not hate the English as 
 too many of the Irish unfortunately do, remark with pride that 
 Scotland is a nation of itself, that it can boast of an antiquity 
 as venerable and of a history as illustrious as that of its larger 
 realm — the throne of which one of its native kings ascended 
 by hereditary right in the seventeenth century, and in suc- 
 cession to Queen Elizabeth — and they object to being called 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 Englishmen. By the Act of Union between the two nations, 
 the names of England and Scotland were legislatively abolished, 
 Scotland being called North Britain, and England South Britain, 
 while the army, navy, and government were severally denomi- 
 nated those of Great Britain, and not the army, navy, and 
 government of either England or Scotland. 
 
 But popular usage in South Britain and at the seat of 
 government has proved itself stronger than the Act of Par- 
 liament, and many of the Scotch themselves, yielding to the 
 literary and colloquial fashion set by the South, find them- 
 selves speaking, sometimes in praise, sometimes in blame, of 
 the English Government. It cannot, however, be affirmed 
 that the objection taken by the northern nation to the southern 
 usurpation of the epithet English is in any way unreasonable, 
 founded as it is upon the commonly received if not universal 
 opinion that the English receive their name from the German 
 " Angles." The Southern English believe this fable, and not 
 aware of the fact that they are not half so much German as 
 they think themselves, make light of the Scottish objection, 
 and call it sentimental, and unworthy of practical considera- 
 tion. But if Angles are in reality " Angael " or the Gael, the 
 Scottish and Northern British people are quite as much Angael 
 or English as those of the south, and the English Government 
 is rightfully the designation of government of the whole 
 kingdom. This fact should remove the natural jealousy of the 
 Scotch, and cut away from the conceit of the South British 
 the very slender and rotten foundation on which it is based. 
 But until the Southern English admit the fact that a colony 
 of Germans did not give name to England, but that the whole 
 country of Britain, otherwise Angha, as the Romans called 
 it, derives its name from the Keltic Angael^ the North British 
 are quite right in objecting and in refusing to recognise in 
 their Southern fellow-countrymen the sole and exclusive title 
 to the honourable designation. 
 
xii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 The principal components of the Scottish tongue, as dis- 
 tinguished from modern and literary English, are derived 
 not from German or High Dutch, but from the Low Dutch, 
 comprising many words once possessed by the English, but 
 which have become obsolete in the latter ; secondly, words and 
 inflexions derived from the Dutch or Flemish, and Danish ; 
 thirdly, words derived from the French, or from the Latin 
 through a French medium ; and fourthly, words derived from 
 the Gaelic or Keltic language of the Highlands, and of Ireland. 
 As regards the first source, it is interesting to note that in 
 the Glossary appended to Mr. Thomas Wright's edition of 
 those ancient and excellent alliterative poems, the '* Vision " 
 and " Creed " of Piers Ploughman, there occur about two 
 thousand obsolete English or Anglo-Teutonic words, many of 
 which are still retained in the Scottish Lowlands ; and that in 
 the Glossary to Tyrrwhitt's edition of Chaucer there occur 
 upwards of six thousand words which need explanation to 
 modern English readers, but fully one half of which need no 
 explanation whatever to a Scotsman. Even Shakspeare is 
 becoming obsolete, and uses upwards of two thousand four 
 hundred words which Mr. Howard Staunton, in many respects 
 his most judicious editor, thinks it necessary to collect in a 
 glossary for the better elucidation of the text. Many of these 
 words are perfectly familiar to a Scottish ear, and require no 
 interpreter. It appears from these facts that the Scotch is 
 a far more conservative language than modern English, and 
 that although it does not object to receive new words, it clings 
 reverently and affectionately to the old. The consequence of 
 this mingled tenacity and elasticity is, that it possesses a 
 vocabulary which includes for a Scotsman's use every word 
 of the English language, and several thousand words which 
 the English have suffered to drop into desuetude. 
 
 In addition to this conservancy of the very bone and sinew 
 of the language, the Scoto-Teutonic has an advantage over the 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 modem English, in having reserved to itself the power, while 
 retaining all the old words of the language, to eliminate from 
 every word all harsh or unnecessary consonants. Thus it has 
 ?oe, for love ; fa\ for fall : wa\ for wall ; awfu\ for awful ; 
 S7)ia\ for small ; and many hundreds of similar abbreviations 
 which detract nothing from the force of the idea or the clear- 
 ness of the meaning, while they soften the roughness of the 
 expression. No such power resides in the English or the 
 French, though it once resided in both, and very little of it in 
 the German language, though it remains in all those European 
 tongues which trace their origin to the Low Dutch. The 
 Scottish poet or versifier may write /a' or "fall " as it pleases 
 him, but his English compeer must write "fall" without 
 abbreviation. Another source of the superior euphony of the 
 Scoto-Teutonic is the single diminutive in ie, and the double 
 diminutive in hie, formed from och or ock, or possibly from 
 the Teutonic chen, as in mddchen, a little maid, which may be 
 applied to any noun in the language, as loifef wifie, wifoch, 
 wifikie, wife, little wife, very little wife ; hairn, hairnie, 
 hairniMe, child, little child, very little child; Urd, hirdie, 
 hirdikie ; and lass, lassie, lassock, lassikie, &c.^ A very few 
 English nouns remain susceptible of one of these two diminu- 
 tives, though in a less musical form, as lamb, lambkin ; goose, 
 gosling, &c. The superior beauty of the Scottish forms of the 
 diminutive is obvious. Take the following lines from Hector 
 MacNeil's song, " My Boy Tammie : " — 
 
 ** I held her to my beating heart, 
 My young, my smiling lammie." 
 
 1 The following specimen of the similar diminutives common in 
 the Dutch and Flemish language are extracted from the Grammaire 
 Flamande of Philippe La Grue, Amsterdam, 1745 : — Manneken, little 
 man ; wyfTcen, little wife ; vrouwtje, little woman ; Meysgie, little girl 
 (Scottice, Missie) ; Mantje, little man ; huysje, little house ; paerdje, little 
 horse ; 8cheq>je, little boat (Scottice, boatie) ; vogdtje, little bird, or 
 birdie. 
 
xiv Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Were the English word lambkin substituted for lammie in 
 this passage the affectionate and tender would be superseded 
 by the prosaic. 
 
 While these abbreviations and diminutives increase not 
 only the melody but the naivete and archness of the spoken 
 language, the retention of the old and strong inflexions of 
 verbs, that are wrongfully called irregular, contributes very 
 much to its force and harmony, giving it at the same time 
 a superiority over the modern English, which has consented 
 to allow many useful preterites and past- participles to perish 
 altogether. In literary and conversational English there is 
 no distinctive preterite for the verbs to heat, to het^ to hid, to 
 forhid, to cast, to hit, to hurt, to put, and to set ; while only 
 three of them, to heat, to hid, and to forhid, retain the past- 
 participles beaten, hidden, and forbidden. The Scottish lan- 
 guage, on the contrary, has retained all the ancient forms of 
 these verbs ; and can say, " I cast, I coost, and I have casten 
 a stone," or *' I put, I pat, or I have putten on my coat," " I 
 hurt, I hurted, or I have hurten myself," and *' I let, I loot, or 
 I have letten, or looten, fa' my tears," &c. 
 
 Chaucer made an effort to introduce many French words 
 into the courtly and literary English of his time, but with 
 very slight success. No such systematic effort was made by 
 any Scottish writer, yet, nevertheless, in consequence of the 
 friendly intercourse long subsisting between France and Scot- 
 land — an intercourse that was alike political, commercial, and 
 social — a considerable number of words of French origin crept 
 into the Scottish vernacular, and there established themselves 
 with a tenacity that is not likely to be relaxed as long as the 
 language continues to be spoken.- Some of these are among 
 the most racy and characteristic of the differences between 
 the English and the Scotch. It will be sufficient if we cite 
 the following : — To fash one's self, to be troubled with or about 
 anything — from se fdcher, to be angered ; douce, gentle, good- 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 tempered, courteous — from doux, soft; dour, grim, obdurate, 
 slow to forgive or relent — from dur, hard ; hien, comfortable, 
 well to do in worldly affairs — from hien, well j ashet, a dish — 
 from assiette, a plate; a creel, a fish-basket — from creille, a 
 basket ; a gigot of mutton — from gigot, a leg ; awmrie, a linen 
 press, or plate-cupboard — from armoire, a movable cupboard 
 or press ; honnie, beautiful and good — from ban, good ; airles 
 and a*VZe-penny, money paid in advance to seal a bargain — 
 from arrhes, a deposit on account; hrulzie, a fight or dispute 
 — from s'emhrouiller, to quarrel; callant, a lad — from galant, 
 a lover ; braw, fine — from brave, honest and courageous ; dool, 
 sorrow — from deuil ; grozet, a gooseberry (which, be it said in 
 parenthesis, is a popular corruption from ^orse- berry) — from 
 groseille ; taujpie, a thoughtless, foolish girl, who does not look 
 before her to see what she is doing — from taupe, a mole ; and 
 haggis, the Scottish national dish (*' Fair fa' its honest, sonsie 
 face ! ") — from hachis, a hash ; pawn, peacock — from paon ; 
 caddie, a young man acting as a porter or messenger — from 
 cadet, the younger born, &c. 
 
 The Teutonic words derived immediately from the Dutch 
 and Flemish, and following the rules of pronunciation of 
 those languages, are exceedingly numerous. Among these are 
 wanlwpe — from icanhoop, despair; wancliancie, ivanlust, loan- 
 restful, and many others, where the English adopt the German 
 un instead of wan. Ben, the inner, as distinguished from but, 
 the outer, room of a cottage, is from binne, within, as but is 
 from beuten, without. Stane, a stone, comes from steen ; 
 smack, to taste^from smack ; goud, gold — from gaud; loupen, 
 to leap — from loopen ; fell, cruel, violent, fierce — from fel ; 
 kist, a chest — from kist ; mutch, a woman's cap — from muts ; 
 ghaist, a ghost — from geest ; kame, a comb — from kam ; rock- 
 lay (rocklaigh), a short coat — from rok, a petticoat or jupon ; 
 het, hot — from heet; geek, to mock or make a fool of — from 
 gek, a fool ; tear, knowledge — from leer, doctrine or learning ; 
 
xvi Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 bane or hain^ a bone — from been ; paddocJc, a toad — from pad ; 
 caff^ chaff — from kaf, straw ; yooky, itchy — from yuh^ an itch ; 
 clyte^ to fall heavily or suddenly to the ground — from Uuyt^ 
 the sward, and Tduyter^ to fall on the sward ; Uythe, lively, 
 good-humoured, from hlyde, contented. 
 
 The Scottish words derived from the Gaelic are apparent 
 in the names of places and in the colloquial phraseology of 
 everyday life. Among these, hen^ glen, hum, loch, strath, corrie, 
 and cairn will recur to the memory of any one who has lived 
 or travelled in Scotland, or is conversant with Scottish lite- 
 rature. Gillie, a boy or servant; grieve, a land-steward or 
 agent, are not only ancient Scottish words, but have lately 
 become English. Loof, the open palm, is derived from the 
 Gaelic lamh (pronounced laff or lav), the hand; cuddle, to 
 embrace — from cadail, sleep; whisky — from uisge, water; 
 cla/^han, a village — from clach, a stone, and clachan, the stones ; 
 croon, to hum a tune — from cruin, to lament or moan ; bailie, 
 a city or borough magistrate — from haile, a town ; may serve 
 as specimens of the many words which, in the natural inter- 
 course between the Highlanders and the Lowlanders, have 
 been derived from the ancient Gaelic by the more modem 
 Scoto -Teutonic. 
 
 Four centuries ago, the English or Anglo-Teutonic, when 
 Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate were still intelligible, had a 
 much greater resemblance to the Scoto-Teutonic than it has 
 at the present day. William Dunbar, one of the earliest, 
 as he was one of the best of the Scottish poets, and supposed 
 to have been born in 1465, in the reign of James III. in 
 Scotland, and of Edward IV. in England, wrote, among other 
 poems, the "Thrissel and the Rose." This composition was 
 alike good Scotch and good English, and equally intelligible to 
 the people of both countries. It was designed to commemorate 
 the marriage of James IV. with Margaret Tudor, daughter 
 of King Henry VII. of England — that small cause of many 
 
Introduction. xvii 
 
 great events, of which the issues have extended to our time, 
 and which gave the Stuarts their title to the British throne. 
 Dunbar wrote in the Scotch of the literati rather than in 
 that of the common people, as did King James I. at an earlier 
 period, when, a captive in Windsor Castle, he indited his 
 beautiful poem, "The King's Quair," to celebrate the grace 
 and loveliness of the Lady Beaufort, whom he afterwards 
 married. The " Thrissel and the Rose " is only archaic in its 
 orthography, and contains no words that a commonly well- 
 educated Scottish ploughman cannot at this day understand, 
 though it might puzzle some of the clever University men who 
 write for the London press to interpret it without the aid 
 of a glossary. Were the spelling of the following passages 
 modernised, it would be found that there is nothing in any 
 subsequent poetry, from Dunbar's day to our own, with 
 which it need fear a comparison : — 
 
 ** Quhen Merche wes with variand windis, past, 
 And Apryll hadd^, with her silver shouris 
 Tane leif at nature, with ane orient blast. 
 And lusty May, that mudder is of flouris, 
 Had maid the birdis to begyn their houris 
 Among the tender odouris reid and quhyt, 
 Quhois harmony to heir it was delyt. 
 In bed at morrowe, sleiping as I lay, 
 Methocht Aurora, with her crystal een. 
 In at the window lukit by the day. 
 And halsit me with visage paile and grene, 
 On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene : 
 ' Awauk luvaris ! out of your slummering ! 
 See how the lusty morrow dois upspring 1 ' " 
 
 King James V. did not, like Dunbar, confine his poetic 
 ejfforts to the speech of the learned, but is supposed to have 
 written in the vernacular of the peasantry and townspeople 
 his well-known poem of " Peblis to the Play." This composi- 
 tion scarcely contains a word that Burns, three hundred years 
 
 h 
 
xviii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 later, would have hesitated to employ. In like manner King 
 James V., in his more recent poem of " Christ's Kirk on the 
 Green," written nearly three hundred and twenty years ago,^ 
 made use of the language of the peasantry to describe the 
 assembly of the lasses and their wooers that came to the 
 "dancing and the deray," with their gloves of the ^^ raffele 
 richt" (right doeskin), their "shoon of the straitis" (coarse 
 cloth), and their 
 
 *' Eirtles of the lineum [Lincoln] licht, 
 Weel pressed wi' mony plaitis." 
 
 His description of " Gillie " is equal to anything in Allan 
 Kamsay or Burns, and quite as intelligible to the Scottisli 
 peasantry of the present day : — 
 
 *' Of all thir maidens mild as mcid 
 
 Was nane say gymp as Gillie ; 
 As ony rose her rude was reid, 
 
 Hir lire was like the lily. 
 Bot zallow, zallow was hir heid, 
 
 And Kche of luif sae sillie, 
 Though a' hir kin suld hae bein deid, 
 
 Sche wuld hae bot sweit Willie." 
 
 Captain Alexander Montgomery, who was attached to the 
 service of the Regent Murray in 1577, and who enjoyed a 
 pension from King James VI., wrote many poems in which 
 the beauty, the strength, and the archness of the Scottish 
 language were very abundantly displayed. " Tlie Cherry and 
 the Slae " is particularly rich in words, that Ramsay, Scott, 
 and Burns have since rendered classical, and is besides a poem 
 as excellent in thought and fancy as it is copious and musical 
 
 1 * • This is doubtful," says the late Lord Neaves, in a letter to the editor 
 of this volume. ** These obscure questions are fully discussed by Dr. 
 Irving in his History of Scottish Poetry. I should say the probability 
 was that 'Peblis to the Play' and 'Christ's Kirk' are by the same 
 authors or of the same age, and neither of them by James V." 
 
Introduction. xix 
 
 in diction. Take the description of the music of the birds on 
 a May morning as a specimen : — 
 
 " The cushat croods, the corbie cries, 
 The coukoo couks, the prattling pies 
 
 To keck hir they begin. 
 The jargon o' the jangling jays, 
 The craiking craws and keckling kayes, 
 
 They deaved me with their din. 
 The painted pawn with Argus e'en 
 
 Can on his mayock call ; 
 The turtle wails on withered trees. 
 
 And Echo answers all. 
 Repeting, with greting, 
 
 How fair Narcissus fell, 
 By lying and spying 
 
 His schadow in the well." 
 
 The contemporaneous, perhaps the more recent, poetry of 
 what may be called the ballad period, when the beautiful 
 legendary and romantic lyrics of Scotland were sung in hall 
 and bower, and spread from mouth to mouth among the 
 peasantry, in the days when printing was rather for the 
 hundred than for the million, as well as the comparatively 
 modem effusions of Ramsay and Burns, and the later pro- 
 ductions of the multitudinous poets and prose writers who 
 have adorned the literature of Scotland within the present cen- 
 tury, afford very convincing proofs, not only of the poetic riches, 
 but of the abundant wit and humour of the Scottish people, to 
 which the Scottish language lends itself far more effectually 
 than the English. Long anterior to the age when the noble 
 art of printing was invented for the delight and instruction of 
 mankind, the poetry of the bards of the ^'JSTorth Countrie" 
 was familiar not only to the people of the North Countrie 
 itself, but to those of the Teutonic south — a far less poetic 
 race than their Keltic brethren ; and northern ballads were re- 
 cited or sung in hall and bower among the upper classes, and 
 
XX Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 in the popular gatherings of the multitude at fairs and festi- 
 vals. These ballads, which often received an English colouring 
 in travelling southwards, were highly esteemed for at least 
 three centuries before the days of Shakspeare. The great 
 poet was himself familiar with them, as is shown by more 
 than one quotation from them in his immortal works. 
 
 Since the time when James YI. attracted so many of his poor 
 countrymen to England, to push their fortunes at the expense 
 of Englishmen, who would have been glad of their places, to 
 the day when Lord Bute's administration under George III. 
 made all Scotsmen unpopular for his sake, and when Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson, who was of Scottish extraction himself [the 
 son of a Scot, established as a bookseller in Leicester], and 
 pretended to dislike Scotsmen — the better perhaps to disguise 
 the fact of his lineage, and turn away suspicion — up to the 
 time of Charles Lamb and the late Rev. Sydney Smith, it has 
 been more or less the fashion in England to indulge in jokes 
 at the expense of the Scottish people, and to portray them not 
 only as overhard, shrewd, and " canny " in money matters, but 
 as utterly insensible to " wit." Sydney Smith, who was a wit 
 himself, and very probably imbibed his jocosity from the con- 
 versation of Edinburgh society, in the days when in that city 
 he cultivated literature, as he himself records, upon a little 
 oatmeal, is guilty of the well-known assertion that " it takes 
 a surgical operation to drive a joke into a Scotsman's head." 
 It would be useless to enter into any discussion on the differ- 
 ences between " wit " and " humour," which are many, or even 
 to attempt to define the divergency between **wit" and what 
 the Scotch call " wut ; " but, in contradiction to the reverend 
 joker, it is necessary to assert that the " wut " of the Scotch 
 is quite equal to the *' wit " of the English, and that Scottish 
 humour is superior to any humour that was ever evolved out 
 of the inner consciousness or intellect of the English peasantry 
 inhabiting the counties south of Yorkshire. There is one 
 
Introduction. xxi 
 
 thing, however, which perhaps Sydney Smith intended when 
 he wrote, without thinking very deeply, if at all, about 
 what he said ; the Scotch as a rule do not like, and do not 
 imderstand banter, or what in the current slang of the day 
 is called "chaff." In "chaff" and "banter" there is but 
 little wit, and that little is of the poorest, and contains no 
 humour whatever. " Chaff " is simply vulgar impertinence ; 
 and the Scotch being a plain and serious people, though 
 poetical, are slow to understand and unable to appreciate it. 
 But with wit, or "wut," and humour, that are deserving 
 of the name, they are abundantly familiar; and their very 
 seriousness enables them to enjoy them the more. The 
 wittiest of men are often the most serious, if not the saddest 
 and most melancholy (witness Thomas Hood, Douglas Jerrold, 
 and Artemus Ward), and if the shortest possible refutation of 
 Sydney Smith's assertion were required, it might be found 
 in the works of Burns, Scott, and Christopher North. 
 Were there no wit and humour to be found in Scotand ex- 
 cept in the writings of these three illustrious Scotsmen, 
 there would be enough and to spare to make an end of this 
 stale "chaff;" and to show by comparison that, wit and 
 humorist as Sydney Smith may have been, he was not equal 
 as a wit to Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, or Professor 
 Wilson. In what English poem of equal length is there to 
 be found so much genuine wit and humour mingled with 
 such sublimity and such true pathos and knowledge of life 
 and character as in "Tam o' Shanter"? What English novel, 
 by the very best of English writers, exceeds for wit and 
 humour any one of the great Scottish romances and tales of 
 Sir Walter Scott, the least of which would be sufficient to 
 build up and sustain a high literary reputation ? And what 
 collection of English jests is equal to the " Laird of Logan," 
 or Dean Ramsay's " Reminiscences of Scottish Life and 
 Character " ? Joe Miller's " Jest Book," and all the countless 
 
xxii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 stories that have been fathered upon Joe Miller — one of the 
 most melancholy of men — are but dreary reading, depending 
 as they mostly do for their point upon mere puns and plays 
 upon words, and to a great extent being utterly deficient in 
 humour. It seems to require some infusion of Keltic blood in 
 a nation to make the people either witty or appreciative of 
 wit ; for the dullest of all European peoples are without ex- 
 ception those in whom the Keltic least prevails. There is 
 little or no wit or sense of wit in the peasantry of the South 
 of England, though there may be some degree of coarse 
 humour. Whereas the Scottish and the Irish peasantry are 
 brimful both of wit and humour. If any one would wish to 
 have a compendium of wisdom, wit, humour, and abundant 
 knowledge, kindly as well as unkindly, of human nature, let him 
 look to Allan Ramsay's "Collection of Scots Proverbs," where 
 he will find a more perfect treasury of "pawkie," "cannie," 
 " cantie," shrewd, homely, and familiar philosophy than English 
 literature affords. And the humour and wit are not only in 
 the ideas, but in the phraseology, which is untranslateable. 
 Scottish poetry and pathos find their equivalents in English 
 and Teutonic, but the quaint Scottish words refuse to go into 
 any other idiom. " A man's a man for a' that " — strong, 
 characteristic, and nervous in the Scottish Doric, fades away 
 into attenuation and hanaliU when the attempt is made to 
 render the noble phrase into French or German, Italian or 
 Spanish. Even in English the words lose their flavour, and 
 become weak by the substitution of "all that," for the more 
 emphatic "a' that." Translate into literary English the 
 couplet in " Duncan Gray," in which the rejected lover of 
 Maggie 
 
 Grat his e'en baith bleer't and blin — ' 
 
 Spak o' lowpin ower a lin — 
 
 and the superior power of expressing the humorous which 
 belongs to the Scottish language will at once become ap- 
 
Introduction. xxiii 
 
 parent. In the same way, when Luath, the poor man's dog, 
 explains to his aristocratic friend what a hard time the 
 poor have of it, a literal translation of the passage into col- 
 loquial English would utterly deprive it of its tenderness and 
 
 humour : — 
 
 A cotter howkin in a sheugh, 
 
 Wi' dirty stanes higgin a dyke, 
 
 Baring a quarry and sic like ; 
 
 Himsel' an' wife he thus sustains 
 
 A smytrie o' icee duddie loeans, 
 
 And nocht but his hand darg to keep 
 
 Them right and tight in thack and rape. 
 
 The *' smytrie o' wee duddie weans " is simply inimitable, 
 and sets a fair English translation and even a paraphrase 
 at defiance. 
 
 Time was within living memory when the Scotch of the 
 upper classes prided themselves on their native "Doric;" 
 when judges on the bench delivered their judgments in the 
 broadest Scotch, and would have thought themselves guilty of 
 puerile and unworthy affectation if they had preferred English 
 words or English accents to the language of their boyhood ; 
 when advocates pleaded in the same forcible tongue ; when 
 ministers of religion found their best way to the hearts and 
 to the understanding of their congregations in the use of the 
 language most familiar to themselves, as well as to those 
 whom they addressed ; and when ladies of the highest rank — 
 celebrated alike for their wit and their beauty — sang their 
 tenderest, archest, and most affecting songs, and made their 
 bravest thrusts and parries in the sparkling ^ encounters of 
 conversation, in the familiar speech of their own country. All 
 this, however, is fast disappearing, and not only the wealthy 
 and titled, who live much in London, begin to grow ashamed of 
 speaking the language of their ancestors, though the sound of 
 the well-beloved accents from the mouths of others is not 
 unwelcome or unmusical to their ears, but even the middle- 
 
xxiv Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 class Scotch are learning to follow their example. The mem- 
 bers of the legal and medical profession are afraid of the 
 accusation of vulgarity that might be launched against them 
 if they spoke publicly in the picturesque language of their 
 fathers and grandfathers; and the clergy are unlearning in 
 the pulpit the brave old speech that was good enough for 
 John Knox [who was the greatest Angliciser of his day, and 
 was accused by Winyet of that fault], and many thousands of 
 pious preachers who, since his time, have worthily kept alive 
 the faith of the Scottish people by appeals to their consciences 
 in the language of their hearts. In ceasing to employ the 
 *' unadorned eloquence " of the sturdy vernacular, and using 
 instead of it the language of books and of the Southern English, 
 it is to be feared that too ' many of these literary preachers 
 have lost their former hold upon the mind of the people, and 
 that they have sensibly weakened the powers of persuasion and 
 conviction which they possessed when their words were in 
 sympathetic unison with the current of thought and feeling that 
 flowed through the broad Scottish intellect of the peasantry. 
 And where fashion leads, snobbism will certainly follow, so 
 that it happens even in Scotland that young Scotsmen of the 
 Dundreary class will sometimes boast of their inability to 
 understand the poetry of Burns and the romances of Scott on 
 account of the difficulties presented by the language ! — as if 
 their crass ignorance were a thing to be proud of ! 
 
 But the old language, though of later years it has become 
 unfashionable in its native land, survives not alone on the 
 tongue but in the heart of the " common " people (and where 
 is there such a common [or uncommon] people as the peasantry 
 of Scotland ?), and has established for itself a place in the 
 affections of those ardent Scotsmen who travel to the New 
 World and to the remotest part of the Old, with the auri sacra 
 fames, to lead them on to fortune, but who never permit that 
 particular species of hunger — which is by no means peculiar to 
 
Introduction. xxv 
 
 Scotsmen — to deaden their hearts to their native land, or to 
 render them indifferent to their native speech, the merest 
 word of which, when uttered unexpectedly under a foreign 
 sky, stirs up all the latent patriotism in their minds, and opens 
 their hearts, and if need be their purses, to the utterer. It 
 has also by a kind of poetical justice established for itself a 
 hold and a footing even in the modern English which affects 
 to ignore it ; and, thanks more especially to Bums and Scott, 
 and, in a minor degree, to Professor Wilson, and to the ad- 
 miration which their genius has excited in England, America, 
 and Australia, has engrafted many of its loveliest shoots upon 
 the modern tree of actually spoken English. Every year the 
 number of words that are taken like seeds or grafts from the 
 Scottish conservatory, and transplanted into the fruitful Eng- 
 lish garden, is on the increase, as will be seen from the following 
 anthology of specimens, which might have been made ten times 
 as abundant if it had been possible to squeeze into one goblet 
 a whole tun of hippocrene. Many of these words are recognised 
 English, permissible both in literature and conversation ; many 
 others are in progress and process of adoption and assimilation ; 
 and many more that are not English, and may never become 
 so, are fully worthy of a place in the Dictionary of a language 
 that has room for every word, let it come whence it will, that 
 expresses a new meaning or a more delicate shade of an old 
 meaning, than any existing forms of expression admit. Eerie^ 
 and gloaming^ and cannie, and cantie, and cozie, and lift, and 
 liltf and caller, and gruesome, and thud, and weird, are all of 
 an ancient and noble pedigree, and were the most of them as 
 English in the fifteenth century as they are fast becoming in 
 the nineteenth. 
 
 If any Scotsman at home or abroad should, in going 
 over the list in this epitome, fail to discover some favourite 
 word that was dear to him in childhood, and that stirs up 
 the recollections of his native land, and of the days when 
 
xxvi Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 he "paidled in the burn," or stood by the trysting-tree 
 " to meet his bonnie lassie when the kye cam' hame," — 
 one word that recalls old times, old friends, and bygone 
 joys and sorrows, — let him reflect that in culling a posie 
 from the garden, the posie must of necessity be smaller 
 than the garden itself, and that the most copious of 
 selectors must omit much that he would have been glad to 
 add to his garland if the space at his disposal had permitted. 
 He must also remember that all the growths of the garden 
 are not rare flowers, but that weeds, though worthy of respect 
 in their way, are not always of appropriate introduction into 
 wreaths and garlands ; and that the design of this Dictionary 
 was not to include all Scotticisms, but only those venerable 
 by their antiquity, quaint in their humour, touching in their 
 simplicity, or admirable in their poetic meaning. 
 
 The principal writers who have adorned the literature of 
 Scotland during the last three centuries, in addition to the 
 nameless and unknown minstrels to whom we owe so many of 
 the rugged but beautiful ballads of the North Countrie, may 
 be fairly said to have commenced with Dunbar, Barbour, 
 Henryson, and Montgomery, and to have ended with Professor 
 John Wilson, author of the inimitable "Noctes Ambrosianse" 
 in Blackioood's Magazine. The list is long, and includes in 
 the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth centuries 
 the names of William Crawford, author of many songs in 
 the purest vernacular of the peasantry; of Hector MacNeil, 
 whose exquisite ballad of the " Braes of Yarrow " would 
 be alone sufficient to place him high in the muster roll 
 of Scottish poets ; and of Allan Ramsay, author of the 
 " Grentle Shepherd," a pastoral poem of which the simple 
 beauty was universally acknowledged at a time when pastoral 
 poems were more to the taste of the age than they have been 
 for the last century, and who collected into four volumes, under 
 the title of the " Tea-Table Miscellany," all the favourite songs 
 
Introduction. xxvii 
 
 of the artificial period in which he flourished. Robert Burns 
 had the highest reverence for the songs of Allan Ramsay, and 
 considered it almost as bad as sacrilege to lay a reforming hand 
 upon the compositions of his venerated predecessor, though 
 Ramsay the wig-maker and barber was a star of very inferior 
 magnitude and brilliancy compared with the solar effulgence 
 that radiated from the genius of Burns the ploughman. 
 
 Between the period of Ramsay and that of Burns, which 
 included about sixty years of very indifferent poetical mani- 
 festations, at least in Scotland, the lyric genius of the country 
 continued as irrepressible, and songs of secondary merit flowed 
 from the lips or pens of literate and illiterate people in a 
 profuse stream. Even the unhappy events of 17 15 and 1745, 
 when the adherents of the dethroned and exiled Stuarts made 
 their gallant and heroic attempts to re-establish themselves in 
 the land of their birth and of their love — the land which they 
 believed the Stuarts had a divine right to govern — the voice 
 of song continued to be heard. True and tender-hearted 
 people make love even in times of national peril and calamity, 
 and the Scottish people sang or made love songs as usual 
 in the homely and earnest dialect of the nation ; while more 
 earnest spirits gave vent to their political animosities and 
 aspirations in the satirical rhymes and trenchant ballads that 
 are still, under the name of " The Jacobite Minstrelsy of 
 Scotland," known to all the literary students of history, as 
 affording a greater insight into the social spirit of the people 
 than the more staid and solid records of the mere annalist 
 or philosophical historiographer are able to convey. Of the 
 popular Scottish songs of the still more prolific age that com 
 menced with the publication of the poems of Robert Burns, 
 I have spoken in " The Book of Scottish Song," in words that 
 I cannot do better than repeat in this place. 
 
 " Scotland is rich in the literature of song. The genius of 
 the people is eminently lyrical. Although rigid in religion, 
 
xxviii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 and often gloomy in fanaticism, they have a finer and more 
 copious music, are fonder of old romance and tradition, dance 
 and song, and have altogether a more poetical aptitude and 
 appreciation than their English brethren. For one poet 
 sprung from the ranks of the English peasantry, Scotland can 
 boast of ten, if not of a hundred. Ploughmen, shepherds, gar- 
 deners, weavers, tinklers, tailors, and even strolling beggars, 
 have enriched the anthology of Scotland with thousands of 
 songs and ballads of no mean merit. The whole land is as 
 musical with the voice of song as it is with torrents and water- 
 falls. Every mountain glen, every strath and loch, every 
 river and stream, every grove and grassy knowe, every castle, 
 and almost every cottage, has its own particular song, ballad, 
 or legend ; for which the country is not so much indebted to 
 scholars and men of learned leisure and intellectual refinement, 
 as to the shrewd but hearty and passionate common people." 
 
 Of the Jacobite ballads, from which many quotations appear 
 in the following pages, 1 said at the same time : — 
 
 " In the Jacobite songs more especially, the humour was far 
 more conspicuous than the pathos. In the heat of the conflict, 
 and when the struggle was as yet unended, and its results uncer- 
 tain, ridicule and depreciation of the enemy were weapons more 
 effective to stir the passions of the combatants than appeals 
 to mere sentiment, even if the sentiment were as elevated as 
 patriotism, or as tender as love and friendship. It was only 
 when the Jacobite cause had become utterly hopeless, and when 
 its illustrious adherents had laid down their lives for it on the 
 bloody moor of Culloden, or on the cruel block of Tower Hill, 
 or were pining in foreign lands in penury and exile, that the 
 popular bards were so far inspired as to be able to strike the 
 keynote of true poetry. 
 
 " As the age was, so were they. In their verse, as in a 
 mirror, were reflected the events and feelings of the time. 
 When the time was hopeful, they were hopeful. When the 
 
Introduction. xxix 
 
 time was ribald, insolent, jaunty, and reckless, they responded 
 to its touch like the harp-string to the harper. From 1688 
 to 1 746 was the day of the common rhymers of the street or 
 the ale-house, or the lone farmhouse among the hills — the 
 day when the men of strong feelings, rude humour, and coarse 
 wit could " say their say " in language intelligible alike to 
 the clansman and the chief, the ploughman and the gentle- 
 man. And they were disputants who could hit as hard in the 
 battles of the tongue as they could, if need were, in the battle 
 of swords ; and who could wield the musket and claymore in 
 physical as effectually as the sledge-hammer of invective in 
 moral warfare. Satire with them was not " a polished razor 
 keen," but a cudgel or a battering-ram ; not a thing that 
 merely drew blood, but that broke the skull and smashed the 
 bones. But after the fatal fight of Culloden the voice of the 
 coarse humorist, if not altogether silenced, was softened or 
 subdued. There had been a time to sing and to dance, but it 
 had passed, and the day of lamentation had succeeded it. The 
 rhymers had flourished in the one epoch, — it was now the turn 
 of the poets. 
 
 " Sorrow for the vanquished and indignation against the 
 victors superseded all the lighter emotions which had hitherto 
 found their expression in songs, ballads, and epigrams ; and 
 the echoes of national music that came from Scotland came 
 from saddened hearts, and from desolate and all but depopu- 
 lated glens. The voice of the mourner of these days was as 
 pathetic and often as vehement as the inspired strains of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah, and partook of the phraseology as well 
 as sentiment of the sacred writings. In the hour of their 
 prosperity the Stewarts had been but common men ; but 
 when adversity befell them, they were elevated to the rank 
 of heroes and demi-gods. Popular sympathy crowned them 
 with graces and virtues which, as throned kings, they had 
 never known ; and loyalty, wavering in the sunshine of 
 
XXX Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 fortune, became firm as the rocks in the tempests of 
 calamity." 
 
 Among the accomplished ladies who between the '45 and 
 the advent of Burns adorned the poetical literature, the names 
 of Lady Anne Lindsay, Mrs. Grant of Carron, Lady Grizzel 
 Baillie, Mrs. Cockbum, Mrs. Crawford, and Miss Blamire 
 stand conspicuous for the tender, joyous, arch, and melan- 
 choly ballads which they wrote to the beautiful old melodies 
 of their country, and which still retain their place amid all 
 the changes of the musical taste and fashion in our time. 
 
 Of the contemporaries of Robert Bums, whose reputations 
 seem pale in the light of his genius, but who are still worthy 
 of honourable mention for their contributions to the literature 
 of their country, may be cited the names of the Rev. John 
 Skinner, author of the renowned ballad of " Tullochgorum," 
 "The Ewie wi' the Crooked Horn," and other songs still 
 popular ; William Julius Mickle, the author of " There's nae 
 Luck aboot the Hoose," one of the most simply beautiful 
 songs that were ever inspired by the domestic affections ; 
 Robert Ferguson, to whom Burns in a burst of poetic enthu- 
 siasm generously erected a mortuary memorial in a grave- 
 yard at Edinburgh ; Lapraik, Semple, and Logan, and in a 
 succeeding generation Dr. John Leyden ; James Hogg, better 
 known as the Ettrick Shepherd ; the Baroness Nairn, authoress 
 of " The Land o' the Leal " and ** Caller Herrin' ; " and Robert 
 Tannahill, the luckless Paisley weaver, who wrote " Jessie 
 the Flower o' Dunblane ; " William Ross, the author of 
 " Eleonore ; " and John Beattie, the luckless author of the 
 admirable poem of "John o' Amha','' that contains passages 
 of wit, humour, and descriptive power only exceeded by the 
 inimitable " Tam o' Shanter " of Burns ; William Motherwell, 
 Donald Carrick, Alexander Rogers, James Ballantine, and a 
 very numerous multitude of bards — all more or less esteemed 
 in Scotland — of which it would serve no good purpose to 
 
Introduction. xxxi 
 
 recapitulate the names, even if it were possible to do so. 
 Favourable specimens of their writings may be seen by all who 
 care to look for them in such collections as *' Whistle-Binkie," 
 " Scottish Minstrelsy " (six volumes), and the very numerous 
 collections issued from the Edinburgh press from the beginning 
 till the middle of the present century. 
 
 But the greatest of all literary preservers of the Scottish lan- 
 guage was undoubtedly the illustrious author of the " Waverley 
 Novels." He was aided in the congenial task of perpetuating 
 that language by such lesser lights of literature as Allan 
 Cunningham, John Gait, and Christopher North; but Sir 
 Walter Scott towered far above them all, and carried the 
 name and fame of Scotland, as well as the quaint graces and 
 tender archaisms of the language, to the remotest parts of 
 the civilised world. 
 
 The generations that have arisen since the old Abbey of 
 Dryburgh received the mortal remains of that greatest of the 
 Scottish writers, second to none of British birth, except Shak- 
 speare, have lost sight in some degree of the works of the great 
 Sir Walter. But though partially eclipsed in popularity, they 
 are firmly established among the classics of the nineteenth 
 century, not only in his own country, but in France and Ger- 
 many. In their original garb — untranslateable to foreign 
 nations in all their native vigour and delicate shades of mean- 
 ing — they will consecrate to many a future generation that shall 
 have ceased to speak Scottish, the remembrance of a noble old 
 language. Yet it may be said with truth " that even in its 
 ashes will live the wonted fires ;" for modern English in the 
 latter half of the nineteenth century has not disdained to 
 borrow from the ancient Scotch many of the strong simple 
 words that the fashionable English writers of the eighteenth 
 century suffered to fall into desuetude. As there has been 
 pre-Baphaelitism in painting, there have been and will continue 
 to be pre-Addisonianism and even pre-Shakspearianism in 
 
xxxii Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 the richly composite language spoken and written in these 
 islands, and in the vast American and Australian continents 
 that are rapidly producing a literature of their own. The 
 English language of the future will in all probability comprise 
 many words not now used or understood on the south of the 
 Tweed, but that are quite familiar to the north of it, as 
 well as in the United States and Australia. Such useful and 
 poetical words as thud, gloamin\ eerie^ dree, weird, and the others 
 already cited, and which have been adopted from the ancient 
 Scotch by the best English writers, are a clear gain to the 
 language, and are not likely to be abandoned. 
 
 Whatever oblivion may attend the works of the great bulk 
 of Scottish writers, Robert Burns and Walter Scott will cer- 
 tainly live in the affection of posterity ; and if some of their 
 words have already become obsolete, their wit and humour, 
 their earnestness and their eloquence, and the whole spirit of 
 their teachings, will survive. To aid English readers in the 
 comprehension of these immortal books, and to remind Scottish 
 readers of what they owe to the literary lights of their country, 
 is one of the main objects of the present compilation. The 
 author, if he can be called the author, or merely the artificer of 
 this book, hopes that it will not only answer this particular pur- 
 pose, but serve more generally to impress upon the minds of the 
 people of this age how rich is the language of their ancestors, 
 and what stores of literary wealth lie comparatively unknown 
 and unregarded in the vernacular of what are irreverently 
 called the ** common people." It is the " common people " who 
 create and shape the language, and the ''uncommon people," 
 known as authors, whose duty it is to help to perpetuate it in 
 books for the pleasure and instruction of posterity. 
 
 November 1887. 
 
DICTIONARY OF LOWLAND SCOTCH. 
 
 Ae, the indefinite article a, or 
 one, and far more emphatic in 
 poetical composition than ane 
 or one, as in Burns' s beautiful 
 song "^e fond kiss and then 
 we sever." Some of the many 
 half -English editors of the 
 Scottish poet have altered ae 
 into " one," which to a Scottish 
 ear is the reverse of an improve- 
 ment. Ae does not merely 
 signify ""one, but only one, and 
 is definite and particular, not 
 indefinite and general, in its 
 meaning. 
 
 Aboon, above. 
 
 Aiblins, perhaps, possibly ; from 
 able, conjoined with lin or lins, 
 inclining to, as in the " westlin 
 wind" — wind inclining to the 
 west ; hence aiblins means inclin- 
 ing to be possible. 
 
 There's mony waur been o' the race, 
 And aiblins ane been better. 
 
 —Burns: The Dream. 
 To George III. 
 
 Aidle, ditchwater ; derivation un- 
 known, but possibly from the 
 
 Gaelic adhall, dull, heavy, stag- 
 nant. 
 
 Then lug out your ladle, 
 Deal brimstone like aidle, 
 And roar every note of the damned. 
 —Burns : Orthodox, Orthodox. 
 
 Ail at. What ails ye at? is a 
 peculiarly Scottish synonym for 
 What is your objection to her, 
 him, or it ? 
 
 An old servant who took a charge of 
 everything that went on in the family, hav- 
 ing observed that his master had taken 
 wine with every lady at the table except one 
 who wore a green dress, jogged his memory 
 with the question, " What ails ye at her 
 in the green gown?" — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Air, early, from the Gaelic ear, the 
 east, where the sun rises. ** An 
 air winter makes a sair winter ; " 
 which maybe Englished, "An 
 early winter makes a surly 
 winter." 
 
 Airt, a point of the compass ; also 
 to direct or show the way. This 
 excellent word ought to be 
 adopted into English. It comes 
 from the Gaelic ard, aird, a 
 height. "Of a' the airts from 
 which the wind can blaw," is 
 better than "of all the quar- 
 A 
 
Aizle — Athol Brose. 
 
 ters from which the wind can 
 blow." 
 
 O' a' the airts the wind can blaw, 
 
 I dearly lo'e the west, 
 For there the bonnie lassie lives, 
 
 The lassie I lo'e best. — Burns. 
 
 But yon green graff (grave), now huskie 
 
 green, 
 Wad airi me to my treasure. — Burns. 
 
 Aizle, a live coal that flies out of 
 the fire. It is a superstition in 
 England to call the live coals 
 violently ejected from the fire 
 by the gas generated in them 
 by the names of "purses" or 
 " coflBns," according to the fan- 
 ciful resemblance which they 
 bear to these articles, and which 
 are supposed to be prophetic 
 of money, or of a death in the 
 family. Some such superstition 
 seems to lie at the root of the 
 Scottish word aide. 
 
 She noticed that an aizle brunt 
 Her braw new worset apron. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 Jamieson says the word was 
 used metaphorically by the poet 
 Douglas to describe the appear- 
 ance of a country that has been 
 desolated by fire and sword. In 
 the Gaelic, aisleine signifies a 
 death-shroud. The derivation, 
 which has been suggested from 
 hazel or hazel-nut, from the 
 shape of the coal when ejected, 
 seems untenable. The Gaelic 
 aiscal, meaning joy, merri- 
 ment, has also been suggested, 
 as having been given by children 
 to the flying embers shot out 
 from the fire ; but the derivation 
 from aisleine seems preferable. 
 
 Anent, concerning, relating to. 
 This word has only recently been 
 admitted into the English dic- 
 tionaries published in England. 
 In Worcester's and Webster's 
 Dictionaries, published in the 
 United States, it is inserted as 
 a Scotticism. Mr. Stormonth, 
 in his Etymological Dictionary 
 ( 1 87 1 ), derives it from the Anglo- 
 Saxon ongean and the Swedish 
 on gent, opposite ; but the ety- 
 mology seems doubtful. 
 
 The anxiety anent them was too intense 
 to admit of the poor people remaining 
 quietly at home. — The Dream Numbers, 
 by T. A, Trollope. 
 
 Arl- penny, a deposit paid to 
 seal a bargain ; earnest-money ; 
 French arrkes. From the Gaehc 
 cartas or iarlas, earnest-money, 
 a pledge to complete a bar- 
 gain. 
 
 Here, tak' this gowd, and never want 
 Enough to gar ye drink and rant, 
 And this is but an arl-penny 
 To what I afterwards design ye. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Asse, the fireplace; the hearth; 
 the place where the ashes or 
 cinders fall. Asse-hole or ash- 
 pit is supposed by some philo- 
 logists to be derivable from the 
 Gaelic aisir, a receptacle ; ais, 
 the back part of anything, or 
 backwards. 
 
 Do ye no see Rob, Jock, and Hab, 
 As they are girded gallantlie, 
 
 While I am hurklin i' the asse ? 
 I'll hae a new cloak about me. 
 — A ncient Ballad : Tak yourA-uld 
 Cloak about ye. 
 
 Athol brose, whisky with honey, 
 taken as a morning drop; a 
 
Auld Lang Syne — Bab. 
 
 powerful and indigestive mix- 
 ture, that no one but a Highlander 
 out in the open air and in active 
 exercise during the whole day 
 can safely indulge in. Why it 
 is named from the district of 
 Athol in preference to any other 
 part of the Highlands is neither 
 known nor perhaps discover- 
 able. 
 
 An' aye since he wore tartan trews 
 He dearly lo'ed the Athole brose, 
 And wae was he, you may suppose, 
 To play farewell to whisky. 
 
 —Neil Gow. 
 
 Auld lang syne. This phrase, 
 so peculiarly tender and beauti- 
 ful, and so wholly Scotch, has 
 no exact synonym in any lan- 
 guage, and is untranslatable ex- 
 cept by a weak periphrasis. The 
 most recent English dictionaries 
 have adopted it, and the expres- 
 sion is now almost as common 
 in England as in Scotland. Allan 
 Kamsay included in "The Tea- 
 Table Miscellany" a song en- 
 titled " Old Long Syne," a very 
 poor production. It remained 
 
 for Robert Bums to make " Auld 
 lang syne " immortal, and fix it 
 for ever in the language of Great 
 Britain, America, and the Anti- 
 podes. Lang sin syne is a kin- 
 dred, and almost as beautiful a 
 phrase, which has not yet been 
 adopted into English. 
 
 A wee, a short time ; contraction 
 of a ^^ wee while," or a little 
 while. Bide-a-wee, wait a little. 
 
 Upon a summer afternoon, 
 
 A wee before the sun gaed doun. 
 
 — The Lass d Gowrie. 
 
 Awmrie, a chest, a cabinet, a 
 secretaire ; from the French 
 armoire. 
 
 Close the awmrie, steek the kist, 
 
 Or else some gear will soon be missed. 
 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Donald Caird. 
 
 Ayont, beyond or on the other 
 side. A Northumbrian as well 
 as a Scottish word. In the Eng- 
 lish Border " ayont the Tweed " 
 is Scotland, and on the Scottish 
 side of the Border it is Eng- 
 land. 
 
 B 
 
 Bab. Any personal adornment 
 worn by young lovers, either a 
 bunch of flowers on the bosom, 
 or a tassel or bow of ribbons. 
 Lug-hah, an ear-ring ; wooer-babs, 
 a knot of ribbons tied at the 
 knee by the young peasant lads 
 when they went courting. The 
 word also signifies a cockade or 
 other badge in the.hat or bonnet. 
 
 Bauble is possibly of similar or 
 the same origin. The word is 
 derived from the Gaelic babag 
 or baban, a tassel, a fringe, a 
 knot, a cluster ; and babach, in- 
 nocent pleasure, applied to the 
 bob as a symbol. 
 
 A cockit hat with a bob o blue ribbons 
 
 at it. 
 —Sir Walter Scott : Old Mortality 
 
Bairn-time — Bane-dry. 
 
 Baim-time, a whole family of chil- 
 dren, or all the children that a 
 woman bears. This peculiarly 
 Scottish word is a corruption 
 of a bairn-teem ; from the Gaelic 
 taom, the English teem, to bear, 
 to produce, to pour out. 
 
 Your Majesty, most excellent ! 
 
 While nobles strive to please ye, 
 Will ye accept a compliment 
 A simple Bardie gi'es ye ? 
 Thae bonny baim-tiftte Heaven has lent. 
 Still higher may they heeze ye ! 
 — Burns : A Dream, Addressed to 
 George J II. 
 
 The following lines, from ' * The 
 Auld Farmer's New Year's Salu- 
 tation to his Auld Mare, Maggie, " 
 show that Bums understood the 
 word in its correct sense, though 
 he adopted the erroneous spell- 
 ing of time instead of teem : — 
 
 My pleugh is now thy bairn-time a', 
 Four gallant brutes as e'er did draw, 
 Forbye sax mae I sellt awa', 
 
 That thou has nurst ; 
 They drew me thretteen pounds an' twa, 
 
 The very warst. 
 
 Balow I An old lullaby in the 
 Highlands, sung by nurses to 
 young children, as in the pathe- 
 tic ballad entitled " Lady Anne 
 Bothwell's Lament : " — 
 
 Balow ! my babe, lie still and sleep. 
 It grieves me sair to see thee weep ! 
 
 Bums has ^^ Hee, haloo!" to 
 the tune of " The Highland 
 Balow : " — 
 
 Hee, ba/oo, my sweet wee Donald, 
 Picture of the great Clanronald. 
 
 The phrase is derived from the 
 Gaelic bd, the equivalent of bye 
 
 in the common English phrase 
 " Bye ! bye ! " an adjuration to 
 sleep — *' Go to bye-bye ; " and 
 laogh, darling, whence, by the 
 abbreviation of laogh into loo, 
 bd-lao or balow — " Sleep, dar- 
 ling." Jamieson has adopted a 
 ludicrous derivation from the 
 French — " bas Id le loup," which 
 he mis-translates " Be still ; the 
 wolf is coming." 
 
 Bandster, one who makes a band 
 or binds sheaves after the reap- 
 ers in the harvest-field. 
 
 In hairst at the shearing, nae youths now 
 are jeering. 
 The bandsters are lyart and wrinkled 
 and grey ; 
 At fair or at preaching, nae wooing or 
 fleeching. 
 The flowers o' the forest are a' weed 
 
 away. 
 — Elliot : The Flowers of the Forest. 
 
 In this pathetic lament for 
 "the flowers" of Ettrick Forest 
 — the young men slain at the 
 doleful battle of Flodden — the 
 maidens mourn in artless lan- 
 guage for the loss of their lovers, 
 and grieve, as in this touching 
 stanza, that their fellow-labour- 
 ers in the harvest -field are old 
 men, wrinkled and grey, with 
 their sparse locks, instead of 
 the lusty youths who have died 
 fighting for their country. The 
 air of this melancholy but very 
 beautiful song is pure Gaelic. 
 
 Bane-dry, dry as a bone ; bane- 
 idle, thoroughly idle ; not only 
 idle in the flesh, but in the bone 
 and marrow. 
 
Bang — Baudrons. 
 
 Ban^, to beat, to subdue ; hangie 
 or hangsome, quarrelsome, irri- 
 table, apt to take offence ; hang- 
 beggar, a constable or a con- 
 stable's staff, and bangree, a 
 scolding, irritable, and conten- 
 tious woman. The etymology 
 of these words is uncertain. 
 The last seems to be derivable 
 from the Gaelic ban, a woman ; 
 banag, a busy little woman ; ban 
 cheaird, a female tramp or gipsy. 
 
 Bannock, an oatmeal cake, ori- 
 ginally compounded with milk 
 instead of water. 
 
 Hale breaks, saxpence, and a bannock. 
 — Burns : To James Tait, Glenconner. 
 
 Bannocks o' bear-nieal, bannocks o' barley. 
 —Jacobite Song. 
 
 From the Gaelic bainne, milk. 
 
 Bap, a small wheaten cake or roll, 
 sold in Scotland for breakfast 
 when porridge is not used. The 
 grandfather of a late Prime 
 Minister of Great Britain kept 
 a small shop in Leith Walk, 
 Edinburgh, where he sold 
 "baps," flour, oatmeal, peas, 
 &c., and where he was popu- 
 larly known to the boys of 
 the neighbourhood as " Sma' 
 Baps," because his baps were 
 reputed to be smaller than those 
 of his brother tradesmen. 
 
 Barken, to clot, to harden on the 
 surface, as some viscous and 
 semi-liquid mixtures do on ex- 
 posure to the air. The word is 
 derived from the bark or out- 
 ward covering of trees. 
 
 Barm, yeast ; old English ; not yet 
 obsolete in the rural districts. 
 
 Barmkin, a corruption of barbican, 
 a watch-tower on a castle or for- 
 tress. The derivation of barbi- 
 can (the name of a street in old 
 London, still retained) is from 
 the Gaelic bar, a pinnacle 
 or high place ; and beachan, a 
 place of watching or observa- 
 tion. From beachan is derived 
 beacon, a watch-fire, a signal 
 light. 
 
 And broad and bloody rose the sun. 
 And on the bamnkin shone. 
 
 And he called a page who was witty 
 and sage 
 To go to the bartnkin high. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Lord Soulis. 
 
 Bauch, insipid, tasteless, without 
 flavour, as in the alliterative pro- 
 verb : — 
 
 Beauty but bounty's but bauch. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 (Beauty without goodness is without 
 flavour.) 
 
 The etymology of this pecu- 
 liarly Scottish word is uncertain, 
 unless it be allied to the English 
 baulk, to hinder, to impede, to 
 frustrate ; or from the Gaelic 
 bac, which has the same mean- 
 ing. 
 
 Baudrons, a pet name for a cat, 
 for which no etymology has yet 
 been found. The word remains 
 as unaccountable as *' Tybert," 
 used by Shakspeare for the same 
 animal. 
 
 Auld baudrons by the ingle sits, 
 Wi' her loof her face a washin'. 
 — Burns : Sic a Wife as Willie had. 
 
Bauk — Beastte. 
 
 Bauk, the cross-beam in the roof 
 of a cottage ; hauMe-bird, a name 
 given to the bat, that haunts the 
 roof. Bauk is from the English 
 baulk, of which the primary 
 meaning was from the Gaelic 
 bac, to hinder, to frustrate, and 
 was applied to the cross-beam of 
 the roof because it prevented 
 the roof from giving way, and 
 to other wooden partitions ne- 
 cessary for division. It also 
 came to signify to disappoint, 
 because disappointment was the 
 prevention or hindering of the 
 fulfilment and realisation of 
 hope. 
 
 When lyart leaves bestrew the yird, 
 Or, waverin' like the baukie-bird, 
 Bedim cauld Boreas' blast, 
 An' hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte. 
 — Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Bawbie, a halfpenny — metaphori- 
 cally used for a fortune by Sir 
 Alexander Boswell, the son of 
 the more famous James Boswell, 
 the biographer of Dr. Johnson. 
 It occurs in the song of "Jen- 
 nie's Bawbie:" — 
 
 Quoth he, " My goddess, nymph, 
 
 and queen. 
 Your beauty dazzles baith my e'en," 
 But deil a beauty had he seen 
 But Jennie's bawbee. 
 
 Sir Alexander took the hint 
 of his song from a much older 
 one: — 
 
 A' that e'er my Jeanie had, 
 My Jeanie had, my Jeanie had, 
 A' that e'er my Jeanie had 
 
 Was ae bawbie. 
 There's your plack, and my plack, 
 And your plack, and my plack, 
 
 And Jeanie's bawbie. 
 
 Bawsont or bawsins, marked 
 with white on the face, as 
 in cattle ; of uncertain ety- 
 mology, but possibly connected 
 with banh, the forehead. 
 
 The stirk stands i' the tether, 
 And our braw bawsint yade 
 
 Will carry ye hame your com ; 
 What wrad ye be at, ye jade ? 
 — Wood and Married and a\ 
 
 Bawtie, a watch-dog ; apparently 
 from the Gaelic beachd, watch, 
 observe, and tigh (pronounced 
 tee), a house. A favourite name 
 in Scotland for a faithful dog. 
 The English word Towser, which 
 is equally common, is also from 
 the Celtic tuisle, to struggle or 
 contend with. 
 
 Bourd na' in Bawiie, lest he bite (i.e., 
 do not play tricks or jest with the watch- 
 dog, lest he bite you). 
 
 Bazil, a sot, a fool ; of unknown 
 etymology, but possibly con- 
 nected with the Gaelic peasa- 
 nach, an impertinent person. 
 
 He scorned to sock mang weirdless fellows, 
 Wi' menseless bazils in an alehouse. 
 —George Beattie : John o' Amha. 
 
 Beak or beek — common in Ayr- 
 shire and Mearns — to sit by a 
 fire and exposed to the full heat 
 of it. 
 
 A lion. 
 To recreate his limbs and take his rest, 
 Beakand his breast and bellie at the sun. 
 Under a tree lay in the fair forest. 
 —Robert Henryson in The Evergreen : 
 The Lion and the Mouse. 
 
 Beastie, an affectionate diminutive 
 of beast, applied to any small 
 and favourite animal. 
 
Beck — Bicker, 
 
 Wee, sleekit, cowerin', timorous beastie, 
 Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
 Thou needna start awa sae hastie, 
 Wi' bickerin' brattle. 
 
 — Burns : To a Mouse. 
 
 Beck, to curtsey. 
 
 " It's aye gude to be ceevil," as the auld 
 wife said when she beckit to the deevil. — 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Bed-fast, confined to bed or bed- 
 ridden. In English, /as« as a 
 suffix is scarcely used except in 
 steadfast, i.e., fast fixed to the 
 stead place or purpose. 
 
 For these eight or ten months I have 
 been ailing, sometimes bed-fast and some- 
 times not. — Burns : Letter to Cunning- 
 ham, 
 
 An earth -fast or yird-fast 
 stane is a large stone firmly 
 fixed in the earth. Faith-fast, 
 truth- fast, and hope- fast are beau- 
 tiful phrases, unused by English 
 writers. If faithful and truth- 
 ful, faithless and truthless, are 
 permissible, why not faith-fast, 
 truth-fast, and hope-fast ? 
 
 Beet, to feed or add fuel to a 
 fire or flame; from the Gaelic 
 beatha, life, food, and beathaich, 
 to feed, to nourish. 
 
 May Kennedy's far-honoured name 
 Lang beet his hymeneal flame. 
 
 — Burns : To Gavin Hamilton. 
 
 It warms me, it charms me. 
 To mention but her name ; 
 
 It heats me, it beets me. 
 And sets me a' aflame. 
 
 — Burns : Epistle to Davie. 
 
 I wonderin' gaze on her stately steps. 
 And beet my hopeless flame. 
 
 — Allan Cunningham : Bonny 
 Lady Ann. 
 
 Beltain, the fire of Bel or Baal, 
 kindled by the Druids annually 
 on the first morning of May 
 direct from the rays of the sun. 
 Ben Ledi, in Perthshire — the 
 hill of God, as the name signi- 
 fies in Gaelic — was the most 
 sacred of all the hills, on the 
 summit of which this imposing 
 ceremony was performed. The 
 name of Bel or Baal is derived 
 from the Gaelic beatha or bea 
 {th silent), life, and uile, all ; 
 whence Bel, Beul, or Baal, the 
 life of all, and tain, a corrup- 
 tion of teine, the fire. The cere- 
 mony was also performed in Ire- 
 land in pre-Christian times on 
 the 2 1st of June. The word 
 " Beltane " is of frequent occur- 
 rence in the ballad poetry of 
 Scotland, and in conjunction 
 with '* Yule " or Christmas is by 
 no means obsolete ; as in the 
 phrase, " The love that is hot at 
 Beltane may grow cauld ere 
 Yule." 
 
 Belyve, by-and-bye, immediately. 
 This word occurs in Chaucer 
 and in many old English ro- 
 mances. 
 
 Hie we belyve 
 And look whether Ogie be alive. 
 
 — Romance of Sir Otuel. 
 
 Belyve the elder bairns come droppin' in. 
 ^— Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Bicker, a drinking-cup, a beaker, 
 a turn ; also a quarrel. 
 
 Fill high the foaming bicker ! 
 
 Body and soul are mine, quoth he, 
 
 I'll have them both for liquor. 
 
 —The Gin Fiend and his Three 
 Houses. 
 
Bide — Billies, 
 
 Setting my staff wi' a' my skill 
 
 To keep me sicker ; 
 Though leeward whiles, against my will, 
 
 I took a bicker. 
 — Burns : Death and Doctor Hornbook. 
 
 Bicker means rapid motion, and, in a 
 secondary and very common sense, quar- 
 relling, fighting, a battle. Sir Walter Scott 
 refers to the bickers or battles between the 
 boys of Edinburgh High School and the 
 Gutterbluids of the streets. In " Hal- 
 lowe'en" Burns applies bickering to the 
 motion of running water : — 
 
 Whiles glistened to the nightly rays, 
 Wi' bickerin, dancin' dazzle. 
 — R. Drennan. 
 
 Bide, to stop, to delay, to wait, 
 to dwell or abide. 
 
 Bield, a shelter. Of uncertain 
 etymology, perhaps from huild. 
 Better a wee bush than nae bield. 
 Every man bends to the bush he gets 
 
 bield frae. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Beneath the random bield of clod or stane. 
 — Burns : To a Mountain Daisy. 
 
 Bien, comfortable, agreeable, snug, 
 pleasant ; from the French hien, 
 well. Lord Neaves was of opinion 
 that this derivation was doubt- 
 ful, but suggested no other. If 
 the French etymology be inad- 
 missible, the Gaelic can supply 
 hinn, which means harmonious, 
 pleasant, in good order ; which 
 is perhaps the true root of the 
 word. 
 
 While frosty winds blaw in the drift 
 
 Ben to the chimla lug, 
 I grudge a wee the great folk's gift 
 That live sae bien and snug. 
 
 — Burns : Epistle to Davie. 
 Biens the but and ben. 
 — James Ballantine : The Fathers 
 Knee. 
 
 Bier or beir, a lament, a moan. 
 
 As I went forth to take the air 
 
 Intil an evening clear, 
 I spied a lady in a wood 
 Making a heavy bier; 
 Making a heavy bier, I wot. 
 
 While the tears dropped frae her e'en, 
 And aye she sighed and said Alas ! 
 For Jock o' Hazelgreen. 
 — Old Ballad, on which Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott modelled his "Jock 
 o' Hazeldean." 
 
 Jamieson says that heir (not 
 hier) is allied to the Icelandic 
 hyre, a tempest, and to old 
 English hri, hyre, hine, force ; 
 but it is of more probable origin 
 in the Gaelic huir, to lament, 
 to whine ; whence probably the 
 prevalence of the custom among 
 the Celtic nations of moaning 
 over the dead body, and chant- 
 ing the doleful coronach or 
 death- wail, came afterwards to 
 be applied to the hier, or table, 
 board, or plank, on which the 
 corpse was extended, or the 
 coffin in which it was placed. 
 
 Bigly, beautiful ; origin unknown. 
 
 Will ye come to my bigfy bower, 
 An' drink the wine wi' me ? 
 — Buchan's Ancient Scottish Ballads. 
 
 Billies, fellows, comrades, young 
 men ; a term of familiarity and 
 affection. 
 
 When chapman billies leave the street, 
 And drouthy neebors neebors meet. 
 
 —Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 Rise up ! rise up now, billie dear, 
 
 Rise up ! I speak these words to see 
 Whether thou'st gotten thy deadly 
 wound. 
 Or if God and good leaching may suc- 
 cour \.\i&^.— Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 " This word," says Jamieson, 
 
Bink — Bismeres. 
 
 **is probably allied to German 
 hillig, the Belgian billiks, equals, 
 as denoting those that are on a 
 footing as to age, rank, relation, 
 affection, or employment." 
 
 This is an error. In German, 
 hillig means moderate in price, 
 fair, just, equitable, reasonable. 
 The Lowland Scotch billie is 
 the same as the English fellow ; 
 and both are derived from the 
 Gaelic ba-laoch, a shepherd, a 
 cowherd, a husbandman; from 
 ha, cows, plural of bo, a cow, and 
 laoch, a lad, a young man. 
 
 Bink or bunker, a bench ; called 
 in America a bunk. 
 
 I set him in beside the iink, 
 
 And gied him bread and ale to drink. 
 
 — Herd's Collection : The Brisk 
 Young Lad. 
 A winnock (window) bunker in the east, 
 Where sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast. 
 —Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 
 Bird or burd, a term of endear- 
 ment, applied to a young woman 
 or child. 
 
 And by my word, the bonnie bird 
 In danger shall not tarry, 
 
 And though the storm is raging wild, 
 I'll row ye o'er the ferry. 
 
 —Thomas Campbell. 
 
 Birdalane or burdalane. A term 
 of sorrowful endearment, ap- 
 plied to an only child, especially 
 to a girl, to signify that she is 
 without household comrades or 
 companions. 
 
 And Newton Gordon, birdalane. 
 And Dalgetie both stout and keen, 
 —Scott's Minstrelsy. 
 
 Birkie, a young and conceited 
 person ; from the Gaelic biorach, 
 
 a two-year-old heifer ; hioraiehe, 
 a colt ; applied in derision to a 
 very young man who is lively but 
 not over-wise. 
 
 Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, 
 Wha struts and stares and a' that. 
 —Burns : A Mans a Man. 
 " And besides, ye donnard carle ! " 
 continued Sharpitlaw, " the minister did 
 say that he thought he knew something 
 of the features of the birkie that spoke to 
 him in the Park."— Scott : Heart of 
 Midlothian. 
 
 " Weel, Janet, ye ken when I preach 
 you're almost always fast asleep before 
 I've well given out my text ; but when any 
 of these young men from St. Andrews 
 preach for me, I see you never sleep a wink. 
 Now that's what I call no using me as you 
 should do." "Hoot, sir," was the reply, 
 "is that a'? I'll soon tell you the reason 
 o' that. When you preach, we a' ken the 
 Word o' God is safe in your hands; but 
 when thae young birkies tak it in hand, 
 ma certie ! but it tak's us a' to look after 
 them." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Birl, to pour out liquor ; probably 
 from the same root as the Eng- 
 lish purl, as in the phrase *' a 
 purling stream," probably de- 
 rived from the ancient but 
 now obsolete Gaelic bior, a well ; 
 bioral, pertaining to a well or 
 like a well. 
 
 There were three lords hirling at the wine 
 
 On the dowie dens o' Yarrow. 
 
 — Motherwell's Ancient Minstrelsy. 
 Oh, she has birled these merry young men 
 With the ale, but and the wine. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Fause Foodrage. 
 
 Birs, the thick hair or bristles on 
 the back of swine. 
 
 The souter gave the sow a kiss. 
 Humph ! quo' she, it's a' for my birs ! 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Bismeres or bismar, the keeper of 
 a brothel, a bawd; from the 
 
16 
 
 Bit and Brat — Black-Mail. 
 
 Gaelic haois, lust, lewdness, and 
 mathair (pronounced ma-air), mo- 
 ther ; also a prostitute. Jamie - 
 son derives the word from the 
 Anglo-Saxon, and quotes Kudd 
 — " Bismer, contumelia, aut bis- 
 merian, illudere, dehonnorare 
 polluere." The Gaelic deriva- 
 tion is more satisfactory than 
 that from the hybrid language 
 called Anglo-Saxon, which is 
 but inchoate and primitive old 
 English based upon corrupted 
 Celtic, with superadded Dutch 
 and Flemish. 
 
 Bit and brat. To earn " bit and 
 brat " is to earn food and rai- 
 ment ; from the Gaelic biadh, 
 food, and brat, a rag, a gar- 
 ment, or clothing. 
 
 Bittock, a small bit or piece. 
 When a wayfarer on the road 
 asks of a chance passer-by 
 at what distance is the place 
 to which he is bound, the 
 probable reply is, that it is 
 two, three, or any other number 
 of miles " and a bittock," signify- 
 ing that the respondent will not 
 pledge himself to the exactitude 
 of his reply, adding, with the 
 proverbial cautiousness popu- 
 larly ascribed in England to 
 his countrymen, that there may 
 be a bittock added to his com- 
 putation ; though the quali- 
 fying bittock has often been 
 found to exceed the primary 
 estimate. 
 
 Black -mail. The word mail is 
 derived from the Gaelic mdl. 
 
 rent, tax, or tribute ; and malay 
 a bag, a sack, a purse, a budget 
 to contain the tribute. Why 
 the particular exaction called 
 black -mail, levied by many 
 Highland chieftains in former 
 times to ensure the protection 
 of the herds of cattle passing 
 through their territories to 
 southern markets, received the 
 epithet of black has never been 
 clearly explained. The word 
 has been supposed by some to 
 designate the moral turpitude 
 and blackness of character of 
 those who exacted such a tax, 
 and by others it has been con- 
 jectured that black-mail derived 
 its name froni the black cattle 
 of the Highlands, for whose 
 protection against thieves and 
 caterans the tribute was levied ; 
 while yet another set of etymo- 
 logists have set forth the opinion 
 that plack-mail, not 6/acA;-mail, 
 was the proper word, derived 
 from the small Scottish coin — 
 the plaque or plack — in which 
 the tribute was supposed to be 
 collected. But as mail is un- 
 doubtedly from the Gaelic, and 
 as black-mail was a purely High- 
 land extortion, and so called 
 at a time when few resident 
 Highland chiefs and none of 
 their people spoke English, it 
 is possible that black is not to 
 be taken in the English sense, 
 but that it had, like its associated 
 word, mail, a Gaelic origin. In 
 that language, blathaich — pro- 
 nounced (the <A, silent) bld-aich — 
 signifies to protect, to cherish. 
 Thus black-mail meant the tri- 
 
Black'MaiL 
 
 II 
 
 bute or tax of protection. If 
 hlach, the colour, were really in- 
 tended, the Highlanders would 
 have used their own word and 
 called the tribute mdl-dubh . The 
 Gaelic blathaich has the secon- 
 dary meaning of to heat. In 
 the same sense, the Flemish has 
 hlaken, to warm, to animate, 
 to burn. In connection with 
 the idea of warming, the Scot- 
 tish language has several words 
 which can scarcely be explained 
 by hlach in the English sense. 
 The first is black-burning, which 
 Jamieson says is " used in re- 
 ference to shame when it is so 
 great as to produce deep blush- 
 ing, or to crimson the counte- 
 nance." This phrase is equiva- 
 lent to the English, a burning 
 shame, when the cheeks burn 
 or glow, not with black, but 
 with red. The second is black- 
 fishing, which Jamieson defines 
 as fishing for salmon by night 
 by means of torches. He ex- 
 plains the epithet black in this 
 instance by suggesting that 
 "the fish" are black or foul 
 when they come up the streams 
 to deposit their spawn, an ex- 
 planation which is wholly in- 
 admissible. The third and 
 fourth phrases are black-foot and 
 black-sole, which both mean "a 
 confidant in love affairs, or one 
 who goes between a lover and 
 his mistress endeavouring to 
 bring the cold or coy fair one 
 to compliance." In these in- 
 stances, black is certainly more 
 related to the idea of warming, 
 inciting, animating, than to that 
 
 of blackness. Black- foot and 
 black-sole in reality mean hot- 
 foot and hot-sole, as in the 
 corresponding phrase, hot-haste, 
 applied to the constant running 
 to-and-fro of the go-between. 
 Black-icinter, which signifies, 
 according to Jamieson, "the 
 last cart-load of grain brought 
 home from the harvest-field," 
 is as difficult as either of the 
 phrases previously-cited to 
 associate with the idea of black- 
 ness, either moral or physical ; 
 but rather with that of comfort, 
 warmth — or provision for the 
 winter months. The winter 
 itself may be metaphorically 
 black, but not by any exten- 
 sion of meaning or of fancy can 
 the epithet black, in colour, be 
 associated with a cart-load of 
 grain. There are two other 
 equivalent phrases in Scottish 
 use in which black is an epithet, 
 namely, black victual, meaning 
 pulse, beans and peas, and black 
 crop, which has the same sig- 
 nification. Jamieson says these 
 crops are so called because they 
 are always green, and extends 
 the meaning to turnips, i pota- 
 toes, &c., for the same reason ! 
 But black cannot be accepted 
 as equivalent to green. 
 
 Of all the derivations ever 
 suggested for black - mail, the 
 word on which this disquisition 
 concerning black started, the 
 most unfortunate is that of 
 Jamieson, who traces it to " the 
 German blakmal, and to the 
 Flemish blaken, to rob." It is 
 sufficient for the refutation of 
 
12 
 
 Black Saxpence — Black Watch. 
 
 Jamieson to state that there 
 is no such word as hlakmal in 
 the German language, and. that 
 llaken, as ab'eady observed, does 
 not signify to rob, but to burn. 
 In conclusion, it may be stated 
 that the English black has long 
 been a puzzle to the compilers 
 of dictionaries. There is no 
 trace of it to be found in the 
 sense of colour in any of the 
 Teutonic languages. Black in 
 German is schwarz ; in Dutch, 
 Flemish, and Swedish, swai-t ; in 
 Danish, svaerte ; and in old Eng- 
 lish, sivarth and swarthy. 
 
 Worcester's Dictionary de- 
 lives black fvombleak. Mr. Wedg- 
 wood, who is one of the latest 
 authorities, says **the original 
 meaning of black seems to have 
 been exactly the reverse of 
 the present sense, viz., shining 
 white. It is, in fact," he adds, 
 " radically identical with the 
 French blanc, from which it 
 differs only in the absence of 
 the nasal." 
 
 Perhaps it may be possible, 
 ex fumo dare lucem, to kindle 
 a light out of all this smoke. 
 May not the real root of the Eng- 
 lish black (as a colour) be the 
 Gaelic bldaick, or the Flemish 
 blaken, to burn ? That which is 
 burned is blackened. A black man, 
 or negro, is one whose skin has 
 been tanned or burned by the sun ; 
 and sun-burnt in this case means 
 blackened. It may be said of 
 this explanation, whether cor- 
 rect or not, that it is at all 
 events entitled to as much con- 
 sideration as those from bleak 
 
 and blanc, and that it is^ far 
 more probable than either. 
 
 Black saxpence, supposed in 
 Scottish superstition to be a 
 magical sixpence given by the 
 Devil in payment for the soul 
 of the person who accepted it. 
 The virtue of this "black" six- 
 pence consisted in its having 
 always a bright sixpence along- 
 side of it ; that as soon as it 
 was taken away and spent, it was 
 replaced by another, and so on 
 to the " crack of doom." Jamie- 
 son supposed that the infernal 
 sixpence was so named from its 
 colour ; but possibly, and more 
 probably, it was thus designated 
 from the Gaelic blathaich, pro- 
 tection, as being a protection 
 against absolute poverty as long 
 as the unholy compact existed. 
 See Black-mail and Black- Watch 
 for this sense of the word 
 black. 
 
 Black-Watch, a name given to the 
 Highland regiment, the brave 
 and very distinguished Forty- 
 Second, which has fought, bled, 
 and conquered in many a hard- 
 won field in every part of the 
 world, where its services were 
 required to vindicate the right 
 and uphold the honour of Great* 
 Britain. It is generally sup- 
 posed that the name was given 
 to them on account of the dark 
 colour of the tartan which they 
 wear ; but the tartan is not 
 black, but very dark green, 
 like the tartans of many High- 
 land clans, in which green is 
 
Blae — Blethers. 
 
 13 
 
 the predominant hue, varied 
 by black, bhie, red, or yellow 
 stripes in some of them. It is 
 possible, however, that hlack 
 in this instance, as in hlack- 
 mail, &c. (which see), signifies 
 protection, and that the popular 
 name of the illustrious regiment 
 in question signifies the ^^pro- 
 tecting watch." 
 
 Blae, of a livid blue colour, sickly 
 blue. 
 
 Blaeberries, bilberries. 
 
 The morning dlae and wan. 
 
 — Douglas : Translation of the 
 yEneid. 
 
 How dow you this blae eastlin' wind, 
 That's like to blaw a body blind ? 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Be in dread, O sirs ! Some of you will 
 stand with blae countenances before the 
 tribunal of God. 
 
 — Bruce : The SouTs Confirmation. 
 
 Blash, a gust of wind. 
 
 Amidst a glint o' sunshine comes a blash 
 o' cauld sleet. — Noctes Ainbrosiance. 
 
 Blate, shy, modest, bashful; of 
 unknown derivation. Bleid in 
 Gaelic is the reverse of Hate 
 in Lowland Scotch, and means 
 impertinent, troublesome, for- 
 ward, presuming. 
 
 Says Lord Frank Ker, Ye are na' blate 
 To bring us the news o' yer ain defeat. 
 —Jacobite Ballad : Johnnie Cope. 
 A blate cat makes a proud mouse. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Blaud, to lay anything flat with 
 violence, as the wind or a storm 
 of rain does the corn. 
 
 Curst common sense, that imp o' hell, 
 
 This day M'Kinlay takes the flail, 
 And he's the boy will bland her. 
 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 Ochon ! ochon ! cries Haughton, 
 
 That ever I was born 
 To see the Buckie burn rin bluid. 
 And blauding a' the corn. 
 
 — A berdeenshire Ballad. 
 
 Blavers. The blue cornflower. 
 
 Blavers that grow amid white land. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads : The 
 Gardener Lad. 
 
 Blaw-i'-my-lug, a flatterer, a 
 cajoler, a wheedler ; one who 
 hlows fair words into the ear of 
 a ready listener for a selfish or 
 sinister purpose. 
 
 Bledoch, skim-milk ; from the 
 Gaelic Ueodhach or hleoghann, 
 to milk. 
 
 She kirned the kirn and scummed it clean, 
 Left the gudeman but bledoch bare. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Evergreen : The 
 Wife of A uchtermuchty. 
 
 Blether, to talk nonsense, to be 
 full of wind like a bladder, 
 Bletherskite, nonsense. 
 
 Blethers, nonsense, impertinence. 
 Blaidry, foolish talk, from the 
 Gaelic blaidaireachd, and Ueidir, 
 impertinence. Bletherum-skate 
 or Uetherum-sMte, sometimes cor- 
 rupted into hladderskate, are 
 derivatives of this word, *" Ye 
 blethrin loon ' and * ye sJcyte,' " 
 says Cromek, the editor of the 
 " Remains of Nithsdale and 
 Galloway Song, " are terms of 
 familiar reproach still in use, 
 and are applied to those satiric 
 
H 
 
 Blinter — Blunk. 
 
 rogues who have the art of 
 mingling falsehood with truth 
 with admirable art." 
 
 Stringing blethers up in rhyme 
 For fools to sing. 
 
 — Burns : The Vision. 
 
 Fame 
 Gathers but wind to blether up a name. 
 —Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 Some are busy bletherin 
 Right loud that day. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Right scornfully she answered him, 
 Jog on your gate, you bladderskate — 
 My name is Maggie Lauder. 
 
 — Semple : Maggie Lauder. 
 
 " She's better to-night," said one nurse 
 to another. "Night's come, but it's not 
 gone," replied her helpmate, in the full 
 hearing of the patient, " and it's the small 
 hours'll try her," "The small hours'll 
 not try me as much as you do with your 
 blethering tongues," remarked the patient 
 with perfect sang-froid. — A Visit to the 
 London Hospitals, March 23, 1870. 
 
 I knew Bums's " Blethering Bitch," who 
 in his later years lived in Tarbolton, and 
 earned a scanty living by breaking stones 
 on the road. In taking a walk round the 
 hill mentioned in " Death and Dr. Horn- 
 book," I came upon Jamie Humphrey 
 (such was his name) busy at work, and 
 after talking with him a short time, I 
 ventured to ask him, " Is it true, Jamie, 
 that you are Bums's blethering bitch ? " 
 "Aye, deed am I, and mony a guid gill I 
 hae gotten by it ! " This was a broad hint ; 
 but I did not take it. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Blinter, to flicker like a flame 
 about to expire for want of 
 nourishment. 
 
 Blirt, a sudden burst of grief or 
 anger, also to weep, sob, and 
 lament simultaneously. A ' ' blirt 
 of greeting " signifies an out- 
 burst of tears. The English 
 
 hlurt is akin to the Scottish hlirt, 
 though not exactly synonymous, 
 and is principally used to signify 
 a sudden and unpremeditated 
 disclosure of what ought to 
 have been kept secret, as in the 
 phrase ** He blurted out the 
 truth," or "He blurted out an 
 oath." The root both of hlirt 
 and hlurt is the Gaelic hlaor, to 
 cry out or roar, and hlaoHe, 
 cried out or roared. 
 
 Blob, a large round drop of water 
 or other liquid. A similar word, 
 hleh, now obsolete, was once 
 used in England to signify an 
 air-bubble, and, in its form of 
 hlebster, is the root of blister. 
 
 We look on this troubled stream of the 
 generations of men to as little purpose 
 almost as idle boys do on dancing blebs or 
 bubbles on the water. — Sir Thomas 
 More : Consolations of the Soul. 
 
 Her e'en the clearest blob o dew out- 
 shining. — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 The bonnie red rose, 
 Wet wi' the blobs o' dew. 
 
 — Allan Cunningham. 
 
 Blouter, to bluster or talk idly; 
 Gaelic bladair, to talk idly. 
 
 Cacklin' about! Coleridge or blouterin 
 about Byron. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Blunk, to mismanage or spoil any- 
 thing by clumsy, inexpert, or 
 stupid handling ; also a dull, 
 stolid, and foolishly inert person, 
 Jamieson thinks it is derived 
 from the Icelandic Wwjirfa, sleepy- 
 headed. It is more probably 
 from the Gaelic blonach or blonag, 
 fat, greasy ; whence fat-headed 
 and stupid. 
 
Bluntie — Bonnieness. 
 
 IS 
 
 Bluntie. In the Dictionary of the 
 Scottish Language by an anony- 
 mous author (Edinburgh, 1818), 
 bluntie is described as a stupid 
 fellow. Jamieson has ''blunt, 
 stupid, bare, naked," and " blun- 
 tie, a sniveller," which he derives 
 from the Teutonic blutten, homo 
 stolidus. 
 
 They mool me sair, and haud me doun, 
 And gar me look like bluntie. Tarn ; 
 
 But three short years will soon wheel roun', 
 And then comes ane-and-twenty, Tam. 
 — Burns. 
 
 The etymology of the English 
 word blunt is uncertain, but as it 
 signifies the opposite of sharp, 
 the Scottish bluntie may be ac- 
 cepted as a designation of one 
 who is not sharp or clever. No 
 English dictionary suggests any 
 etymology that can reasonably 
 be accepted, the nearest being 
 flump, round, or rounded with- 
 out a point. ** Blunt" the slang 
 word for money, is supposed by 
 some to be derived from the 
 name of Sir John Blunt, a rich 
 director of the South Sea Com- 
 pany in the year 1 720. 
 
 Bob, to make a curtsey, to bend, 
 to bow down. 
 
 Sweet was the smell of flowers, blue, white, 
 and red. 
 The noise of birds was maist melodious, 
 The bobbing boughs bloom'd broad abune 
 my head. 
 
 — R. Henryson : The Lion and 
 the Mouse. 
 When she cam' ben she bobbit. 
 —Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 Weel done, quo' he ; play up, quo' she ; 
 
 Weel bobb'd, quo' Rob the Ranter, 
 It's worth my while to play indeed 
 When I hae sic a dancer. 
 
 ^ — Maggie Lauder. 
 
 When she came ben she bobbit.—BvKus. 
 
 Out came the auld maidens a' bobbin^ dis- 
 creetly. 
 
 —James Ballantine : The Auld 
 Beggar Man. 
 
 When she came ben she bobbit fu' low, 
 And what was his errand he soon let her 
 
 know. 
 Surprised was the laird when the lady said 
 
 Na! 
 As wi' a laigh curtsie she turned her aw a. 
 — The Laird o' Cockpen. 
 
 Bodle, a small Scottish coin, of 
 less value than a bawbee, the sixth 
 part of an English penny. 
 
 Black Madge, she is prudent, has sense 
 
 in her noddle, 
 Is douce and respectit ; I care na' a bodle. 
 — Joanna Baillie. 
 
 Bonailie, a parting drink, a stir- 
 rup-cup ; a deoch an dorus, of- 
 fered to and partaken with a 
 departing guest, with wishes 
 for a good and pleasant journey ; 
 a bon voyage. The word, some- 
 times written bonalais or bonally, 
 is a corrupt spelling of the 
 French bonne allee, or bon aller. 
 
 Bonnie, beautiful, good-natured, 
 and cheerful — the three quali- 
 ties in combination — as applied 
 to a woman ; applied to natural 
 objects, it simply signifies beau- 
 tiful, as in *' Ye banks and braes 
 o' bonnie Doon." This is an old 
 English word, used by Shake- 
 speare and Ben Jonson, and 
 still current in the Northern 
 English counties, as well as in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Bonnieness, a word that conveys 
 the sense of both prettiness 
 
i6 
 
 Bonspiel — Brander. 
 
 and goodness, that are some- 
 times, but ought never, to dwell 
 apart. 
 
 Bonnieness gaed to the water to wash, 
 And prettiness gaed to the barn to thrash ; 
 Gae tell my maister to pay me my fee, 
 For bonnieness winna let prettiness be, 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 Bonspiel, sport or play. 
 
 I hae been at mony a bonspiel, but I 
 ne'er saw such a congregation on the ice 
 before. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Boodie, a ghost, a sprite, a hob- 
 goblin ; by some derived from 
 hode, a message, the German 
 hote, a messenger, and by others, 
 with more probabihty, from the 
 Gaelic bodach, a spectre — a word 
 which is also applied irrever- 
 ently to an ill-favoured and 
 churlish old man. 
 
 Borrow, to ransom, and not, as in 
 Enghsh, to effect a loan. 
 
 And in cam' her brother dear, 
 
 A waeful man was he. 
 I'd gie a' the lands I hae, 
 
 Bonnie Jean, to borrow thee. 
 Oh, borrow me, brother, borrow me. 
 
 Or borrowed I'll never be, 
 For I gar'd kill my ain dear lord, 
 
 An' life's nae pleasure to me. 
 
 — The Laird o Warristoun. 
 
 Bourack or bourock, a name 
 given by children to the little 
 mounds of sand or earth that 
 they raise on the sea-shore or in 
 their playgrounds in imitation 
 of castles or houses ; — a diminu- 
 tive, apparently, of the word 
 hower, a lady's chamber. The 
 word is sometimes used for a 
 shepherd's hut or shieling. In 
 
 some parts of Scotland it signi- 
 fies a heap or mound of any kind, 
 and also metaphorically a heap 
 or crowd of people. 
 
 We'll ne'er big bourocks i' the sand 
 together {Old Proverb), i.e., we'll never 
 be familiar or closely allied in sentiment or 
 purpose. 
 
 Bourd, a jest, a joke ; also to jest, 
 to play tricks with. In old 
 English, hord. From the Gaelic 
 hurt, mockery. 
 
 The wizard could no longer bear her bord. 
 But, bursting forth in laughter, to her said. 
 — Spenser : Faerie Queene. 
 
 I'll tell the bourd, but nae the body. 
 A sooth bourd is nae bourd. 
 They that bourd wi' cats may count upon 
 scarts. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Properbs. 
 
 Bouse, to drink deeply, to revel ; 
 whence the colloquial English 
 word " boozy." 
 
 Then let him bouse and deep carouse 
 
 Wi' bumpers flowing o'er, 
 Till he forgets his loves and debts. 
 
 And minds his griefs no more. — Burns. 
 
 And though bold Robin Hood 
 Would with his Maid Marian 
 Sup and botise from horn and can. 
 —Keats. 
 
 Brae, the brow or side of a hill ; 
 from the Gaehc bruaich, a hill 
 side, a steep. 
 
 We twa hae run about the braes, 
 And pu'd the gowans fine, 
 
 But mony a weary foot we've trod 
 Sin auld lang syne. — Burns. 
 
 Brander, a gridiron, also a toast- 
 ing-fork; from the Teutonic 
 brennen, to burn; gebrannt, 
 burned. 
 
Brander — Bree, 
 
 17 
 
 Brander, a gridiron, i.e., a burner, 
 on which to submit food to the 
 direct action of the fire without 
 the intervention of water ; from 
 the Teutonic brennen, to burn, 
 and gelvannt, burnt. 
 
 Brander-bannock, a cake heated 
 on a gridiron ; a common mode 
 of preparing oaten cakes in Scot- 
 land. 
 
 Brankie, gaudy, showy. BranJcit, 
 vain, conceited, proud of one's 
 fine clothes. BrankirC a great 
 show of finery. 
 
 Where hae ye been sae braw, lad ? 
 
 Where hae ye been sae brankie, O ? 
 Where hae ye been sae braw, lad ? 
 
 Cam' ye by Killicrankie, O ? 
 
 — Johnson's Musical Mtiseum. 
 
 Branne, the calf of the leg; 
 whence the English Iravmy, 
 muscular. 
 
 Your stocking shall be like the cabbage 
 leaf, 
 That is baith braid and lang, 
 Narrow, narrow at the cute (the instep or 
 ankle). 
 And braid, braid at the branne. 
 
 — Ballad of the Gardener, from 
 Kinlock's Collection. 
 
 Brash, a sickness, a rash, an 
 eruption. 
 
 The lady's gane to her chamber, 
 
 A moanful woman was she. 
 As gin she had taken a sudden brash, 
 
 An' were about to dee. 
 
 — The Gay Gosshawk. 
 
 Brash, a sudden gust of wind, 
 also a tuzzle or fight ; brashy or 
 braushie, stormy. 
 
 Brat, a rag or clothes ; from the 
 Oaelic brat, a covering, a mantle, 
 
 a rag ; also bratach, a flag, a ban- 
 ner ; whence perhaps the con- 
 temptuous English term of brat, 
 for a beggar's child, in allusion 
 to the rags in which it is clad. 
 
 We've aye had bit and brat, John, 
 
 Great blessings here below ; 
 And that helped to keep peace at home, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 — From the old version of ' ' John A nder- 
 son my Jo," abridged, amended, and 
 purijied by Robert Burns. 
 
 Bratchet, a contemptuous or angry 
 term for a troublesome or mis- 
 chievous child ; a diminutive of 
 brat, a child, so called from the 
 Gaelic brat, a rag ; synonymous 
 with another Scottish phrase for 
 a poor man's child, as used by 
 Burns, " a smytrie o' wee duddie 
 (ragged) weans." 
 
 Brattle, clatter, or any noise made 
 by the rapid collision of hard 
 substances; possibly from be- 
 rattle, the augmentative of the 
 English word rattle. 
 
 List'ning the doors an' windows rattle, 
 I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
 Or silly sheep, that tide the brattle 
 O' winter war. 
 
 —Burns: A Winter Night. 
 
 Breathin'. ''I'll do't in a &rm<A- 
 iw'," instanter, in the time 
 which it would take to draw 
 a breath. This phrase is far 
 superior to the vulgar English 
 " in a jiffy," or to the still more 
 intolerable slang "the twink- 
 ling of a bedpost." 
 
 Bree, the juice, the essence, the 
 spirit. Barley-Sree, the juice of 
 the barley, i.e., whisky or ale. 
 B 
 
i8 
 
 Breeks — Brownie. 
 
 Brew is to extract the spirit or 
 essence of barley, malt, hops, 
 &c. Both hree and hrew are 
 directly derived from the Gaelic 
 hrigh, spirit, juice, &c. The 
 Italians have hrio, spirit, energy, 
 life, animation. From this 
 source is derived the English 
 slang word a ''brick," applied 
 to a fine, high-spirited, good 
 fellow. Various absurd attempts 
 have been made to trace the 
 expression to a Greek source 
 in a spurious anecdote bor- 
 rowed from Aristotle, who 
 speaks of a tetragonos aner or 
 *' four-cornered man," supposed 
 in the slang of the Universities 
 to signify a hrick. 
 
 Breeks, the nether garments of a 
 man, trousers, trews, breeches. 
 The vulgar English word breeches 
 is derived from the breech, the 
 part of the body which they 
 cover. The Scottish word has 
 a more dignified origin in the 
 Gaelic breaghad, attire, dress, or- 
 nament, and breaghaid, adorn, 
 embellish, "from which Celtic 
 word," says Ainsworth in his 
 Latin Dictionary, "the Romans 
 derived bracca and braccatus, 
 wearing trews, like the Gauls." 
 
 Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
 I wad hae gien them aff my hurdies 
 For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 
 Brent or brant, high, steep ; also 
 smooth. 
 
 Her fair brent brow, 
 Smooth as the unwrinkled deep. 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 When we were first acquaint, 
 
 Your locks were like the raven, 
 Your bonnie brow was brent. 
 
 — Burns : John Anderson my Jo. 
 In "John Anderson my Jo," the auld 
 wife means that her husband's brow was 
 smooth. I believe that brent in this pas- 
 sage is the past-participle of bum. Shin- 
 ing is one of the effects of burning. I 
 think the word is always used to mean 
 smooth, unwrinkled — as in the Scottish 
 phrase brent new, the English] bran new, 
 shining with all the gloss of newness. — 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Brim, fierce, disastrous, fatal, 
 furious; from the Gaelic brea- 
 mas, mischief, mischance. 
 
 The brim battle of the Harlaw. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : Tke Evergreen. 
 
 Bring home, to be delivered of a 
 chHd. 
 
 Now when nine months were past and gone, 
 The lady she brought home a son. 
 
 — Buchan's Ballads : Lord Dingwall. 
 
 Brook, to spot, or soil, or blacken 
 with soot ; brooTdt, having a 
 dirty face ; and brooJcie, a nick- 
 name either for a sweep or a 
 blacksmith. Bruckit is tanned 
 by the sun or freckled. The 
 root is the Gaelic brucach, 
 spotted, freckled, speckled, par- 
 ticularly in the face. 
 
 Broostle, to perspire profusely; 
 also to be in a great hurry, 
 bustle, or confusion. From the 
 Teutonic braus, bustle, noise, 
 or tumult ; brausen, to ferment, 
 to rush, to roar, to snort with 
 anger or impatience. 
 
 Brownie, a household sprite in 
 the ancient and not yet extinct 
 
Brown Study — Bubbly-jock. 
 
 19 
 
 superstition of Scotland, who, if 
 conciliated, performed domestic 
 duties, and made himself use- 
 ful and agreeable, similar in 
 his character to Puck or Robin 
 Good-fellow in England. From 
 the Gaelic bronn, a gift, a fa- 
 vour. 
 
 Brown study. This phrase, to 
 signify deep, sad, or melan- 
 choly meditation, was originally 
 Scotch, but has long become 
 familiar in English. It has 
 puzzled all the philologists, who 
 persist in deriving almost every 
 English word and phrase from 
 the Teutonic, the Greek, or the 
 Latin, to the exclusion of the 
 Celtic, from which even these 
 three languages are largely de- 
 rived. But they have made no 
 guesses superior to that which 
 would trace it to a brow study, be- 
 cause those who fall into brown 
 studies often knit their brows in 
 deep thought ! The real source 
 of the word is the Gaelic bron, 
 sorrow, grief, sadness, melan- 
 choly, mourning ; bronag, a sor- 
 rowful woman ; bron bhrat, a 
 mourning cloth, a cerement or 
 mortcloth ; bronaeh, sorrowful, 
 and bronadh, lamentation. This 
 explanation ought to satisfy 
 even the Keltophobists, and 
 teach them to "rest and be 
 thankful " in their study of this 
 particular colloquialism. 
 
 Bruik, to enjoy, to possess; 
 from the Teutonic brauchen, to 
 make use of. Was braucht es ? 
 What is the use of it ? 
 
 Weel bruik ye o' yon broun, broun bride, 
 
 Between ye and the wa', 
 And sae will I o' my winding-sheet. 
 That suits me best of a'. 
 
 — Jamieson's Collection : Ballad of 
 Lammikin. 
 
 Brulzie or bnilyie, a disturb- 
 ance, a commotion, a quarrel. 
 This word seems to be the root 
 of the English brawl, broil, 
 embroil, and embroilment, and 
 the French embrouiller ; all de- 
 rivable from the Gaelic bruUl, 
 to crush, to beat, to fight, to 
 thrash. 
 
 Bannocks o' bear-meal, bannocks o' barley ! 
 Wha' in a brulzie will first cry a parley? 
 Never the lads wi' the bannocks o' barley ; 
 Here's to the Highlandman's bannocks o" 
 barley ! 
 
 — ^Johnson's Musical Museum, 
 
 Bnimble, to make a rumbling 
 noise. The English rumble and 
 the Lowland Scotch brumble are 
 synonymous, and both appear 
 to be derived from the Teutonic 
 brummen, to rush audibly like 
 a rapid stream ; to gurgle, to 
 growl. 
 
 Bryttle, to cut up venison. 
 
 And Johnnie has bryttled th^ deer sae weel, 
 And has feasted his gude blude-hounds. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Johnnie oj 
 Braidislie. 
 
 Bubbly-jock, a turkey-cock. 
 
 Some of the idiot's friends coming to 
 visit him at a farmhouse where he resided, 
 reminded him how comfortable he was, 
 and how grateful he ought to be for the 
 care taken of him. He admitted the fact, 
 but he had his sorrows and troubles like 
 wiser men. He stood in awe of the great 
 turkey-cock of the farm, which used to 
 run and gobble at him. "Aye ! aye ! " he 
 
20 
 
 Buckie — But, 
 
 said, unburthening his heart, " I'm very 
 weel aff, nae doubt ; but eh ! man, I'm 
 sair hadden doun by the Bztbbly-jock!" 
 Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Buckie, a whelk or periwinkle. 
 
 An' there'll be partans [crabs] an' btcckies. 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Buckle-to, to marry ; derived from 
 the idea of fastening or joining 
 together. The word occurs in 
 a vulgar English song to a very 
 beautiful Scottish air, which 
 was written in imitation of 
 the Scottish manner by Tom 
 D'Urfey in the reign of Charles 
 II. It has been long popular 
 under the title of "Within a 
 Mile of Edinburgh Town." 
 
 Buckle-beggar signified what was 
 once called a hedge-priest, who 
 pretended to perform the cere- 
 mony of marriage. To "buckle 
 with a person" was to be en- 
 gaged in argument with another. 
 
 *' Buff nor stye," a common collo- 
 quialism. To say of any one that 
 " he would neither buff nor stye," 
 means that he would neither do 
 one thing or another, that he 
 did not know his own mind, 
 or that he was so obstinately 
 wedded to his own purpose that 
 nothing could make him deviate 
 from it. It is probably a cor- 
 ruption of "he would neither 
 le of nor stay." Jamieson, 
 however, derives buff from the 
 Teutonic bof, a cheer made by 
 mariners ; and thinks that stye 
 may refer to the act of mounting 
 the shrouds, from the Swedish 
 
 stiga, to ascend ! He has thus 
 had recourse to two languages to 
 help him out of a difficulty, when 
 one, and that his own, would 
 have been sufficient. 
 
 He would neither buff nor stye for father 
 or mother, friend or foe. — Galt: ^The 
 Entail. 
 
 Buirdly, strong and stalwart, 
 hearty, well-built. 
 
 Buirdly chiels [fellows] 
 
 Are bred in sic a way as this is. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Burnewin, a contraction of 
 "Bum-the wind," the popular 
 and familiar name for a black- 
 smith. 
 
 Busk, to adorn, to dress ; from 
 the Gaelic busgadh, a head-dress, 
 an adornment for the person ; 
 busgainnick, to dress, to adorn, 
 to prepare. 
 
 A bonnie bride is soon buskit. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scoti 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie bride. 
 Busk ye, b-uskye, my winsome marrow. 
 — Hamilton of Bangor. 
 
 But. This word in Scotland long 
 preserved the meaning it once 
 had in England of "without," 
 and was derived etymologicaUy 
 from "be out," of which it is 
 an abbreviation. It remains in 
 the heraldic motto of the Clan 
 Chattan, " Touch not the cat 
 but the glove ! " It does duty in 
 the humorous Jacobite song, in 
 ridicule of George I., the Elector 
 of Hanover : — 
 
But and Ben — Cadgie. 
 
 21 
 
 Wha the deil hae we gotten for a king, 
 
 But a wee, wee German lairdie ; 
 And when we gaed to bring him hame. 
 
 He was delvin' in his yairdie, 
 
 Sheughin kail and layin' leeks, 
 
 But the hose, and but the breeks, 
 
 And up his beggar duds he cleeks, 
 
 The wee, wee German lairdie. 
 
 But and ben, the out and in, the 
 front and back rooms of a 
 cotter's hut. 
 
 Toddlin but and toddlin ben, 
 I'm nae sooner slockened, than drouthy 
 again. 
 
 — Sir'Alexander Boswell : A 
 Matrimonial Duet. 
 
 Had siller been made in the kist to lock by, 
 It wadna been round, but square as a dye. 
 Whereas by its shape ilka body may see 
 It aye was designed it should circulate free. 
 Then we'll toddle but, and we'll toddle ben. 
 An' aye when we get it, we'll part wi't 
 again. — Ibid. 
 
 Byspel, an accidental piece of 
 good fortune ; a wonderful 
 stroke of luck or dexterity. An 
 epithet applied, generally in a 
 half-hearted spirit of laudation, 
 to any person of rare good 
 
 qualities or successful rise in 
 the world; as in the phrase 
 " He's just a 6yspeZ," The word 
 is from the Teutonic beispiel, an 
 example ; literally a by-play. In 
 this sense it is sometimes held 
 to signify an illegitimate or 
 a love-child, a "by-blow," a 
 bastard. 
 
 Byssim, a monster, also a 
 worthless and shameless woman. 
 Supposed to be from the Ice- 
 landic bysn, a monster, a pro- 
 digy. The German bose, wicked, 
 and the Gaelic baois, lust, libi- 
 dinousness, and also madness, 
 have been suggested . as the 
 root of this word. A third 
 derivation is worthy of study, 
 that from baoth {bao), wicked, 
 and smuain, thoughts, whence 
 bao - smuain, quasi bissim or 
 byssom, a wicked thought, or 
 a person with wicked thoughts. 
 The word Bezonian, which has 
 puzzled Shakespearian commen- 
 tators to explain, may be allied. 
 
 C 
 
 Ca', to drive, or drive in, to smite ; 
 also to contend or fight ; from 
 the Gaelic cath, pronounced ca\ 
 to smite, to fight. 
 
 I'll cause a man put up the fire, 
 
 Anither ca in the stake. 
 And on the head o' yon high hill 
 
 I'll burn you for his sake. 
 Buchan's Ballads : Young Prince James. 
 
 Every naig was cad a shoe on. 
 The smith and thee got roaring fu' on. 
 — Burns : Tarn o' Shanter. 
 
 Ca' cannie ! an exhortation to be- 
 ware, to take heed or care as to 
 what you are doing or saying ; 
 ca\ to drive, and cannie, cau- 
 tious or cautiously. 
 
 Cadgie — sometimes written caigie 
 — cheerful, sportive, wanton, 
 friendly ; possibly from the old 
 Gaelic cad, a friend, whence, 
 according to some philologists, 
 
22 
 
 Cair — Cannie. 
 
 cadie, a lad (used in the sense 
 of kindness and familiarity) ; 
 but, according to others, from 
 the French cadet, a younger 
 born. 
 
 A cock-laird fu' cadgie 
 Wi' Jeanie did meet ; 
 He haused her, he kissed her, 
 And ca'd her his sweet. 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 Yon ill-tongued tinkler, Charlie Fox, 
 May taunt you wi' his jeers and shocks ; 
 But gie't him het, my hearty cocks, 
 
 E'en cowe the cadie I 
 And send him to his dicing-box 
 And sportin' lady. 
 — Burns : Author s Earnest Cry 
 and Prayer. 
 
 Cair, to strain through. " This 
 word," says Jamieson, "is used 
 in Clydesdale, and signifies to 
 extract the thickest part of 
 broth or hotch-potch while 
 dining or supping." It is pro- 
 bably from the Gaehc cir, a 
 comb ; whence also the Enghsh 
 word to curry a horse, and curry- 
 comb, the comb used for the 
 purpose. 
 
 Caird, a tinker. 
 
 Close the awmrie, steek the kist, 
 Or else some gear will soon be miss'd ', 
 Tell the news in brugh and glen, 
 Donald Cairds come again. 
 
 — Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 From the Gaelic cear (i, a smith, 
 a Wright, a workman ; with the 
 prefix teine, fire, is derived the 
 English tin-caird or tinker, a fire- 
 smith. Johnson, ignorant of 
 Celtic, traced tinker from tink, 
 because tinkers struck a kettle 
 and produced a tinkling noise 
 to announce their arrival. 
 
 Caller, fresh, cool. There is no 
 exact Enghsh synonym for this 
 word. " Caller herrm," " Caller 
 haddie," and "Caller ow" are 
 familiar cries to Edinburgh 
 people, and to all strangers who 
 visit that beautiful city. 
 
 Sae sweet his voice, sae smooth his tongue, 
 
 His breath's like caller air ; 
 His very foot has music in't 
 When he comes up the stair. 
 
 — MiCKLE : There's nac Luck 
 about tJie House. 
 Upon a simmer Sunday morn. 
 When Nature's face is fair, 
 I walked forth to view the com 
 And snuff the caller air. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Camsteerie, crooked, confused, 
 unmanageable ; from the Gaelic 
 cam, crooked, and stiuir, to steer 
 or lead. 
 
 The phalanx broken into pieces like 
 camsteerie clouds. — Noctes Ambrosiams. 
 
 Cannie, knowing, but gentle ; not 
 to be easily deceived, yet not sly 
 or cunning. A very expressive 
 word, often used by Enghshmen 
 to describe the Scotch, as in the 
 phrase, "a canny Scotsman," 
 one who knows what he is about. 
 The word also means dexterous, 
 clever at a bargain, and also for- 
 tunate. It is possibly derived 
 from the Gaelic ceannaich, to 
 buy ; and is common in the 
 North of England as well as in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Bonny lass, canny lass, wilt thou be 
 mine? 
 
 — The Cumberland Courtship. 
 He mounted his mare and he rode can- 
 nilie. 
 
 — The Laird o' Cockpen. 
 
Cantie — Carle, 
 
 23 
 
 Hae naething to do wi' him; he's no 
 canny. 
 
 They have need of a canny cook who 
 have but one egg for dinner. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Cantie, joyons, merry, talkative 
 from excess of good spirits; 
 from the Gaelic cainnt, speech, 
 or can, to sing. 
 
 Contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair. 
 
 — Burns. 
 Some cannie wee bodie may be my lot, 
 An' I'll be cantie in thinking o't. 
 — Brockett's North Country Glossary: 
 Newcastle Song. 
 The cantie auld folks. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 The clachan yill had made me cantie. 
 —Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Cantrip, a charm, a spell, a trick, 
 a mischievous trick. The word 
 is a corruption of the Gaelic 
 word ceann, head, chief, prin- 
 cipal, and drip, a trick. 
 
 Coffins stood roun' like open presses, 
 That showed the dead in their last dresses ; 
 And by some devilish cantrip slight, 
 Each in its cauld hand held a light. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 Burns, in the " Address to the Deil," has 
 another example of this word, in which the 
 humour is great and the indecency greater. 
 — Lord Neaves. 
 
 Caperaoity, peevish, crabbed, apt 
 to take offence, of singular and 
 uncertain humour. 
 
 " Me forward ! " answered Mrs. Patt ; 
 " the capemoity, old, girning ale-wife may 
 wait long enough ere I forward it ! " — 
 Scott : St. Ronans Well. 
 
 Gaelic, cabair, a gabbler, a 
 tattler ; naitheas, mischief. 
 
 Cappernoytit, slightly de- 
 ranged. 
 
 D'ye hear what auld Dominie Napier 
 says about the mirk Monday? He says 
 it's an eclipse — the sun and the moon fecht- 
 ing for the upper hand ! But, Lord ! he's 
 a poor capemoytit creature. — Laird of 
 Logan. 
 
 Carfuffle, agitation of mind, per- 
 plexity ; from the Gaelic cearn^ 
 a twist or wrong turn, and haoh, 
 haobach, and baobhail, an alarm, 
 a fright, a perplexity ; and with 
 the aspirate, the b pronounced 
 as/, bhaobaU, fuffle. 
 
 Troth, my lord may be turned fule out- 
 right an' he puts himsell into a carfuffle 
 for ony thing ye could bring him, Edie. — 
 Scott : The Antiquary. 
 
 Carkin', grinding, oppressively 
 wearying, vexatious. The root 
 of this word is the Gaelic 
 garg, rough, from whence also 
 gargle, the rough noise pro- 
 duced by a liquor to foment the 
 throat, but not to be swallowed. 
 
 The lisping infant prattlin' on his knee 
 Does a' his weary carkin cares beguile, 
 An' makes him quite forget his labour 
 and his toil. 
 — Burns : Cotter's Saturday Night. 
 
 Carle, a man, a fellow ; from the 
 Teutonic Icerl. This word, which 
 was used by Chaucer, has been 
 corrupted into the English churls 
 which means a rude fellow. In 
 Scotland it still preserves its 
 original and pleasanter signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 The miller was a stout carle for the nones ; 
 Full big he was of braune, and eke of bones. 
 — Chaucer. 
 
 The pawky auld carle cam' ower the lea, 
 Wi' mony guid e'ens and guid days to me, 
 Saying, Kind sirs, for your courtesy. 
 Will you lodge a silly poor man ? 
 — Ritson's Caledonian Songs. 
 
24 
 
 Carle-wtfe — Carp. 
 
 Oh ! wha's that at my chamber door ? 
 
 Fair widow, are ye waukin' ? 
 Auld carle, your suit give o'er, 
 
 Your love lies a' in talkin'. 
 
 — ^Allan Ramsay. 
 When lairds break, carles get land. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 Up starts a carle, and gains good, 
 And thence comes a' our gentle blood. 
 — Idem. 
 My daddie is a cankered carle. 
 
 He'll no twine wi' his gear ; 
 But let them say or let them dae. 
 
 It's a' ane to me ; 
 For he's low doun, he's in the broom, 
 
 That's waiting for me. 
 
 — James Carnegie, 1765. 
 
 Carle, a man, or fellow, is also 
 used adjectively for male, manly, 
 strong, vigorous : as in carlc- 
 hem'p, the largest seed-bearing 
 stalk of hemp ; carle-dodder, the 
 largest stalk of dodder-grass ; 
 carle-heather or carlin-heather, the 
 largest species of heather or 
 erica ; carle-tangle, the largest 
 species of tangle or sea-weed ; 
 carle-wife, a man who does 
 women's work ; carle-cai, a tom- 
 cat, a male cat, &c. 
 
 Ye have a stalk o* carle-hemp in you. 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The carle-stalk of hemp in man — 
 Resolve. — Burns. 
 
 Carle-wife, a husband who med- 
 dles too much with the house- 
 hold duties and privileges of 
 the wife ; a much better word 
 than its English equivalent — a 
 "molly-coddle." 
 
 Carline or carlin, an old woman. 
 
 Cats and carlines love to sleep i' the sun. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 That auld capricious carlin Nature. 
 —Burns: To James Smith. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Monro of Westray, preach- 
 ing on the flight of Lot from Sodom, said : 
 "The honest man and his family were 
 ordered out of the town, and charged not 
 to look back ; but the auld carlin. Lot's 
 wife, looked owre her shouther, for which 
 she was smote into a lump of sawt." And 
 he added, with great unction : " Oh, ye 
 people of Westray, if ye had had her, mony 
 a day since ye wad hae putten her in the 
 parritch-pat ! " — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Carp, by some commentators con- 
 sidered to signify to sing, by 
 others to rehearse, from the oft- 
 recurring phrase in old ballads 
 recording the performances of 
 bards and minstrels — " he harpit 
 and he carpU." 
 
 And ay he harpit, and ay he carpit. 
 
 Till a' the nobles ga'ed o'er the floor ; 
 But and the music was sae sweet. 
 The groom forgot the stable door. 
 — Scott's Border Minstrelsy : The 
 Lochmaben Harper. 
 
 To this passage Mr. Robert 
 Chambers, in his ** Collection of 
 Scottish Ballads," appended the 
 note: — "In the 'Minstrelsy of 
 the Scottish Border ' carpit is ex- 
 plained as meaning sung, but I 
 suggest, with great deference, 
 that it appears, from the use 
 made of it in Barbour's ' Bruce,' 
 that it refers to the narrative 
 which the ancient minstrels ac- 
 companied on their instruments." 
 But Mr. Chambers has left the 
 doubt exactly where he found it, 
 for the old minstrels sometimes 
 sang and sometimes merely re- 
 cited or declaimed their stories. 
 The etymology and meaning are 
 both as doubtful as ever. The 
 English to carp, to cavil or find 
 fault, is probably connected. 
 
Carry — Chandlers. 
 
 25 
 
 Carry, the driving clouds. 
 
 Mirk and rainy is the night, 
 No a starn (star) in a' the carry. 
 
 — Tannahill. 
 
 The word is derived from the 
 Gaelic caraich, to move, to stir ; 
 caraidhy movement. 
 
 Castock, sometimes written cus- 
 tock, a cabbage-stalk. 
 
 There's cauld kail in Aberdeen, 
 
 An' castocks in Stra'bogie. 
 
 — Duke of Gordon. 
 
 Every day's no Yule-day ; — cast the cat 
 a castock. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 In their hearts they're as callous as cus- 
 tocks. — Noctes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Cateran. A Highland cateran was 
 a term formerly applied in the 
 Lowlands to a Highland marau- 
 der or cattle-stealer, and gene- 
 rally to the Highlanders, who 
 were all supposed to be lawless 
 depredators on the wealth of the 
 Lowlands. The word is probably 
 from the Gaelic cath, a battle, 
 a fight ; cathach, a fighter or 
 warrior; and ran, to shout, to 
 roar ; whence, by emphatic de- 
 nunciation, a roaring, a violent 
 warrior or depredator. 
 
 My love he was as brave a man 
 
 As ever Scotland bred, 
 Descended from a Highland clan, 
 
 A cateran to his trade. 
 
 — Gilderoy. 
 
 Cauld bark. To live in ''the 
 cauld bark," is to be dead and 
 buried. Bark, in this meta- 
 phorical euphemism, is evidently 
 not traceable to hark, a boat 
 or ship, or to the hark of an 
 
 animal; but is possibly from 
 hark, skin (which see), or from 
 herg or }mrg or burrow, a hill or 
 hillock, or slight mound raised 
 over a grave. 
 
 Cauld coal. * * He has a cauld coal 
 to blaw," i.e., he is engaged in 
 a hopeless undertaking; there 
 is no spark of fire in it which 
 can be blown into a flame. 
 
 Cauldrife, cold-hearted, cool in 
 love or friendship, indifferent - 
 minded. 
 
 Gae, get you gone, you cauldrife wooer, 
 Ye sour-looking cauldrife wooer. 
 I straightway showed him to the door, 
 Sayin', Come nae mair to me, oh ! 
 
 —Herd's Collection: The Brisk 
 Young Lad. 
 
 Cavee. According to Jamieson, 
 this is an Aberdeenshire word, 
 signifying a state of commotion 
 or perturbation of mind. He 
 suggests its derivation from the 
 French ca& vif, a matter that 
 gives or requires activity (of 
 mind). Is it not rather the 
 Gaelic cabhag {ca-vag), hurry, 
 haste, dispatch, trouble, diffi- 
 culty ? whence cahhagach, hasty, 
 impetuous, hurried. Cave is 
 used in the "Noctes Ambro- 
 sianae" as synonymous with toss. 
 " Gallopin' on a grey horse that 
 caves the foam from its fiery 
 nostrils." 
 
 Chandlers, candlesticks ; the Eng- 
 lish chandeliers. 
 
 Hae ye ony pots or pans. 
 Or ony broken chandlers ; 
 
 I am a tinker to my trade, 
 An' newly come frae Flanders. 
 
26 
 
 Channer — Clachan. 
 
 As scant of siller as of grace, 
 
 Disbanded, I'd a bad run ; 
 
 Gae tell the lady o' the place 
 
 I've come to clout the cauldron. 
 — The Tinker, or Clout the Cauldron. 
 
 Channer, to contend, to com- 
 plain, to grumble, to chide, to 
 remonstrate ; from the G-aelic 
 canran, a contentious murmur- 
 ing, chiding ; canranach, queru- 
 lous murmuring, contentions ; 
 and canranacha, petulance, ill- 
 humour. 
 
 The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, 
 The channeriti worm doth chide. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Clerk's 
 Twa Sons o' Ourenford. 
 
 How the worm could channer 
 or chide in the grave is incom- 
 prehensible, unless one of the 
 meanings of the word is to 
 fret or cause to fret with vexa- 
 tion. This interpretation has 
 led to the supposition that 
 "fret," in the sense of its for- 
 mer signification of " gnaw " 
 or " eat," from the German 
 fressen, Flemish /re^m, as in the 
 Scripture phrase ** The moth 
 fretteth the garment," is synony- 
 mous with channer. This, how- 
 ever, is not the case, as the 
 Gaelic etymology suffices to 
 prove. But neither channcring 
 nor fretting supplies an intelli- 
 gible or satisfactory explana- 
 tion of the ballad-writer's mean- 
 ing. 
 
 Chap, to knock ; chaup, a blow. 
 
 I dreamed I was deed, and carried far, 
 far, far up, till I came to Heaven's yett — 
 when I chappit, and chappit, and chappit, 
 till at last an angel keekit out and said, 
 " Wha are ye?"— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 The chiel was stout, the chiel was stark, 
 And wadna bide to chap nor ca', 
 
 And Girzie, faint wi' holy wark, 
 Had na the power to say him na ! 
 — Holy Girzie. 
 
 The Burnewin comes on like death at 
 every chaup. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Chark, to make a grinding or 
 grunting noise, also to com- 
 plain petulantly and obstinately. 
 A form of cark, with the sub- 
 stitution of ch for c or ^% as in 
 church for kirk, &c. 
 
 Cheep, to chirp or chirrup like a 
 bird. 
 
 Ye're nae chicken for a your cheepin. — 
 Proverb. 
 
 Chiel, a fellow, a youth ; the same 
 as the ancient English childe, 
 as used by Byron in *' Childe 
 Harold." From the Gaelic gULe, 
 a youth. 
 
 The brawny, bainie ploughman chiel. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 A chiefs amang ye takin' notes. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Clachan, a village; from the 
 Gaelic clach, a stone, and clachan, 
 the stones or houses. 
 
 The clachan yill (ale) had made me cantie. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 Ye ken Jock Hornbook o' the clachan. 
 — Idem. 
 The clachan of Aberfoyle. 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Rob Roy, 
 
 Many English and American 
 tourists in Scotland, and other 
 readers of the works of Sir 
 Walter Scott, imagine that 
 the "clachan of Aberfoyle" 
 means the m\R of Aberfoyle. 
 
Clart — Clepie. 
 
 27 
 
 They derive the word from the 
 English clack, the noise of the 
 miU-wheel, and knowing no- 
 thing of dachan, the village, are 
 disappointed when they find 
 neither windmill nor watermill 
 on the classic spot. 
 
 Clart, to defile, to make dirty. 
 
 Clarty, dirty; from the Gaelic 
 clabar or clubhar, filth, mud, 
 mire. 
 
 Searching auld wives' barrels ; 
 
 Ochon the day ! 
 That clarty barm [dirty yeast] should stain 
 my laurels ! 
 
 ' But — what'll ye say ? 
 Those movin' things ca'd wives and weans 
 Wad move the very hearts o' stanes. 
 
 — Burns : On being Appointed 
 to the Excise. 
 
 Clatch, to daub, to do any kind 
 of work carelessly, awkwardly, 
 recklessly, orignorantly ; claught, 
 snatched. 
 
 Claur or glaur, mud, dirt, mire; 
 "a gowpen o' glaur" a handful 
 of mud ; "a humplock of glaur, ' ' 
 a heap of mud. 
 
 The wee laddie, greetin', said his brither 
 Jock had coost a gowpen o' glaur at 
 him and knockit him on the neb. — James 
 Ballantine. 
 
 Claut, to snatch, to lay hold of 
 eagerly ; something that has 
 been got together by greed ; a 
 large heap. 
 
 Ken ye what Meg o' the Mill has gotten ? 
 She's gotten a coof wi' a claut o' siller, 
 And broken the heart o' the barley miller. 
 —Burns : Meg o' the Mill. 
 
 Claut is undoubtedly from the English 
 
 word claw, which had the sense in olden 
 time of to scratch, to gather together, and 
 is in that sense still in use in some parts of 
 England. Claut, in Scotch, is most fre- 
 quently used as a noun, and is the name 
 given to a hoe used to gather mud, &c., 
 together ; to claut the roads, to gather the 
 mud. I don't think the world itself con- 
 tains the idea of getting together a large 
 heap by greed. I don't recognise the 
 other meanings, " to snatch," " to lay hold 
 of eagerly." I would use a different word 
 to express these meanings, — to glaum, io 
 play glaum, would fit them exactly. — 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Clavers, idle stories, silly calum- 
 nies. 
 
 Hail Poesie ! thou nymph reserved ; 
 In chase o' thee what crowds hae swerv'd 
 Frae common sense, or sunk unnerv'd 
 'Mong heaps o' clavers. 
 
 —Burns : On Pastoral Poets. 
 
 Claw, to flatter ; from the Gaelic 
 civil, praise, and not, as igno- 
 rantly supposed, from the Eng- 
 lish claw, to scratch with the 
 nails, in allusion to the itch. 
 
 Claiu me and I'll claw you. — Scottish 
 Proverbs. 
 
 I laugh when I am merry, and claw no 
 man in his humour. 
 — Shakespeare : Much Ado about 
 Nothing. 
 
 Claymore, the Highland broad- 
 sword; from the Gaelic ciaid- 
 heamh, or glaive, a sword, and 
 mor, great. 
 
 Wha on the moor a gallant clan 
 
 From boastin' foes their banners bore. 
 
 Who showed himself a better man 
 
 Or fiercer waved the broad claymore ? 
 — Sir Alexander Boswell. 
 
 Clepie, deceitful ; from the Gaelic 
 clihe, deceit. 
 
28 
 
 Clishmaclaver — Clunk. 
 
 Clishmaclaver, idle talk, foolish 
 gossip, incessant gabble. 
 
 What further clish-ma-claver might been 
 said. — Burns : The Brigs o' Ayr. 
 
 From the Gaelic dis {dish), 
 nimble, rapid, and dab {dabh), 
 an open mouth ; dabach, gar- 
 rulous ; dahaire, a babbler, a 
 loud disagreeable talker ; dabar, 
 the clapper of a milL 
 
 Clocking-hen, a hen engaged in 
 the act of incubation ; from 
 dock or ducJc, the cry or cackle 
 of the hen when hatching. The 
 word is sometimes used jocu- 
 larly or contemptuously for an 
 elderly woman or nurse. 
 
 Clocksie, lively, sprightly, viva- 
 cious, talkative; possibly from 
 dack, talk; and that, again, 
 from the Gaelic dach or dock, 
 a bell ; applied derisively to the 
 tongue of a garrulous person, 
 likened to the clapper of a bell. 
 
 The clocksie auM laird o' the Warlock Glen, 
 Wha stood without, half cowed, half 
 
 cheerie. 
 Raised up the latch and cam' crousely ben, 
 — Joanna Baillie, 
 
 Cloot, a cloven foot ; Clootie, one 
 who is hoofed or cloven-footed, 
 i.e., the devil. 
 
 O thou, whatever title suit thee, 
 Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie. 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Cloot (pronounced clute, long French «) 
 is not a hoof, but the half of a hoof. We 
 speak of a horse's hoof, and of a cow's 
 cloots, and apply this latter word only to 
 the feet of those animals that divide the 
 hoof. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Clour, a lump on the flesh caused 
 by a heavy blow. 
 
 That cane o* yours would gie a clour on 
 a man's head eneuch to produce a phre- 
 nological faculty. — Professor Wilson : 
 Noctes A inbrosiancE. 
 
 Clour is a heavy blow— the lump is only 
 the result of a clour. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Clout, a rag ; cloutie, a little rag, 
 baby-clouts, baby-clothes. Clcmt 
 also signifies a patch, or to 
 patch, to mend, as in the old 
 song of "Clout the Cauldron" 
 (mend the kettle). 
 
 Wha my baby-clouts will buj' ? 
 
 —Old Song. 
 
 A countryman in a remote part of Aber- 
 deenshire got a newly coined sovereign in 
 the days when such a thing was seldom 
 seen, and went about showing it to his 
 friends and neighbours for the charge of a 
 penny each sight. Evil days unfortunately 
 overtook him, and he was obliged to part 
 with his beloved coin. A neighbour one 
 day called upon him and asked for a sight 
 of his sovereign. "Ah! man," said he, 
 " it's gane ; but I'll let ye see the cloutie it 
 was rowed (wrapped) in for a bawbee I " — 
 Dean Ramsay. 
 
 ClufF, to strike with the fist, to 
 slap ; "a duff i' the lug," a box 
 on the ear. The word is akin 
 to the English fisticuff and to 
 
 Clunk, the gurgling, confused 
 sound of liquor in a bottle or 
 cask when it is poured out ; 
 equivalent to the Enghsh glug 
 in the song of " Gluggity Glug." 
 It is derived by Jamieson from 
 the Danish glunk and the Swe- 
 dish klunka, which have the 
 same meaning. 
 
Clyte — Cock, 
 
 29 
 
 Sir VioHno, with an air 
 
 That showed a man o' spunk, 
 
 Wished unison between the pair, 
 And made the bottle clunk. 
 
 —Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 An old English song has 
 "and let the cannikin clink, '^ 
 which is obviously from the 
 same root, though clunk is more 
 expressive of a duU sound than 
 clink is. 
 
 Clyte, a fall ; to stop in the midst 
 of a set speech for want of words 
 or ideas, and sit down sud- 
 denly. "I couldna find words 
 to continue my speech," said 
 a Glasgow bailie, " and sae I 
 clyted" 
 
 I fairly clyted 
 
 On the cauld earth. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Clyte, a heavy, sudden kind of fall. I 
 have generally heard the word as a verb 
 used in connection with the word played 
 — " It played clyte at my heels," " He got 
 as far as the road, and then played clyte." 
 — R. Drennan. 
 
 Clytie-lass, a servant girl whose 
 duty is to carry out of the 
 house all filth or ordure, and 
 to deposit it on the midden or 
 elsewhere. The first word is ap- 
 parently from the Gaelic cuil- 
 aite, the back place or latrine, 
 from cuU or cvZ, back, and aite, 
 a place, whence by abbreviation 
 clyte and clytie. 
 
 Cock. This syllable, which enters 
 into the composition of many 
 words and phrases both in 
 Lowland Scotch and modern 
 English, has generally been 
 associated with its supposed 
 
 derivation from cock, the name 
 given to the male of birds, 
 and especially to the fami- 
 liar gallinaceous barn-door fowl 
 that " crows in the morn- 
 ing." Its true derivation, how- 
 ever, is from the Gaelic coc, 
 which means to elevate, to 
 erect, to stand up, to throw 
 high, to lift, as in such phrases 
 as a ^^ cocked-hat," a ^^ cockade," 
 •' cock up your beaver," " cock- 
 sure" (manifestly or presumedly 
 sure, or pretending to be so), 
 " cock-a-hoop," and many others. 
 It is more common in Lowland 
 Scotch than in English. To 
 cock, signifies to mount one boy 
 on the back of another for 
 punishment on the posteriors ; 
 to cock-shy, to throw a stone or 
 other missile high in the air; 
 cock-a-penny or cock-a-pentie, to 
 live beyond one's income for 
 pride or ostentation, or the dis- 
 inclination to appear as poor as 
 one is in reality by expending 
 more pennies than one has 
 honestly got ; cockie-vain, con- 
 ceited, arrogant, stuck up ; 
 cockie-ridie, a game among chil- 
 dren, when one rides on the 
 shoulders of another ; a cock- 
 horse, a wooden horse, on which 
 children mount for amusement ; 
 cock-laird, a small landed pro- 
 prietor, who affects the dignity 
 and gives himself the airs of a 
 great one ; cock-headed or cockle- 
 headed, vain, conceited, whimsi- 
 cal, stuck up ; cockemonie (which 
 see) ; cock-raw, manifestly or 
 plainly raw, underdone ; cock- 
 up nose, a tumed-up nose, " tip- 
 
30 
 
 Cockernonte — Cod-crune. 
 
 tilted," as Lord Tennyson more 
 elegantly describes it, and cock- 
 eye, a squint-eye, that cocks 
 up or awry when it should 
 look straight. 
 
 None of these words have 
 any connection with the male 
 bird of the Gallinacese, but all 
 are traceable etymologically to 
 the Gaelic root of coc. Philolo- 
 gists, if so disposed, may trace 
 to this same source the vulgar 
 and indecent English and Scot- 
 tish words which may be found 
 in Juvenal and Horace as 
 Mentuia. 
 
 Cockernonie, a gathering up of 
 the hair of women, after a 
 fashion similar to that of the 
 modern " chignon," and some- 
 times called a " cock-up." Mr. 
 Kirkton, of Edinburgh, preach- 
 ing against " cock-ups "—of 
 which chignons were the re- 
 presentatives a quarter of a 
 century ago — said: "I have 
 been all this year preaching 
 against the vanity of women, 
 yet I see my own daughter in 
 the kirk even now with as high 
 a * cock-up ' as any one of you 
 aU." 
 
 Jamieson was of the opinion, 
 that cocA;erno7iie signified a snood, 
 or the gathering of the hair in 
 a band or fillet, and derived 
 the word from the Teutonic 
 Tcoker, a cape, and nonne, a nun, 
 i.e., such a sheath for fixing the 
 hair as nuns were accustomed 
 to use ! The word was a con- 
 temptuous one for, false hair — a 
 contrivance to make a little hair 
 
 appear to be a good deal— and 
 seems to have been compounded 
 of the Gaelic coc, to stand erect, 
 and neoni, nothing. 
 
 I saw my Meg come linkin' ower the lea, 
 I saw my Meg, but Meggie saw na me, 
 Her cockernonie snooded up fu' sleek. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 But I doubt the daughter's a silly thing : 
 an unco cockemony she had busked on her 
 head at the kirk last Sunday. — Scott : 
 Old Mortality. 
 
 My gude name ! If ony body touched 
 my gude name I wad neither fash council 
 nor commissary. I would be down upon 
 them like a sea-falcon amang a wheen wild 
 geese, and the best o' them that dared to 
 say onything o' Meg Dods but what was 
 honest and civil, I wad soon see if her 
 cockernonie was made o' her ain hair or 
 other folks' !— Scott : St. Ronans' Well. 
 
 Cod, from the Gaelic, cod, a 
 cushion, a pillow, a bag, a re- 
 ceptacle ; peas-cod, the shell in 
 which the peas are formed and 
 retained. The word is retained 
 in English in an indelicate sense 
 for the scrotum. 
 
 I hae guid fire for winter weather, 
 A cod o' cafF (chaff) wud fill a cradle, 
 
 A halter an' a guid hay tether, 
 A deuk about the dub to paidle. 
 — The Wooin' o' Jenny and Jock. 
 
 Cod-crune or cod-crooning, a 
 
 curtain lecture ; from the Gaelic 
 cod, a pillow, and croon, to mur- 
 mur, to lament, to moan. Jamie- 
 son derives the word from the 
 Teutonic Tcreunen, and says it is 
 sometimes called a "bowster 
 (bolster) lecture." No such word, 
 however, as kreunen or krunen 
 is to be found in the German 
 dictionaries. 
 
Codroch — Collte-shangie. 
 
 31 
 
 Codroch, miserable, ugly, detest- 
 able. These are the meanings 
 assigned to the word by Allan 
 Ramsay, though Jamieson, who 
 cites it as used in Fifeshire and 
 the Lothians, explains it as a 
 rustic, or one who is dirty and 
 slovenly. 
 
 A codroch coffe, he is sure sich, 
 And lives like ony wareit wretch. 
 —Pedder Coffe : The Evergreen. 
 
 The final syllable seems to 
 be the Gaelic droch, bad, evil, 
 wicked, mischievous. Go is 
 doubtless the Gaelic cotrih (pro- 
 nounced c6), a prefix equivalent 
 to the Latin co and con. Jamie- 
 son derives it from the Irish 
 Gaelic cudar, the rabble, a 
 word that does not appear in 
 O'Reilly's excellent Irish Dic- 
 tionary, though cudarman and 
 cudarmanta appear in it as 
 synonymous with ** vulgar and 
 rustic." 
 
 Coffe, a fellow; in vulgar Eng- 
 lish, a chap. From the German 
 kaufen, to buy ; and Jcaufmann, 
 a merchant, a tradesman. 
 
 Coft, bought, purchased. Cooft, 
 to buy, from kaufen, has become 
 obsolete ; but cooper, a buyer or 
 seller, survives in horse-cooper 
 or horse-dealer. 
 
 Then he has cqft for that ladye 
 
 A fine silk riding-gown ; 
 Likewise he co/t for that ladye 
 A steed, and set her on. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads: 
 Jock o' Hazelgreen {old version). 
 
 Cog and cogie, a bowl or cup, also 
 a basin. From the Gaelic cimch, 
 
 a cup, used either for broth, ale, 
 or stronger drink. 
 
 I canna want my cogie, sir, 
 
 I canna want my cogie ; 
 I winna want my three-girred cog 
 
 For a' the wives in Bogie. 
 
 — Duke of Gordon. 
 
 It's good to have our cog out when it 
 rains kail ! — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 Coggle, to shake, to waggle ; from 
 the Gaelic gog or cog, to shake ; 
 gogail, wavering, unsteady. 
 Whence probably the French 
 coquette, a flirt, or one who 
 wavers or is unsteady in the 
 bestowal of her favours to male 
 admirers. 
 
 It coggled thrice, but at the last 
 It rested on his shoulders fast. 
 — George Beattie : John o Arnha. 
 
 Collie-shangie, a loud dispute, a 
 quarrel, an uproar, a noise of 
 angry tongues. 
 
 How the collie-shangie works 
 Betwixt the Russians and the Turks. 
 — Burns : To a Gentleman who Sent 
 hint a Newspaper. 
 
 " It has been supposed," says 
 Jamieson, " that from collie, a 
 shepherd's dog, and shangie, a 
 chain, comes the word collie- 
 shangie, a quarrel between two 
 dogs fastened with the same 
 chain." Under the word " col- 
 lie," he explains it to mean a 
 quarrel, as well as a dog of that 
 species ; as if he believed that 
 the gentle and sagacious shep- 
 herd's dog was more quarrel- 
 some than the rest of the 
 canine species. In Gaelic, coUeid 
 
32 
 
 Conundrum — Corbie. 
 
 means noise, confusion, uproar ; 
 and coileideach, noisy, confused, 
 angry ; which is no doubt the 
 etymology of collie in the com- 
 pound word collie-shangie. The 
 meaning of shangie is diflScult 
 to trace, unless it be from the 
 Gaelic seang (pronounced shang), 
 slender, lean, hungry. 
 
 Conundrum, a kind of riddle sug- 
 gestive of resemblances where 
 no resemblances exist ; a wordy 
 puzzle. The word is of com- 
 paratively recent introduction 
 into English, and has been sup- 
 posed by some etymologists to 
 be derivable from the German 
 Jcennen, to know. Stormonth 
 was content to trace it to the 
 Anglo-Saxon cunnan; but on its 
 being pointed out to him by 
 the present writer, in a private 
 note, after the issue of the first 
 edition of his Dictionary, that 
 the derivation was so far un- 
 satisfactory that it did not ac- 
 count for the final syllable, and 
 that it was an ancient Scottish 
 word, of which the components 
 were the Gaelic conn, sense or 
 meaning, and antrom, heavy or 
 difficult, he abandoned the 
 Anglo - Saxon derivation, and 
 expressed his resolve to adopt 
 the Gaelic etymology if his Dic- 
 tionary ever reached a second 
 edition. He died, unfortunately, 
 before preparing a second edi- 
 tion for the press. 
 
 Coof, cuif, gowk, a fool, a sim- 
 pleton, a cuckoo. 
 
 Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, 
 
 Wha struts an' stares an' a' that ; 
 
 Though hundreds worship at his word, 
 He's but a cut/for a' that. 
 
 — Burns : A Man's a Man. 
 
 Coof and gowTc, though appar- 
 ently unlike each other in sound, 
 are probably corruptions of the 
 same Gaelic words, cudbhag 
 {cuafag) and cuach, a cuckoo : — 
 
 Ye breed of the gowk (cuckoo), ye hae 
 but ae note in your voice, and ye're aye 
 singing it. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 In England, a "fool" and a 
 "goose" are synonymous; but 
 in Scotland the cuckoo is the 
 bird that symbolises stupidity. 
 
 Cuif, fool, and blockhead, are not exact 
 synonyms, — rather a useless fellow, a sort 
 of male tawpie. A man may be a cuij, 
 and yet the reverse of a fool or blockhead. 
 — R. Drennan. 
 
 Coo-me-doo, a term of endear- 
 ment for a turtle-dove, wood 
 pigeon, or cushat. 
 
 O coo-me-doo, my love sae true. 
 
 If ye'll come doun to me, 
 Ye'se hae a cage o' guid red gowd 
 
 Instead o' simple tree. 
 
 — Buchan's Ballads: The Earl o' 
 Mars Daughter. 
 
 Corbie, the hooded-crow ; also 
 the raven ; from the French 
 corheau. 
 
 Corbies will no pick out corbies' e'en 
 {Old Proverb). [Signifying that two of a 
 trade ought not to divulge the tricks of 
 the trade ; also applied among thieves to 
 a confederate who informs against them, 
 or peaches. \ 
 
 The adder lies i' the corbies nest. 
 
 Beneath the corbies wing ; 
 And the blast that rives the corbies nest 
 
 Will soon bring hame the king. 
 
 ^ —Jacobite Song, 1745. 
 
Cosh — Craig. 
 
 33 
 
 Cosh, quiet, snug. {See Cozie.) 
 
 And sang fu' sweet the notes o' love, 
 Till a' was cosh within. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Gay 
 Gosshawk. 
 
 Cosie, cozie, comfortable, snug, 
 warm. 
 
 While some are cozie in the neuk. 
 And forming assignations 
 To meet some day. 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Jamieson says that cosie, snug, 
 warm, comfortable, seems to be 
 of the same derivation as cosh, a 
 comfortable situation, and com- 
 fortable as implying a defence 
 from the cold. It is evidently 
 from the Gaelic coiseag, a little, 
 snug, or warm corner, a deriva- 
 tion from cos and cois, a hollow, 
 a recess, a corner. 
 
 Couthie, well - known, familiar, 
 handsome, and agreeable — in 
 contradistinction to the English 
 word uncouth. 
 
 Some kindle, couthie, side by side, 
 And burn together trimly. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 My ain couthie dame, 
 O my ain couthie dame ; 
 Wi' my bonny bits o' bairns, 
 Aftd my ain couthie dame. 
 
 — Ingleside Lilts. 
 
 Covrp, to tumble over ; akin to the 
 French cowp, a blow ; whence to 
 suffer a blow in falling. 
 
 I drew my scythe in sic a fury, 
 I near had cowpit in my hurry. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 word is traceable in the English 
 crabbed, ill-tempered. 
 
 He that crabbs without cause should 
 mease (apologise) without mends (making 
 amends). — Scottish Proverb. 
 
 Crack, talk, gossip, conversation, 
 confidential discourse, a story ; 
 from the Gaelic crac, to talk ; 
 cracaire, a talker, a gossip, and 
 cracaireachd, idle talk or chat. 
 To ''crack a thing up" in Eng- 
 lish is to talk it into repute 
 by praise. A crach article is a 
 thing highly praised. Jamieson 
 derives the word from the Ger- 
 man hralcen, to make a noise, 
 though there is no such word in 
 that language. 
 
 But raise your arm, and tell your crack 
 Before them a'. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 They're a' in famous tune 
 For cracks that day. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 The cantie auld folk crackin crouse. 
 The young anes rantin' through the house ; 
 My heart has been sae fain to see them, 
 That I for joy hae barkit wi' them. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 A lady on hiring a servant girl in the 
 country, told her, as a great indulgence, 
 that she should have the liberty of attend- 
 ing the kirk every Sunday, but that she 
 would be expected to return home im- 
 mediately after the conclusion of the ser- 
 vice. The lady, however, rather unex- 
 pectedly found a positive objection raised 
 against this apparently reasonable arrange- 
 ment. "Then I canna engage wi' ye, 
 mem, for indeed I wadna gie the crack i' 
 the kirkyard for a' the sermon." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Crabb, to find fault, to be angry, 
 to complain for slight cause, 
 or without real necessity. This 
 
 Craig, the neck. 
 
 Ane got a twist o' the craig, 
 Ane got a punch o' the wame 
 C 
 
34 
 
 Crambo- Clink — Croon. 
 
 Symy Hair got lamed o' a leg, 
 And syne ran wabblin' hame. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Death of 
 Featherstonehaugh. 
 
 Crambo-clink or crambo-jingle, a 
 
 contemptuous name for dog- 
 gerel verse, and bad or medi- 
 ocre attempts at poetry, which 
 Douglas Jerrold, with wit as 
 well as wisdom — and they are 
 closely allied — described as 
 "verse and ?wrse." 
 
 A' ye wha live by crambo-clink, 
 A' ye wha write and never think, 
 Come mourn wi' me. 
 — Burns : On a Scotch Bard. 
 
 Amaist as soon as I could spell, 
 I to the crambo-jingle fell, 
 
 Tho' rude and rough ; 
 But crooning to a body's sel' 
 
 Does weel enough. 
 
 — Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 Crambo seems to be derived 
 from the Gaelic crom, crooked, 
 or perhaps from " cramp " 
 or "cramped." "Clink" and 
 "jingle," assonance, conson- 
 ance, or rhyme, are from the 
 English. 
 
 Creel or creil, a fish-basket ; from 
 the French creiUe, with the same 
 meaning. 
 
 The boatie rows, the boatie rows, 
 
 The boatie rows fu' weel, 
 And muckle luck attend the boat, 
 
 The merlin, and the creel. — Old Song. 
 
 Creepie, a low stool ; from the 
 Gaelic cruh, to bend low. 
 
 I sit on my creepie arid spin at my wheel, 
 An' think on the laddie that lo'es me sae 
 weel. — Logie d Buchan. 
 
 Creeshie, greasy. 
 
 Kamesters (wool-combers) are aye cree- 
 shie {Old Proverb), i.e., people are ever 
 tainted with their trade, as in the phrase, 
 " Millers are aye mealy." 
 
 Crone, an old woman, a witch. 
 Worcester, in his Dictionary, 
 derives this word from the 
 Scottish "croon" "the hollow 
 muttering sound with which old 
 witches uttered their incanta- 
 tions." {See Croon.) 
 
 Crony, a comrade, a dear friend, 
 a boon companion ; derived in 
 a favourable sense from crone. 
 This Scottish word seems to 
 have been introduced to English 
 notice by James I. It was used 
 by Swift and other writers of 
 his period, and was admitted 
 into Johnson's Dictionary, who 
 described it as a " cant word." 
 
 To oblige your crony Swift, 
 Bring our dame a New Year's gift. 
 — Swift. 
 My name is Fun, your crony dear, 
 The nearest friend ye ha'e. 
 
 —Burns: The Holy Fair. 
 And at his elbow Souter Johnny, 
 His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony. 
 
 —Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 
 Croodle, to coo like a dove: "a 
 wee croodlin' doo," a term of 
 endearment to an infant. 
 
 Far ben thy dark green plantin' shade 
 The cushat (wood-pigeon) croodles amor- 
 
 ousHe. — Tannahill. 
 There's ae thing keeps my heart light, 
 
 Whate'er the world may do ; 
 A bonnie, bonnie, bonnie, bonnie. 
 
 Wee croodlin doo. — Old Song. 
 
 Croon, to hum over a tune, to 
 prelude on an instrument. The 
 
Crouse — Crummie. 
 
 35 
 
 word seems derivable from the 
 Gaelic cronan, a dull, murmur- 
 ing sound, a mournful and mo- 
 notonous tune. 
 
 The sisters grey before the day 
 Did croon within their cloister. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, 
 Whiles croonin o'er some auld Scots sonnet. 
 — Burns : Tarn o' Shunter. 
 
 Where auld ruined castles grey 
 
 Nod to the moon, 
 To fright the nightly wanderer's way 
 
 Wi' eldritch croon. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Plaintive tunes. 
 Such as corpse-watching beldam croons. 
 — Sttidies/rom the Antique. 
 
 Crouse, merry, lively, brisk, bold, 
 from the Gaelic craos, greedy, 
 sensual, gluttonous, eager for 
 any pleasure of the senses. 
 
 A cock's aye crouse on his ain midden. — 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The cantie auld folk crackin' crouse, 
 The young anes rantin' through the house. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 crowdie is thick and firm, and in 
 that quality its great merit con- 
 sists, as distinguished from its 
 watery competitor, the nourish- 
 ment of the sick-room, and not 
 to be compared to the strong 
 wholesome "parritch," which 
 Burns designated "the chief of 
 Scotland's food." 
 
 Oh, that I had never been married, 
 
 I'd never had nae care ; 
 Now I've gotten wife and bairns. 
 
 An' they cry crowdie evermair ! 
 Once crowdie, twice crowdie. 
 
 Three times crowdie in a day ! 
 
 — Burns. 
 Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time. 
 
 And soon I made me ready. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair, i 
 
 My sister Kate came up the gate 
 Wi' crowdie unto me, man ; 
 
 She swore she saw the rebels run 
 Frae Perth unto Dundee, man. 
 — The Battle of Sheriffmuir. 
 
 Crowdie, properly, is oatmeal mixed 
 with cold water ; but it is also used for 
 food in general, as in the expression, 
 "I'll be hame about crowdie-t\xa.t." — R. 
 Drennan. 
 
 Crowdie, oatmeal boiled to a 
 thick consistency ; crowdie-time, 
 breakfast-time or meal-time. 
 
 Jamieson goes to the Icelandic 
 for the origin of the word crowdie, 
 once the favourite and general 
 food of the Scottish people, in 
 the days before the less nutri- 
 tious potato was introduced 
 into the country. But the name 
 of crowdie is not so likely to 
 be derived from the Icelandic 
 graut-ur, gruel made of groats, 
 as from the Gaelic cruaidh, 
 thick, firm, of hard consistency. 
 Gruel is thin, but porridge or 
 
 Crummie, a familiar name for a 
 favourite cow ; from the crooked 
 horn. Gaelic crom, crooked. In 
 the ancient ballad of **Tak' 
 your auld cloak about ye," 
 quoted by Shakespeare in 
 *' Othello," the word appears 
 as Crumboch 
 
 Bell, my wife, who loves no strife, 
 
 She said unto me quietlie. 
 Rise up and save cow Crumbock's life. 
 
 And put thine auld cloak about thee. 
 
 The word appears as Crum- 
 mock in Burns's "Epistle to 
 Major Logan." - „ 
 
36 
 
 Crunt — Cupar. 
 
 Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle, 
 Lang may your elbuck jouk and diddle, 
 To cheer you through the weary widdle 
 
 O' this wide warl', 
 Until you on a crummock driddle, 
 
 A grey-hair'd carl. 
 
 Crunt, a smart blow with a cudgel 
 or fist on the crown of the 
 head. 
 
 And mony a fellow got his licks 
 Wi' hearty crunt. 
 —Burns : To Willie Simpson. 
 
 This word seems to come 
 either from the English crown, 
 the head (hence a blow on the 
 head), or from the Gaelic crun, 
 which has the same meaning. 
 The crown of the head, the very 
 top of the head, is a common 
 phrase ; the croon of the cause- 
 way — the top ridge of the road, 
 or the middle of the road — is a 
 well-known Scotticism. In slang 
 English, a crunt is called a wqp- 
 jper, or one for his "nob." 
 
 Cuddie, a donkey; supposed by 
 some to be derived from the 
 Gaelic cutach, bob-tailed, or 
 from ceutach, grace, elegance, 
 beauty, upplied to the animal 
 by its owner either in affection 
 or derision. 
 
 One^day my grandfather saw Andrew 
 Leslie's donkey up to the knees in a field 
 of clover. " Hallo, Andrew ! " said he, " I 
 thought your cztdJie wad eat nothing but 
 thistles and nettles." " Ay," said he, 
 " but he misbehaved himself, and I put 
 him in there just to punish him." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Cuddle. This word, which in the 
 English vernacular means to em- 
 brace, to fondle, to press to the 
 
 bosom, simply signifies in Scot- 
 tish parlance to sleep, and is 
 derived from the Gaelic cadaiL 
 
 An auld beddin' o' claes 
 Was left me by my mither ; 
 
 They're jet black o'er wi' flaes ; 
 Ye may cuddle in them thegither. 
 
 The bride she gaed to her bed, 
 
 The bridegroom he came till her, 
 The fiddler crept in at the foot, 
 An' they a' cuddled together. 
 
 —Maggies Tocher: The Tea- 
 Table Miscellany. 
 
 Where shall I cuddle the night ? 
 
 — Galt : Mansie Wauch. 
 
 Cuif or coof, a fool, a blockhead. 
 {See Coop, anJLe.) 
 
 Cupar. 
 
 He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar. 
 
 This proverb, applied to an 
 obstinate man who will have his 
 own way, has puzzled many 
 commentators. Dean Ramsay 
 asks, "Why Cupar? and whether 
 is it the Cupar of Angus or the 
 Cupar of Fife ? " 
 
 It has been suggested that the 
 origin of "Cupar," in the sense 
 employed in the proverb, is the 
 Gaelic comhar {covar), a mark, a 
 sign, a proof, and that the phrase 
 is equivalent to "he who will be 
 a marked man (by his folly or per- 
 versity) must be a marked man." 
 It has also been suggested 
 that " Cupar " is from comharra 
 {covarra), shelter or protection 
 of the sanctuary, to which a 
 man resorted when hard pressed 
 by justice for a crime which he 
 had committed. 
 
Cum — Cutty-mun. 
 
 37 
 
 Cum, a grain of corn ; whence 
 kernel, the fruit in the nut ; 
 curny-gutty. 
 
 Mind to splice high with Latin — a cum 
 or two of Greek would not be amiss : and if 
 ye can bring in anything about the judg- 
 ment of Solomon in the original Hebrew, 
 and season with a merry jest or so, the dish 
 will be the more palatable. — Scott : For- 
 tunes of Nigel. 
 
 Allied words to cum are 
 "kern" and "churn," a hand- 
 mill for grinding corn, and 
 " churn," a mill for stirring the 
 milk so as to make butter. 
 
 Cushat, a turtle-dove, a wood- 
 pigeon. 
 
 O'er lofty aiks the cushats wail, 
 And echo coos the dolefu' tale. 
 
 — Burns : Bess and her Spinning 
 Wheel. 
 
 Custock or castock, the edible 
 stalk of cabbage ; a kail-runt. 
 
 There's cauld kail in Aberdeen, 
 
 An' custocks in Stra'bogie, 
 
 An' ilka lad maun hae his lass. 
 
 An' I maun hae my cogie. 
 
 — Herd's Collection : The Three- 
 
 Girred Cog. 
 
 Cutty or cuttie, short ; from the 
 Gaelic cutach, that has been cut, 
 abridged, or shortened ; whence 
 cwW2/-pipe, a short pipe. 
 
 I'm no sae scant o' clean pipes as to blaw 
 wi' a burnt cutty. — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Till first ae caper, then anither, 
 
 Tam tint his reason a' thegither, 
 
 And roared out " Weel done, cutty sark ! " 
 
 And in an instant a' was dark. 
 
 — Burns : Tam o Shanter. 
 
 Her cutty sark, o' Paisley ham, 
 That when a lassie she had worn, 
 
 In longitude though sorely scanty, 
 It was her best, and she was vaunty. 
 —Ibid. 
 
 Cuttie-stool, a three-legged stool; 
 a short stool, such as Jennie 
 Geddes is reported to have 
 thrown from the pulpit stairs 
 at the head of the heretical 
 minister. 
 
 A circumstance connected with Scottish 
 church discipline has undergone a great 
 change in my time — I mean the public 
 censure from the pulpit of persons con- 
 victed of a breach of the seventh command- 
 ment. . . . This was performed by the 
 guilty person standing up before the whole 
 congregation on a raised platform called 
 the cutty-stool. — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 The culprits did not always take the ad- 
 monition patiently. It is recorded of one 
 of them in Ayrshire, that when accused of 
 adultery by the minister, he interrupted 
 and corrected his reverend monitor by 
 denying the imputation, and calling out, 
 "Na! na! minister; it was simple /ornie 
 (fornication), and no adultery ava." — Ibid. 
 
 Cutty-mun and tree-ladle. These 
 words, according to Jamieson, 
 were the names of old tunes 
 once popular in Scotland. No 
 trace of them, however, has 
 hitherto been discovered, and 
 the interpretation given to them 
 by Jamieson remains a mere 
 supposition on his part. Cutty- 
 mun, he says, means a spoon 
 with a short handle. Cutty no 
 doubt signifies short or small, 
 as in cutty-stool and in {Mtty- 
 pipe ; but Jamieson should have 
 been aware that in no known lan- 
 guage does mun signify a spoon. 
 Investigation would have shown 
 him that the same language 
 from which cutty is derived sup- 
 
38 
 
 Daff- — Dambrod. 
 
 plied the true etymology of mwn, 
 from mainne, delay, and that 
 cutty-mun signified short delay. 
 In like manner tree-ladle has no 
 reference to a wooden spoon or 
 ladle, as he supposed, but is 
 derived from the Gaelic triall, 
 departure on a journey, and 
 luathaich, speed ; luathailteach, 
 swift, speedy. Thus the old 
 tune mentioned by Jamieson 
 resolves itself into a Low- 
 land rendering of the Gaelic, 
 
 and signified "a short shrift 
 and speedy exit." This would 
 be an appropriate phrase ap- 
 plied to the hanging of a High- 
 land criminal by a feudal chief, 
 or to i the more formal but 
 equally eflScacious justice as 
 administered in the Lowlands, 
 and is, there can be little or no 
 doubt, the real meaning of the 
 name of the old song on which 
 Jamieson relied for his inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 Daff, to make merry, to be sportive ; 
 daffin', merriment. 
 
 Wi' daffin weary grown, 
 Upon a knowe they sat them down. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Dr. Adam, Rector of the High School 
 of Edinburgh, rendered the Horatian ex- 
 pression " desipere in loco " by the Scottish 
 phrase " weel-timed daffin " — a translation 
 which no one but a Scot could properly 
 appreciate. — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 I>aff has long ceased to be cur- 
 rent English, though it was used 
 by Shakespeare in the sense of 
 to befool. In the scene between 
 Leonato and Claudio in " Much 
 Ado About Nothing," when 
 Claudio refuses to fight with 
 an old man, Leonato rephes : 
 
 Canst thou so ^a^ me— thou who killed 
 my child ? 
 
 The Shakespearean commen- 
 tators all agree that this word 
 - should be doff me, or put me off. 
 
 They interpret in the same way 
 the line in King Lear : — 
 
 The madcap Prince of Wales, that 
 daff'd the world aside ! 
 
 It would appear, however, that 
 in both instances, daff was used 
 in the sense which it retains in 
 Scotch, that of fool or befool. 
 
 Daft, crazy, wild, mad. 
 
 Or maybe in a frolic daft 
 
 To Hague or Calais take a waft. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Daidle, to trifle, to dawdle. 
 
 Daidlin in the mock-turtle ! I hate 
 a' things mock. — Nodes Ainbrosiance. 
 
 Daiker or daker, to saunter, to 
 stroll lazily or idly, or without 
 defined purpose or object. 
 
 Dambrod, draught - board or 
 chess-board ; from the Flemish 
 dambord ; the first syllable from 
 
Dapperpye — Dautie. 
 
 39 
 
 the French dame^ or jcu aux 
 dames, draughts. 
 
 Mrs. Chisholm entered the shop of a 
 linen-draper, and asked to be shown some 
 table-cloths of a dambrod pattern. The 
 shopman was taken aback at such appar- 
 ently strong language as " damned broad," 
 used by a respectable lady. The lady, on 
 her part, was surprised at the stupidity 
 of the London shopman, who did not 
 understand so common a phrase. — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Dapperpye, brilliant with many- 
 colours ; from dapper, neat and 
 smart, the German tapfer, brave, 
 English, bravery in attire, and 
 pied, variegated. 
 
 Oh, he has pu'd off his dapperpye coat. 
 The silver buttons glanced bonny. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Annan 
 Water. 
 
 Darg or daurk, a job of work ; 
 from the Gaelic dearg, a plough. 
 
 You will spoil the darg if you stop the 
 plough to kill a mouse. — Northumbrian 
 Proverb. 
 
 He never did a good darg that gaed 
 grumbling about it. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Monie a sair daurk we hae wrought. 
 
 — Burns : To his Auld Mare 
 Maggie. 
 
 Darger, a day-labourer, one who 
 works by the piece or job ; also 
 a ploughman. 
 
 The croonin kye the byre drew nigh. 
 The darger left his thrift. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Water 
 Kelpie. ^ 
 
 Daud, to pelt ; also a large piece. 
 
 I'm busy too, an' skelpin' at it. 
 But bitter daudin showers ha'e wat it. 
 —Burns: To J. Lapraik. 
 
 He'll clap a shangan on her tail, 
 An' set the bairns to dai4d her 
 Wi' dirt this day. 
 —Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 A daud o' bannock 
 Wad mak' him blithe as a body could. 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Daud and hlaud or hlad are 
 synonymous in the sense of a 
 large piece of anything, and 
 also of pelting or driving, as 
 applied to rain or wind. 
 
 I got a great blad o' Virgil by heart. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Dauner or daunder, to saunter, 
 to stroll leisurely, without a 
 purpose. 
 
 Some idle and mischievous youths waited 
 for the minister on a dark night, and one 
 of them, dressed as a ghost, came up to 
 him in hopes of putting him in a fright. 
 The minister's cool reply upset the plan. 
 "Weel, Maister Ghaist, is this a general 
 rising, or are ye jist taking a dauner 
 frae your grave by yoursel' ? " — Dean 
 Ramsay's Reminiscences. 
 
 Daunton, to subdue, to tame, to 
 daunt, to dominate, to break in 
 (applied to horses) ; from the 
 Gaelic dan, bold, daring, and 
 danaich, to exert boldness, to 
 dare, to challenge, to defy. 
 
 To daunton me, and me sae young, 
 Wi' his fause heart an' flatterin' tongue, 
 That is the thing ye ne'er shall see, 
 For an auld man shall never daunton me. 
 — Old Song, altered by Burns. 
 
 Daut, to fondle, to caress. 
 
 Dautie, a darling, one who is fon- 
 dled and affectionately treated ; 
 allied to the English doat, doat 
 upon, and dotage. 
 
40 
 
 Daw — Deas. 
 
 Whae'er shall say I wanted Jean, 
 When I did kiss and daut her. 
 
 — Burns : Had I the ivyte. 
 My dautie and my doo (dove). 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 To some it may appear that daivtie may 
 have had its origin from the Gaelic dalt, a 
 foster-child. — Jamieson. 
 
 Yestreen ye were your daddie's doo, 
 But an your mither's dautie. 
 — Bvchan's Ancient Bal/ads : The 
 Trooper and Fair Maid. 
 
 Daw, a slut, akin to the colloquial 
 English dowdy, an ill -dressed 
 woman or sloven. 
 
 See-saw, Margery Daw, 
 
 Sold her bed and lay in the straw. 
 
 — Nursery Rhyme. 
 
 Dawds and blawds is a phrase 
 that denotes the greatest abun- 
 dance. — Jamieson. 
 
 Dawk, a drizzling rain ; dawky, 
 moist, rainy, not exactly a down- 
 pour of steady rain, but of inter- 
 mittent drizzle. 
 
 Day-daw, abbreviation of day- 
 dawn, or dawn of day. 
 
 Dead is often used in the sense of 
 very, extremely, or entirely, as in 
 the English word dead-heat. It 
 occurs in Scottish parlance as 
 dead-loun, very calm and still; 
 dcad-cauld, extremely cold ; dead- 
 ripe, very ripe, or ripe to rotten- 
 ness ; dead-sweir, extremely lazy 
 or tired out. 
 
 Dear me ! Oh dear me ! Deary 
 
 me ! These colloquial exclama- 
 tions are peculiar to the Eng- 
 lish and Scottish languages, and 
 are indicative either of surprise, 
 
 pain, or pity. If the word 
 " dear " be accepted as correct, 
 and not a corruption of some 
 other word with a different 
 meaning, the explanation, if 
 literally translated into any 
 other language, would be non- 
 sensical ; in French, for in- 
 stance, it would be clier moi ! 
 and in German, A ch theuer mich ! 
 The original word, as used by 
 our British ancestors, and 
 misunderstood by the Danes, 
 Flemings, and Dutch, who suc- 
 ceeded them in part posses- 
 sion of the country, appears to 
 have been the Gaelic Dia {dee-a), 
 God. Oh Dia ! or Oh dear ! 
 and Oh dear me ! would signify, 
 God ! Oh God I or Oh my God ! 
 synonymous with the French 
 Mon Dieu ! or Oh mon Dieu ! and 
 the German Mein Gott ! or Ach 
 mein Gott ! 
 
 Deas, a stone seat in the porch, 
 or at the porch of a church, 
 probably so named from its 
 usual position at the right hand 
 side ; from the Gaelic deas, the 
 right side, on the right hand. 
 
 An' when she came to Marie's kirk. 
 
 An' sat down in the deas. 
 The licht that came frae fair Annie 
 
 Enlichten't a' the place. 
 
 Vkkcy' s Reliques : Sweet William 
 and Fair A nnie. 
 
 The etymology of the Eng- 
 lish and French word dais has 
 given rise to much diference of 
 opinion. Stormonth's English 
 Dictionary defines dais as "a 
 canopy over a throne, after- 
 wards the whole seat," and sug- 
 
Deave — Deray. 
 
 4t 
 
 gests a derivation from the " old 
 French dais, a. table, from Latin 
 discus, a quoit — the raised floor 
 at the upper end of a dining- 
 room ; a raised seat, often cano- 
 pied." Brachet's Etymological 
 Dictionary, in which the com- 
 piler follows Littr^, says that 
 *' dais in old French always 
 meant a dinner-table, but espe- 
 cially a state table with a 
 canopy ; that gradually the 
 sense of table has been lost, 
 and that of canopy prevails ; 
 whereas in England the sense 
 of canopy is lost, while that of 
 the platform on which the table 
 stands has taken its place." 
 
 May not all these apparent 
 discrepancies between canopy, 
 platform, table, seat, and disk 
 or discus, be explained by the 
 Gaelic deas, as the real origin of 
 dais ? The right-hand side of 
 the host was the place of honour, 
 reserved for the most distin- 
 guished guest ; and the canopy 
 was raised, as a matter of course, 
 at the upper end of the ban- 
 queting hall, where kings and 
 great nobles held their festivals. 
 The suggestion will be taken by 
 philologists quantum vaZeat. It 
 is certainly as well deserving 
 of consideration as the deriva- 
 tion from discus is, which has 
 hitherto found favour with phi- 
 lologists who are ignorant of the 
 Gaelic. 
 
 Deave, to deafen. 
 
 Last May a braw wooer came down the 
 lang glen, 
 An' sair wi' his love he did deave me ; 
 
 I said there was naethin' I hated like men, 
 The deil gae wi'm to believe me. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 A drunken wife I hae at hame, 
 
 Her noisome din aye deaves me ; 
 The ale-wife, the ale-wife, 
 
 The ale-wife she grieves me ; 
 The ale-wife an' her barrelie 
 They ruin me an' deave me. 
 
 — Buchan's Scots Songs and 
 Ballads. 
 
 Deil's-buckie or Deevil's-buckie, 
 
 an angry epithet applied to any 
 mischievous lad or small boy. 
 Jamieson says huckie signifies a 
 spiral shell of any kind, and 
 adds that a refractory urchin 
 is not only designated by irate 
 persons as a deiVs buckie, but as 
 a thrawn or twisted buckle. It 
 may be questioned, however, 
 whether huckie is not derived 
 from the Gaelic buachaille, a 
 cowherd, and not from a shell, 
 as far more likely to be in use 
 among a pastoral and agricul- 
 tural peasantry than a shell, 
 that is not in any way sugges- 
 tive of either a good boy or a 
 bad one, 
 
 Deray, disorder, disarray. The 
 word is also applied to any 
 amusement of a boisterous char- 
 acter. 
 
 Sic dancin' and deray. 
 
 —Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 The word is used by the old 
 poets Barbour and Douglas, but 
 seldom or never by those of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, and is all but obsolete. 
 
42 
 
 Dern — Dilly Castle. 
 
 Dem, dismal, gloomy. 
 
 Auld Dourie never saw a blink, 
 The lodging was so dark and dem. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Chirstie's Will. 
 
 Deuch, a drink, a draught ; a cor- 
 ruption of the Gaelic deoch, which 
 has the same meaning. Jamie- 
 son has deuch-an-dorach and 
 deuch-an-doris, both corruptions 
 of the Gaelic deoch-an-dorus, a 
 drink at the door, the parting 
 cup, the stirrup-cup. The ale- 
 house sign, once common in Eng- 
 land as well as in Scotland, 
 "The Dog and Duck," appears 
 to have had no relation to aqua- 
 tic sports, but to have been a 
 corruption of the Gaelic deoch 
 an diugh, a drink to-day. In 
 the same manner, " Mad Dog" 
 — once set up as a sign at a 
 place called Odell, as recorded 
 in Hotten's " History of Sign- 
 boards" — is merely the GaeUc of 
 math deoch or maith deoch, good 
 drink. In the London slang of 
 the present day, duke is a word 
 used among footmen and grooms 
 for gin. 
 
 Deuk. A vulgar old song, which 
 Burns altered and sent to 
 "Johnson's Museum," without 
 much improvement on the 
 coarse original, commences with 
 the lines : — 
 
 The bairns gat out wi' an unco shout. 
 The deuk's dang o'er my daddie, oh I 
 
 The fient may care, quo' the ferlie auld wife, 
 He was but a paidlin' body, oh ! 
 
 The glossaries that accompany 
 the editions of Burns issued by 
 
 Allan Cunningham, Alexander 
 Smith, and others, all agree in 
 stating that deuTc signifies the 
 aquatic fowl the duck. But 
 " the ducTc has come over, or 
 beaten over, or flown over my 
 father," does not make sense of 
 the passage, or convey any mean- 
 ing whatever. It is probable — 
 though no editor of Burns has 
 hitherto hinted it — that the 
 word deuk should be deuch, 
 from the Gaelic deoch, drink, a 
 deep potation, which appears in 
 Jamieson without other allusion 
 to its Gaelic origin than the 
 weU-known phrase the deoch- 
 an-dorus, the stirrup-cup or 
 drink at the door. {See Deuch, 
 ante.) Seen in this light, the 
 line "the deuch' 8 dang o'er my 
 daddie" would signify "the 
 drink or drunkenness has beaten 
 or come over my daddie," and 
 there can be little doubt that 
 this is the true reading. 
 
 Dew-piece, a slight refreshment, 
 a piece of bread, a scone, or oat- 
 cake, given out to farm-servants 
 in the early morning before pro- 
 ceeding to out-of-door work. 
 
 Dight, to wipe, or wipe off. 
 
 Dight your mou' ere I kiss you. 
 
 —Old Song. 
 
 Just as I dight frae the table the wine 
 drops in ma sleeve. — Nodes AmbrosiamB. 
 
 Dilly castle. This, according to 
 Jamieson, is a name given by 
 boys to a mound of sand which 
 they erect on the-sea shore, and 
 stand upon until the advancing 
 
Ding — Dirdunt, 
 
 43 
 
 tide surrounds it and washes it 
 away. He thinks the name 
 comes from the Teutonic " digle 
 or digel, secretus, or from the 
 Swedish doelja or dylga, oc- 
 cultare suus, a hiding-place." 
 The etymology was not so far 
 to seek or so difficult to find as 
 Dr. Jamieson supposed, but is 
 of purely home origin in the 
 Gaelic dile (in two syllables), a 
 flood, an inundation, an over- 
 flow of water. 
 
 Ding, to beat, or beat out ; from 
 the Gaelic dinn, to trample, to 
 tread down. 
 
 If ye've the deil in ye, ding him out wi' 
 his brither. Ae deil dings anither. 
 
 It's a sair dung (beaten) bairn that manna 
 greet. — Allan Ramsay, Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Ding only survives in English 
 in the phrase ding, dong, bell ; 
 and is the slang of working 
 people out on the strike for an 
 advance of wages, who call a 
 comrade who has left the con- 
 federacy, and yielded to the 
 terms of the employer, a dung, 
 i.e., one who is beaten in the 
 conflict. 
 
 The following ludicrous ex- 
 ample of the use of dung as 
 the past tense of ding, to beat, 
 is given by Dean Ramsay in 
 an anecdote of two bethrels 
 or beadles, who were severally 
 boasting of the fervour of their 
 two ministers in preaching : — 
 
 "I think," said one, "our minister did 
 weel. Ay ! he gart the stour fly out o' the 
 cushion." To which the other replied with 
 a calm feeling of superiority, " Stour out 
 
 o' the cushion ! Hoot ! our minister, sin' 
 he cam' till us, has dung the guts out o' twa 
 Bibles ! " 
 
 Dink, from the Gaelic diong, 
 worthy, highly esteemed, proud, 
 is suggested by Jamieson to 
 mean neat, prim, saucy. The 
 word occurs in the song, "My 
 lady's gown there's gairsupon't," 
 in which a lover draws a contrast 
 between the great lady of his 
 neighbourhood and the humble 
 lass that he is in love with, to 
 the disadvantage of the former. 
 To "dink up" is to dress gor- 
 geously or ostentatiously. Gair, 
 in the title of the song, signifies 
 an ornamental fold in the 
 dress. 
 
 My lady's dink, my lady's dressed. 
 The flower and fancy o' the West ; 
 But the lassie that a man lo'es best, 
 That's the lass to make him blest. 
 
 Dinsome, noisy, full of din. 
 
 Till block an' studdie (stithy or anvil) ring 
 
 and reel 
 Wi' dinsome clamour. * 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Dirdum, noise, uproar; supposed 
 to be a corruption of the Gaelic 
 torman, noise, uproar, confu- 
 sion. 
 
 Humph ! it's juist because — ^juist that 
 the dirdum's a' about yon man's pock- 
 manty.— Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Sic a dirdum about naething. 
 
 — Laird of Logan. 
 
 What wi' the dirdum and confusion, 
 and the lowpin here and there of the 
 skeigh brute of a horse. — Scott: For* 
 tunes of Nigel. 
 
44 
 
 Dirl — Donsie. 
 
 Dirl, a quivering blow on a hard 
 substance. 
 
 I threw a noble throw at ane. 
 
 become much more common in 
 English than " never-do-well." 
 
 It jist played dirl upon the bane, 
 But did nae mair. 
 ' — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Divot, a piece of turf ready cut 
 and dried for burning. 
 
 The dell sat gimin' in the neuk, 
 Rivin' sticks to roast the Duke, 
 { And aye they kept it hot below, 
 Bonnie laddie ! Highland laddie ! 
 Wi' peats and divots frae Glencoe, 
 Bonnie laddie ! Highland laddie ! 
 
 — Jacobite Ballad. 
 
 Doited, confused, bewildered, 
 stupid; hopelessly perplexed; 
 of a darkened or hazy intellect. 
 
 I'hou clears the head o' doited lear. 
 Thou cheers the heart o' droopin' care, 
 Thou even brightens dark despair 
 Wi' gloomy smile. 
 
 — BuKNS : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Ye auld, blind, doited bodie, 
 
 And blinder may ye be — 
 'Tis but a bonnie milking cow 
 My minnie gied to me. 
 — Our Gudeman cam' Hame at E'en. 
 
 This word seems to be deriv- 
 able from the Gaelic doite^ dark- 
 coloured, obscure. 
 
 Doited evidently has some connection 
 with the modern English word dotage, 
 which again comes from dote, which an- 
 ciently had, in addition to its modern 
 meaning, that of to grow' dull, senseless, 
 or stupid. — R. Drennan, 
 
 Do-nae-guid and Ne'er-do-weel. 
 
 These words are synonymous, 
 and signify what the French call 
 a vaurien, one who is good for 
 nothing. Neer-do-weel has lately 
 
 Donnart, stupefied. 
 
 Just dung don- 
 
 "Has he learning' 
 nart wi' learnin'." 
 
 —Scott : St. Ronaris Well. 
 
 Jamieson traces this word to 
 the German donner, thunder ; 
 but it comes most likely from 
 the Gaelic donas, ill-fortune, or 
 donadh, mischief, hurt, evil — 
 corrupted by the Lowland 
 Scotch by the insertion of the 
 letter r. The EngUsh word 
 dunce appears to be from the 
 same source, and signifies an 
 unhappy person, who is too 
 stupid to learn. 
 
 Donnot or donot, a ne'er-do-weel, 
 usually applied to an idle or 
 worthless girl or woman ; a cor- 
 ruption of do-nought, or do- 
 nothing. 
 
 Janet, thou donot, 
 I'll lay my best bonnet 
 Thou gets a new gudeman afore it be night. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 Donsie, unlucky ; from the Gaelic 
 donas, misfortune ; the reverse 
 of sonas, sonsie or lucky. 
 
 Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, 
 
 Their failings and mischances. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Ufico Guid. 
 
 Jamieson admits that the 
 word may be derived from the 
 Gaelic donas, and says that it 
 means not only unlucky, but 
 pettish, peevish, ill-natured, 
 dull, dreary. But all these epi- 
 thets resolve themselves more 
 or less intimately into the idea 
 of unluckiness. 
 
Doo — Dous. 
 
 45 
 
 Doo, a dove, a pigeon ; <^o-tart or 
 tert, a pigeon-pie. *' My bonnie 
 doo " is a familiar and tender 
 salutation to a lover. Doo-cot, 
 a dove-cot. 
 
 Oh, lay me doun, my doo, my doo, 
 
 Oh, lay me doun, my ain kind dearie ; 
 For dinna ye mind upo' the time 
 We met in the wood at the well sae 
 wearie. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Dook or douk, to dive under 
 water. Colloquial English, to 
 duck or dive. 
 
 Gae douk, gae douk, the king he cried, 
 Gae douk for gold and fee. 
 Oh, wha will douk for Hunter's sake. 
 — Herd's Collection ; Young Hunter. 
 
 Dool or dule, pain, grief, doleful- 
 ness ; from the Gaelic dolas, 
 the French deuil, mourning. 
 
 Of a' the numerous human dools, 
 
 Thou bear'st the gree. 
 — Burns : Address to the Toothache. 
 
 I'hough dark and swift the waters pour, 
 Yet here I wait in dool and sorrow ; 
 
 For bitter fate must I endure. 
 Unless I pass the stream ere morrow. 
 — Legends of the Isles. 
 
 Oh, dule on the order 
 Sent our lads to the Border — 
 The English for once by guile won the day. 
 — The Flowers of the Forest. 
 
 Dorty, haughty, stubborn, austere, 
 supercilious ; from dour, hard 
 (q.v.) 
 
 Let dorty dames say na ! 
 
 As lang as e'er they please, 
 Seem caulder than the snaw 
 While inwardly they bleeze. 
 —Allan Ramsay : Polwarth on the 
 Green. 
 
 Then though a minister grov/ldorty, 
 Ye '11 snap your fingers 
 Before his face. 
 —Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Douce, of a gentle or courteous 
 disposition ; from the French 
 d(yax, sweet. 
 
 Ye dainty deacons and ye douce conveners. 
 —Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Ye Irish lords, ye knights and squires, ; 
 Who represent our brughs and shires, 
 An' doucely manage our aflFairs 
 In Parliament. 
 —Burns: The Author s Earnest Cry 
 and Prayer. 
 
 Doun - draught. A pull -down, 
 draw-down, or drag-down. 
 
 Twa men upon ae dog's a sair doun- 
 draught. — Nodes A mbrosiancB. 
 
 Dour, hard, bitter, disagreeable, 
 close-fisted, severe, stern ; from 
 the French and Latin, dur and 
 dwrus. 
 
 When biting Boreas, fell and dour. 
 Sharp shivers through the leafless bower. 
 —Burns: A Winter Night. 
 
 I've been harsh-tempered and dour 
 enough, I know ; and it's only fitting as 
 they should be hard and dour to me where 
 I'm going.— A. Trollope : Vicar of Bull- 
 hampton. 
 
 Dous or Doos, i.e., doves. To 
 ''shoot amang the dous'^ is a 
 metaphorical phrase for making 
 an assertion at random or with- 
 out knowledge. It is sometimes 
 applied to any wilfully false 
 assertion. The true meaning is 
 merely that of an indiscriminate 
 shot, in the hope of hitting or 
 killing something — as in the 
 
46 
 
 Dow — Down. 
 
 barbarous practice, miscalled 
 sport, which was the fashion 
 under royal patronage at Hur- 
 lingham, of firing into a cloud 
 of pigeons with the chance or 
 the certainty of killing some of 
 them. 
 
 Dow, to be able, of which the 
 synonym in the infinitive mood 
 to can, from the Teutonic Tcannen, 
 has long been obsolete. The 
 misuse and perversion of this 
 word in English in the cus- 
 tomary greeting "How do you 
 do?" is a remarkable instance 
 of the corruption of the popular 
 speech by the illiterate multi- 
 tude, and its adoption after long 
 currency by the literate, until it 
 acquires an apparent authen- 
 ticity and a real vitality which 
 no correction however authori- 
 tative can rectify. *' How do 
 you do?'' originally meant, and 
 still means, how do you douo? 
 i.e., how is your strength or 
 ability? how do you thrive or 
 prosper or get on? as in the 
 German phrase Wie geMs? or 
 Wie hcfinden sie sieh ? the Italian 
 Come state ? or Come sta ? in the 
 French Comment vous portez 
 vous ? or Comment vous va-t-iZ ? 
 or the Gaelic Cia mar tha sibh 
 an diugh, pronounced ca-mar-a 
 shee an dew, equivalent to the 
 English How are you ? The an- 
 cient word doughty, strong, is a 
 derivative of dow, able. Dow 
 is provincial in England, but 
 common in Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Facts are chiels that winna ding, 
 And downa be disputed.— Burns. 
 
 And now he goes daundrin' about the 
 
 dykes, 
 An' a' he dow do is to hund the tykes. 
 —Lady Grizzel Baillie. 
 
 Dowd, stale, flat ; from the Gaelic 
 daoidh, weak, feeble, worth- 
 less. 
 
 Cast na out the dowd water till ye get 
 the fresh. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 Dowf, doof, doofing, doofart. 
 
 All these words are appUed to a 
 stupid, inactive, dull person, 
 and appear to be the originals 
 of the modern English slang a 
 duffer, which has a similar 
 meaning. 
 
 Her <&«j^ excuses pat me mad. 
 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 They're dowfzcnd. dowie at the best, 
 Dowfaxi^ dowie, dow/axvd dowie, 
 
 Wi' a' their variorum ; 
 They canna please a Highland taste 
 
 Compared wi' Tullochgorum. 
 — Rev. John Skinner. 
 
 Dowie, gloomy, melancholy, for- 
 lorn, low-spirited ; from the 
 Gaelic duibhe, blackness. 
 
 It's no the loss o' warl's gear 
 
 That could sae bitter draw the tear, 
 
 Or mak' our bardie, dowie, wear 
 
 The mourning weed. 
 — Burns : Poor Mailie's Elegy. 
 Come listen, cronies, ane and a'. 
 While on my dowie reed I blaw. 
 And mourn the sad untimely fa' 
 
 O' our auld town. 
 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 Down. The Scottish language 
 contains many more compounds 
 of down than the English, such 
 as down-drag and down-draw, 
 that which drags or draws a 
 
Downa-do — Draidgie. 
 
 47 
 
 man down in his fortunes, an 
 incumbrance ; down-throw, of 
 which the English synonym is 
 overthrow ; down-way, a decUvity 
 or downward path ; down-put or 
 doiim-putting, a rebuff ; doion- 
 eoming, abandonment of the 
 sick-room on convalescence ; 
 doion-looJc, a dejected look or 
 expression of countenance ; all 
 of which are really English, 
 although not admitted into the 
 dictionaries. 
 
 Downa-do, impotency, powerless- 
 ness, inability. 
 
 I've seen the day ye buttered my brose, 
 
 And cuddled me late and early, O ! 
 But downa-do s come o'er me now. 
 And oh I feel it sairly, O ! 
 
 — Burns : The Deuk's Dang o'er 
 my Daddie. 
 
 Dowp, the posterior, sometimes 
 written dolp. This word applies 
 not only to the human frame, 
 but to the bottom or end of 
 anything, and is used in such 
 phrases as the " dowp of a 
 candle," "the dowp of an ^%%," 
 as well as in the threats of 
 an angry mother to a young 
 child, " I'll skelp your dowp'' 
 *' Where's your grannie, my wee 
 man 1 " was a question asked 
 of a child. The child replied, 
 ** Oh, she's ben the house, burn- 
 ing her dowp,'' i.e., her candle* 
 end. 
 
 Deil a wig has a provost o' Fairport 
 worn sin auld Provost Jervie's time, and 
 he had a quean o' a servant lass that 
 dressed it hersel' wi' the dowp d a candle 
 and a dredging-box.— Scott : The Anti- 
 quary. 
 
 Dowp-skelper. A humorous word 
 appUed to a schoolmaster ; from 
 skelp, to smite with the palm of 
 the hand. A similar idea enters 
 into the composition of the Eng- 
 lish phrase " a bum-brusher," 
 with the difference that Irusher 
 refers to the rod, and not to the 
 palm of the hand. Burns applies 
 the epithet to the Emperor 
 Joseph of Austria, with what 
 allusion it is now difficult to 
 trace : — 
 
 To ken what French mischief was brewin' 
 Or what the drumlie Dutch were doin' — 
 That vile dowp-skelper Emperor Joseph, 
 If Venus yet had got his nose off. 
 — Burns : To a Gentleman who had Pro- 
 mised to send him a Newspaper. 
 
 This word is not to be mis- 
 taken for dw6-skelper — from duh, 
 a pool, a pond, a puddle — and 
 applied to one who rushes on his 
 way recklessly, through thick 
 and thin, heedless of dirt or 
 obstruction. 
 
 Draibles or drabbles, drops of 
 liquor or crumbs of food allowed 
 to fall from the hand upon the 
 clothes in the act of drinking or 
 eating ; akin to the English 
 drihlets, signifying small quanti- 
 ties of anything. 
 
 Draidgie. A funeral entertain- 
 ment ; from the French dragic, a 
 comfit, a sweetmeat. This word 
 does not appear in Jamieson, 
 but is to be found in a small 
 and excellent handbook of the 
 Scottish vernacular, published 
 in Edinburgh, 1818. 
 
48 
 
 Dram — Dreigh. 
 
 Dram. This ancient Scottish word 
 for a small glass or "nip"of whisky 
 or any other alcoholic liquor has 
 long been adopted into English, 
 but has no synonym of any allied 
 sound in any other European 
 language. The French call it a 
 ''petit verre," and the Germans 
 a •* schnapps," while the Ameri- 
 cans have recently taken to call- 
 ing it a " smie, " or " a/i eye-opener. " 
 Philologists have been contented 
 to derive it from the Greek 
 drachma, though, if this be the 
 fact, it is curious that the word 
 has not found its way into the 
 vernacular of any other people 
 than those of the British Isles. 
 But though the classic etymo- 
 logy be too firmly rooted in 
 popular estimation to be readily 
 abandoned, it may be interest- 
 ing to note that in Lowland 
 Scotch dram originally signified 
 melancholy, heaviness of mind, 
 from the Gaelic truime, heavi- 
 ness, and that the dram was re- 
 sorted to in order to raise the 
 spirits and drive out melancholy 
 — an idea which seems to have 
 suggested the current American 
 slang of a ''smiled 
 
 *" A story is told in Scotland of an old 
 farmer too much addicted to his "dram" 
 and his toddy, who was strictly forbidden 
 by his medical attendant to indulge in 
 more than an ounce of whisky per diem, if 
 he hoped to escape a serious illness. The 
 old man was puzzled at the word "ounce," 
 and asked his son,*who had studied at the 
 University of St. Andrews and was quali- 
 fying for the Scottish ministry, what the 
 doctor meant by an ounce. " An ounce," 
 said his son, "why, every one knows that 
 an ounce is sixteen drams (drachms)." 
 " Ah ! weel," said his sire, " if I may tak' 
 
 saxteen drams i' the day, it's a' richt, 
 an' I'll dae weel eneuch. The doctor, nae 
 doot, kens his business. I've already had 
 twa the day, and I've still fourteen to the 
 fore ! " Tradition does not record the ulti- 
 mate fate of the old farmer. 
 
 Dreder, terror, apprehension, 
 dread of impending evil ; some- 
 times written dredour. 
 What aileth you, my daughter Janet, 
 
 You look so pale and wan ? 
 There is a dreder in your heart, 
 Or else you love a man. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads: Lord 
 Thomas and the Kings Daughter. 
 
 Dree, to endure, to suffer ; pro- 
 bably from the Teutonic triiben, 
 to trouble, to sadden, and 
 thence to endure trouble or 
 suffering ; or from tragen, to 
 bear, to carry, to draw. 
 
 Sae that no danger do thee deir 
 What dule in dem thou dree 
 (What soon thou mayst suffer in secret). 
 —Robyn and Makyn ; The Evergreen. 
 Oh wae, wae by his wanton sides, 
 
 Sae brawlie he could flatter. 
 Till for his sake I'm slighted sair, 
 
 And dree the kintra clatter. 
 — Burns ; Here's his Health in Water. 
 
 In the dialects of the North 
 of England, to dree is used in 
 the sense of to draw or journey 
 towards a place. 
 
 In the summer-time, when leaves grow 
 green, 
 And birds sing on the tree, 
 Robin Hood went to Nottingham 
 As fast as he could dree. 
 — Robin Hood and the Jolly Tinker. 
 
 Dreigh, difficult, hard to travel, 
 
 tedious, prolix, dry. 
 Hech, sirs ! but the sermon was sair dreigh ! 
 — Galt. 
 
 Dreich at the thought and dour at the 
 delivery. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
Driddle — Drumlie. 
 
 49 
 
 Driddle. This is a word of several 
 meanings, all more or less signi- 
 ficant of anything done by small 
 quantities at a time, such as to 
 urinate often, to move with slow 
 steps, to spill a liquid by un- 
 steady handling of the vessel 
 which contains it. It appears 
 to be traceable to the Gaelic 
 drudh or druidh, to ooze, to 
 drip, to penetrate, and drudhag, 
 a small drop. 
 
 Droddum, a jocular name for the 
 breech, the posteriors, but more 
 popularly known as the hurdies 
 or dowp (which see). 
 
 My sooth ! right bauld ye set your nose out, 
 As plump and grey as ony grozet ; 
 Oh, for some rank mercurial rozet, 
 
 Or fell red smeddum, 
 I'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o't, 
 
 Wad dress your droddum. 
 —Burns : To a Louse, on seeing one on 
 a Lady's Bonnet at Church. 
 
 The word seems to be of kin 
 to drod, thick, squat, fleshy. 
 The derivation is uncertain. 
 
 Droich, a dwarf ; from the Gaelic 
 troid or troich, with the same 
 meaning. 
 
 Only look at the pictures (of the aristo- 
 cracy) in their auld castles. What beauti- 
 ful and brave faces ! Though now and 
 then, to be sure, a dowdy or a droich, — 
 Noctes Atnbrosiance. 
 
 Drook, to wet; drookit, wet 
 
 through, thoroughly saturated 
 with moisture ; from the Gaelic 
 druchd, dew, moisture, a tear, a 
 drop; drudhag {dru-ag), a drop 
 of water; and drughadh, pene- 
 trating, oozing through. The 
 
 resemblance to the Greek SaKpv, 
 a tear, is noteworthy. 
 
 There were twa doos sat in a dookit, 
 The rain cam' doun and they were drookit. 
 
 — Nursery Song. 
 The last Hallowe'en I was waukin' 
 
 My drookit sark sleeve, as ye ken, 
 His likeness cam ben the house stalkin'. 
 
 And the vera grey breeks o' Tam Glen. 
 —Burns: Tam Glen. ' 
 
 My friends, you come to the kirk every 
 Sabbath, and I lave you a' ower wi' the 
 Gospel till ye're fairly drookit wi't. — Ex- 
 tract from, a sermon by a minister in 
 Arran : Rogers's Illustrations of Scot- 
 tish Life. 
 
 Drouth, thirst ; drouthie, thirsty ; 
 from dry, dryeth. 
 
 Tell him o' mine and Scotland's drouth. 
 — Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 Folks talk o' my drink, but never talk o' 
 my drouth. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 When drouthie neebors neebors meet. 
 
 — Burns : Tam o' Shanter. 
 
 Drumlie, turbid or muddy (ap- 
 plied to water), confused, not 
 clear ; applied metaphorically to 
 thoughts or expression. This 
 word would be a great ac- 
 quisition to the English lan- 
 guage if it could be adopted, 
 and lends a peculiar charm to 
 many choice passages of Scottish 
 poetry. All its English synon- 
 yms are greatly inferior to it, 
 both in logical and poetical ex- 
 pression. It is derived from the 
 Gaelic trom or truim, heavy 
 (and applied to water), turbid. 
 The word appears at one time 
 to have been good English. 
 
 Draw me some water out of this spring. 
 Madam, it is all foul, drumly, black, 
 muddy ! — French and English Grammar, 
 1623. 
 
50 
 
 Drummock — DunL 
 
 Haste, boatman, haste I put off your boat, 
 Put off your boat for golden monie ; 
 
 I'll cross the drumlit stream to-night, 
 Or never mair I'll see my Annie. 
 —Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 When blue diseases fill the drumlie air. 
 —Allan Ramsav. 
 
 Drink drumly German water 
 To make himself look fair and fatter. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 They had na sailed a league, a league, 
 
 A league but barely three, 
 When dismal grew his countenance, 
 
 And drumlie grew his e'e. 
 
 — Laidlaw : The Demon Lover. 
 
 There's good fishing in drumlie waters. 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 I heard once a lady in Edinburgh ob- 
 jecting to a preacher that she did not 
 understand him. Another lady, his great 
 admirer, insinuated that probably he was 
 too deep for her to follow. But her ready 
 answer was, " Na, na !— he's no just deep, 
 ut he's drumly."— Dkkh Ramsay. 
 
 Drummock, cold porridge.— iNToc^M 
 AmbrosiancB. 
 
 Drunt, draunt, to drawl, to whine, 
 to jrrumble; a fit of ill-humour, 
 pcttishness. Both of these words 
 are from the Gaelic dranndan, 
 grumbling, growling, mourning, 
 complaining ; dranndanach, pee- 
 vish, morose, though errone- 
 ously derived by Jamieson from 
 the Flemish drinten, tumescere. 
 
 May nae doot took the drunt, 
 To be compared to Willie. 
 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 Nae weel-tocher'd aunts to wait on their 
 
 drunts. 
 And wish them in hell for it a*, man. 
 
 —Burns : The Tarbolton Lasses. 
 
 But lest he think I am uncivil, 
 To plague you with this draunting drivel. 
 —Burns. 
 
 Dub, a small pool of dirty water. 
 The Qoosc-dubs is the name of a 
 street in Glasgow. Deuk-dub, a 
 duck-pond. 
 
 O'er dub and dyke 
 She'll run the fields all through. 
 — Leader Haughs and Yarrow. 
 There lay a deuk-dub afore the door. 
 And there fell he, I trow. 
 
 —Herd's Collection : The Brisk 
 Young Lad. 
 
 Dud, a rag ; duddies, little rags. 
 
 Then he took out his little knife, 
 
 Let a' his duddies fa*. 
 An' he was the brawest gentleman 
 That stood amang them a'. 
 — We'll Gang no* Mair a Rovin. 
 A smytrie o' wee duddie weans. 
 
 — Burns. 
 The duddie wee laddie may grow a braw 
 man.— David Hutcheson. 
 
 Dunnie-wassal, a Highland gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 There are wild dunnie ' wastats three 
 
 thousand times three 
 Will cry oich for the bonnets o' Bonnie 
 
 Dundee.— Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 This word, generally mis- 
 printed in the Lowlands, and 
 by Sir Walter Scott in his ex- 
 cellent ballad of "Bonnie Dun- 
 dee," is from the Gaelic duinc, a 
 man, and uasal, gentle, noble, of 
 good birth. 
 
 Dunsh, to sit down hastily and 
 heavily. 
 
 His dowp dunshin do^tm.—Noctes Am- 
 brosiana. 
 
 Dunt, a blow, a knock ; from dint, 
 to deal a heavy blow that leaves 
 a mark on a hard substance. 
 
Dush — Eerie. 
 
 51 
 
 I am naebody's lord, 
 
 I am slave to naebody ; 
 I hae a gude broad sword, 
 
 I'll talc' dunts frae naebody. 
 
 —Burns : Naebody. 
 
 Dush or dish, to push with tho 
 head or horns like animals, to 
 butt, to ram ; also to give a hard 
 blow, to destroy or discomfit. 
 
 Ye needna doubt I held my whisht, 
 The infant aith, half-formed, was crusht ; 
 I glower'd as eerie's I'd been dusht 
 
 In some wild glen; 
 Then sweet, like modest worth, she blusht, 
 
 And steppit ben. 
 
 •—Burns: The Vision. 
 
 The English slang duh, to de- 
 feat or conquer, seems to be of 
 similar origin ; as when the late 
 Lord Derby made use of the 
 expression ''Dish the Whigs," 
 he meant to discomfit, circum- 
 vent them, or defeat them as a 
 party. The root seems to be 
 the Gaelic dith {di), to press, 
 to squeeze, and disne, a die or 
 press. 
 
 Duxy, ugly, mischievous ; from 
 the Gaelic duaich and duaich- 
 nidhf ugly. 
 
 You duxy lubber, brace your lyre ; 
 Still higher yet 1 you fiend, play higher. 
 
 Sic themes were never made to suit 
 Your dozen o' lugs, ye duxy brute. 
 — Georgb Bkattik : John o' Amha\ 
 
 Dwam, a swoon, a fainting fit. 
 
 Fast congealin' into a sort oi divam and 
 stupefaction. — Nodes A mbrosiante. 
 
 Dyke-louper, an immoral unmar- 
 ried woman, or mother of an 
 illegitimate child. Tho dyhc in 
 this phrase means the marriage 
 tie, obligation, or sacramental 
 wall that prohibits the illicit 
 intercourse of the sexes ; and 
 louper, one who treats the wall 
 and its impediment as non- 
 existent, or who despises it 
 by louping, jumping, or leaping 
 over it. 
 
 Dyvor, a bankrupt ; from the 
 Gaelic dith (di), to destroy, to 
 break ; and fear, a man — a 
 broken man or bankrupt. Jamie- 
 son derives the word from tho 
 French devoir, duty, or to servo. 
 
 .Smash them, crash them a' to spails. 
 And rot the dyvors in the jails. 
 
 —Burns : Address 0/ Beelzebub. 
 
 E 
 
 Eastie - wastie, a person who 
 docs not know his own mind, 
 who veers round in his purpose 
 from one side to the other, i.e., 
 from eait to vaut. 
 
 Eee-bree, an eyebrow. 
 
 There's no a bird in a' this forest 
 Will do as muckle for me 
 
 As dip its wing in the warm water 
 An' straik it on my ee-bree. 
 — Johnnie o' Braidislee {when dying 
 alone in the forest). 
 
 Eerie, gloomy, wearisome, full of 
 fear. 
 
 In mirkiest glen at midnight hour 
 I'd rove and ne'er be eerie, O I 
 
 If thro* that glen I gacd to tlicc, 
 My ain kind dearie, O.— Burns. 
 
52 
 
 Eith — Erne. 
 
 It was an eerie walk through the still 
 chestnut woods at that still hour of the 
 night. — The Dream Numbers, by T. A. 
 Trollope. 
 Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin' 
 
 Wi' eerie drone. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Eerie is a most difficult word to explain. 
 I don't know any English word that comes 
 near it in meaning. The feeling induced 
 by eerieness is that sort of superstitious 
 fear that creeps over one in darkness, — 
 that sort of awe we feel in the presence of 
 the unseen and unknown. Anything un- 
 usual or incongruous might produce the 
 feeling. "The cry of howlets mak's me 
 eerie," says Tannahill. The following 
 anecdote illustrates the feeling when a 
 thing unusual or incongruous is presented : 
 — An Ayrshire farmer, who had visited 
 Ireland, among other uncos he had seen, 
 related that he went to the Episcopal 
 church there, and this being the first time 
 he had ever heard the English service, he 
 was startled by seeing a falla' come in with 
 a long white sark on, down to his heels. 
 " Lord, sir, the sicht o' him made me feel 
 quite eerie." — R. Drennan. 
 
 Eith, easy ; etymology uncertain, 
 but neither Gaelic, Flemish, nor 
 German, 
 
 It's eith defending a castle that's no 
 besieged. 
 
 It's eith learning the cat the way to 
 the kirn. 
 
 Eith learned, soon forgotten. 
 
 It's eith working when the will's at hame. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Eke, to add to, an addition ; 
 *'eiA;to a testament," a codicil 
 to a will. This English word 
 has acquired a convivial mean- 
 ing in Scotland among toddy- 
 drinkers. When a guest is about 
 to depart, after having had a 
 fair allowance of whisky, the 
 host presses him to *' tak an 
 
 eke"— i.e., another glass, to eke 
 out the quantity. " I hate 
 intemperance," said a northern 
 magistrate, who was reproached 
 by an ultra-temperance advocate 
 for the iniquity of his trade as 
 a distiller, "but I like to see a 
 cannie, respectable, honest man 
 tak' his sax tumblers and an eke 
 in the bosom o' his family. But 
 I canna thole intemperance I " 
 
 Eldritch, fearful, terrible. Jamie- 
 son has this word elrische, and 
 thinks it is related to elves or 
 evil spirits, and that it is derived 
 from two Anglo-Saxon words 
 signifying elf and rich, or 
 rich in elves or fairies ! The 
 true derivation is from the 
 Gaelic oiUt, terror, dread, horror, 
 which, combined with droch, bad, 
 wicked, formed the word as 
 Bums and other Scottish writers 
 use it. 
 
 On the eldritch hill there grows a thorn. 
 —Percy's Reliques : Sir Carline. 
 
 The witches follow 
 Wi' mony an eldritch screech and hollow. 
 —Burns : Tam o' Shunter. 
 
 I've heard my reverend grannie say. 
 In lonely glens ye like to stray, 
 Or where auld ruined castles gray 
 
 Nod to the moon. 
 To fright the nightly wanderer's way 
 Wi' eldritch croon. 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Erne, an uncle ; from the Teutonic 
 okeim. 
 
 The pummel o' a guid auld saddle, 
 And Rob my erne bocht me a sack, 
 Twa lovely lips to lick a ladle. 
 Gin Jenny and I agree, quo' Jock. 
 — The Wooin o' Jenny and Jock. 
 
Ettle — Eytyn, 
 
 53 
 
 Ettle, to try, to attempt, to en- 
 deavour. 
 
 For Nannie, far before the rest, 
 Hard upon noble Maggie prest, 
 And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle. 
 But little wist she Maggie's metal. 
 
 — Burns : Tam o' Skanter. 
 
 I ettled wi' kindness to soften her pride. 
 — James Bai.lantine : The Way to Woo. 
 
 They that ettle to get to the top of the 
 ladder will at least get up some rounds. — 
 They that mint at a gown of gold will 
 always get a sleeve of it. — Scott : The 
 Monastery. 
 
 Ettle. — The correct synonyms are to 
 intend, to expect, to aim at. Intention is 
 the essential element in the meaning of this 
 word. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Everly, continually, always, for 
 ever. 
 
 To be set doun to a wheelie (spinning 
 wheel), 
 An' at it for ever to ca', 
 An' syne to hae't reel by a chielie (fellow) 
 That everly cryed to draw. 
 
 — Wood an' Married an a. 
 
 Ewe-bucht, a sheepf old ; buchtin', 
 or buchtin'-time, the evening 
 time or gloaming, when the 
 cattle are driven into the fold. 
 
 When o'er the hill the eastern star 
 Tells bughtin -tim.e is near, my jo. 
 
 And owsen frae the furrow'd field. 
 Return sae dowf and wearie, O. 
 —Burns : My Ain Kind Dearie, O. 
 
 Oh, the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom. 
 The broom o' the Cowden knowes ! 
 
 And aye sae sweet as the lassie sang, 
 In the ewe-bucht, milking her ewes. 
 — The Broom d the Cowden Knowes. 
 
 The word 'bught seems to be 
 an abbreviation of the Gaelic 
 
 huaigheal, a cow-stall, and huai- 
 chaUle, a cowherd, a shepherd ; 
 huaiie, a fold ; btmilte, folded, or 
 driven into the fold. Jamieson 
 goes to Germany for the root of 
 the word and does not find it. 
 
 Eydent, diligent, earnest, zealous ; 
 from the Gaelic eud, zeal. 
 
 My fair child. 
 
 Persuade the kirkmen eydently to pray. 
 
 — Henrvsone : The Lion and the 
 
 Mouse : The Evergreen. 
 
 Their master's and their mistress'scommand 
 
 The youngsters a' were warned to obey. 
 
 An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand. 
 
 — Burns '.Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Eyrie, an eagle's nest ; from the 
 Gaelic eirich, to rise, and eirigh, 
 a rising. 
 
 The eagle and the stork 
 On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build. 
 
 —Milton. 
 'Tis the fire shower of ruin all dreadfully 
 
 driven 
 From his eyrie that beacons the darkness 
 of heaven. 
 
 —Campbell : LochieTs Warning. 
 
 Ejrtyn, Etyn, Etaine, Aiten, Red- 
 Aiten. This word, with its dif- 
 ferent but not unsimilar spell- 
 ings, appears to be a corruption 
 of the Norse Jotun, a giant. 
 It was formerly used in England 
 as well as in Scotland. Eynde 
 Etyn, or the gentle giant, is the 
 title of a Scottish ballad in Kin- 
 loch's Collection. 
 
 They say the King of Portugal cannot 
 sit at his meat, but the giants and etyns 
 will come and snatch it from him. — Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher : Burning Pestle . 
 
54 
 
 Fa! — FairifH . 
 
 Fa', the Scottish abbrevation of 
 fall. The word is used by Burns 
 in the immortal song of "A 
 man's a man for a' that," in a 
 sense which has given rise to 
 much doubt as to its meaning : — 
 
 A king can mak' a belted knight, 
 A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
 , But an honest man's aboon his might, 
 Gude faith, he mauna^a' that. 
 
 The context would seem to im- 
 ply that /a' means to try, to at- 
 tempt. No author except Bums 
 uses the word in this sense ; and 
 none of the varieties of words 
 in which fall or the act of faLl- 
 ing, either physically or meta- 
 phorically, is the primary mean- 
 ing, meets the necessities of 
 Burns's stanza. Halliwell has 
 fay as an archaic English word, 
 with five different meanings, of 
 which the fourth is to succeed, 
 to act, to work. The /a' of 
 Burns may possibly be a variety 
 of the English word, current in 
 Ayrshire in his time. It finds 
 no place in Jamieson. 
 
 Burns did not originate the 
 idea, so well expressed, and to 
 which he has given such wide 
 currency. It is to be found in 
 an anecdote recorded of King 
 James VI. and his faithful old 
 nurse, who came uninvited from 
 Edinburgh to pay him a visit. 
 It is told that the King was de- 
 lighted to see her, and asked 
 her kindly what he could do 
 
 for her. After some hesitation, 
 she replied that she desired no- 
 thing for herself, only that she 
 wanted his Majesty to make her 
 son a gentleman. * ' Ah, Jeanie, 
 Jeanie ! " said the King, ** I can 
 mak' him a duke, if ye like ; but 
 I canna mak' him a gentleman 
 unless he mak's himsel' ane I " 
 
 Faird, a journey, a course. 
 Jamieson thinks it signifies a 
 hasty and noted effort, and 
 quotes a Mid-Lothian phrase, 
 " Let them alane ; it's but a 
 faird, it'll no last lang ; they'll 
 no win (arrive) far afore us." 
 The word is evidently from the 
 same source as fare, to travel, 
 as in waj-farer ; the Teutonic 
 fahren, to go, to travel; and 
 fdhre, a ferry, a passage over 
 the water, and gefdhrlich, dan- 
 gerous ; as originally applied to 
 travelling in primitive and un- 
 settled times. 
 
 Fairdy, clever, tight, handy ; fair 
 to do. 
 
 With ane ev'n keel before the wind, 
 She is rightyairdy with a sail. 
 
 TAe Fleming Bark— belonging to 
 Edinburgh. 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Evergreen. 
 
 Fair in' signifies either reward 
 or punishment ; one's deserts. 
 Fair fa' ! may good or fair 
 things befall you! is equiva- 
 lent to a benison or benediction. 
 
Fank — Feck. 
 
 55 
 
 Jamieson derives the word from 
 fair or market, and thinks it 
 means a present bought at a 
 fair. But this is guess-work, 
 and does not meet the sense 
 of the passage in "Tarn o' 
 Shanter." Possibly it has some 
 connection with the Teutonic 
 gefakr, danger, also a doom or 
 punishment ; supposed, in its 
 favourable term, to be derived 
 from a present purchased at a 
 fair to be bestowed as a gift on 
 one who was not at it. 
 
 Fair fa your honest, sonsie face, 
 Great chieftain o' the puddin' race. 
 
 — Burns : To a Haggis. 
 
 Ah, Tarn \ ah, Tam ! thou'lt get thy 
 
 fairin ; 
 In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'. 
 
 — Burns : Tam o Shanter. 
 
 Fank, a coil, a tangle, a noose ; 
 possibly from fang, to take hold 
 of. To fank a horse in a field, 
 to catch him with a rope noose 
 or lasso ; fanhit, entangled ; a 
 fanh o' tows, a coil of ropes. 
 It may also be the root of the 
 English /wn/fc, i,e., to be in a coil 
 of perplexity or dread. The com- 
 mon derivation of funk, from 
 the German funk, a sparkle of 
 light, is not tenable. The Gae- 
 lic fainnich signifies to curl, 
 from fainne, a ring. 
 
 Farle, a small oaten or wheaten 
 cake, the fourth part of a ban- 
 nock; from farthel, or fourth 
 part ; the Flemish viertel and 
 Qerman fiertel. 
 
 An' there'll be gude lapper-milk kebbucks, 
 An' sowens, z.x\ farles, an' baps. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Fash, to bother, to worry, to 
 distress one's self; from the 
 French sefdcher, to be angry. 
 
 Fashions, troublesome. 
 
 Speak out, and n&v&r /ash your thumb, i 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 The Rev. John Brown of Whitburn was 
 riding out one day on an old pony, when 
 he was accosted by a rude youth. " I 
 say, Mr. Brown, what gars your horse's tail 
 wag that way ? " " Oh ! " replied Brown, 
 "just what gars your tongue wag; it's 
 fashed -wx a weakness."— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Fazard, dastard, coward. 
 
 They are mair fashions nor of feck ; 
 Yon fazards durst not, for their neck, 
 
 Climb up the crag with us. 
 
 — Montgomery : The Cherry and 
 the Slae. 
 
 The root of this word would 
 appear to be the Gaelic /as, 
 vacant, hollow, good-for-no- 
 thing, with the addition of ard, 
 as in dastarc?, coward, wizard, 
 a suffix which signifies eminent, 
 or in a high degree. Thus, fa- 
 zard or fasard means worthless 
 in the extreme. 
 
 Feck, power, activity, vigour. 
 Feck seems to be derivable from 
 the Gaelic fiach, worth, value. 
 Feckfvl, full of power. Feckless, 
 without power or vigour of body 
 or mind. Worcester, in his dic- 
 tionary, derives this word from 
 effectless. 
 
 Many &feckful chield this day was slain. 
 — Blind Haury's Wallace. 
 
56 
 
 Fell — Feu. 
 
 The lazy luxury which feckless loons 
 indulge in. — Scott. 
 
 Feckless folk are aye fain o' ane anither. 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs, j 
 Poor devil ! see him o'er his trash, 
 PiS, feckless as a withered rash. 
 
 — Burns : To a Haggis. 
 That feckless fouter ! — Nodes Am- 
 brosiatue. 
 
 Fell, to km. 
 
 The sister of a lady, who had died of a 
 surfeit from eating too bountifully of straw- 
 berries and cream, was consoled with by 
 a friend, who said to her, " I had hoped 
 your sister would have lived many years." 
 " Leeve ! " she replied, " how could she 
 leeve, when she just felled hersel' at 
 Craigo wi' strawberries an' cream?" — 
 Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Fend, to ward off — probably a 
 contraction from defend. Fend 
 also means to prosper or do weU, 
 to provide, to live comfortably — 
 possibly from the idea of ward- 
 ing off want or poverty. 
 
 Can she mak' nae better fend for them 
 than that ?— Scott : The Monastery. 
 But gie them guid coo-milk their fill. 
 Till they be fit to fend themsel'. 
 —Burns : Dying Words of Poor Mailie. 
 Here stands a shed to fend the showers, 
 And screen our countra gentry. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 How is \iefendin\ John Tod, John Tod ? 
 He is scouring the land wi' a song in his hand. 
 — Chambers's Scots Songs : John Tod. 
 
 Fendy, clever at contrivances in 
 diflSculty, good at making a 
 shift. 
 " Alice," he said, " was both canny and 
 
 fendy." — Scott : Waverley. 
 
 Ferlie, a wonder, to wonder, won- 
 derful. 
 
 Who barkened ever slike 2i ferlie thing. 
 — Chaucer : The Reeves Tale. 
 
 On Malvern hills 
 Me befel aferly. 
 
 —Piers Ploughman. 
 Never breathe out of kin and make your 
 {riends ferly at you. 
 
 The longer we live the moreferlies we see. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 And tell what new taxation's comin'. 
 And ferlie at the folk in Lunnon. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Ferlie and wonner. In this 
 phrase wonner is a corruption 
 of the English wonder ; a con- 
 temptuous and ludicrous term 
 to designate a person or thing 
 that is strangely, wondrously 
 ugly, ill - favoured, or mean ; 
 almost synonymous with the 
 modern English slang a guy or 
 a cure. Burns uses both words 
 in the same poem : — 
 
 Ha ! where ye gaun, ye crdiwWn' ferlie I 
 
 Ye ugly, creepin', blastit wonner, 
 Detested, shunned by saint and sinner ? 
 — To a Certain Insect, on seeing one 
 on a Lady's Bonnet at Church. 
 
 Ferrikie. Jamieson cites this as 
 an Upper Clydesdale word for 
 " strong, robust." He derives it 
 from the German ferig, which 
 he translates expeditus, alacer ; 
 but there is no such word as 
 ferig in the German language. 
 It is more probably from the 
 Gaelic fear, a man, fearachas, 
 manhood, and fearail, manly, 
 virile, strong, lusty. The Welsh 
 hasher, solid, strong. 
 
 Feu, to let land for building ; a 
 possession held on payment of 
 a certain rent to the feudal 
 proprietor, heritor, or owner of 
 the soil. Where the English 
 
Fey — Fient. 
 
 57 
 
 advertise " land to let for build- 
 ing purposes," the Scotch more 
 tersely say "land to/ew." 
 
 There is, or was lately, a space of un- 
 occupied ground on the " Corran" at Oban, 
 contiguous to DunoUy Castle, in the midst 
 of which on a pole was a board inscribed 
 "This land to feu" An English bishop 
 on his holiday tour having observed the 
 announcement, and wondering what it 
 meant, turned to his wife and asked her 
 if she knew. She did not, and the bishop 
 thereupon hazarded the conjecture that it 
 meant to "fire," from the French ^». 
 " Very likely," replied the lady, " to burn 
 the grass." Before the bishop left Oban 
 his ignorance on the subject was dispelled 
 by a guest at the table-d' hdte of the hotel 
 to whom he applied for information. 
 " Curious language, the Scotch ! " was 
 his lordship's rejoinder. — C. M. 
 
 Fey, fated, bewitched, unlucky, 
 doomed ; one whose fate is 
 foreknown or prophesied ; from 
 the Gaelic faidhf a prophet, the 
 Latin vates. 
 
 Let the fate fall upon ih&feyest. 
 Take care of the man that God has 
 marked, for he's no^^^. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 We'll turn again, said good Lord John, 
 
 But no, said Rothiemay, 
 My steed's trepanned, my bridle's broke, 
 
 I fear this day I'm/ey. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 They hacked and hashed, while broad- 
 swords clashed. 
 
 And through they dashed, and hewed, 
 and smashed. 
 
 Till fey men died awa, man. 
 
 — The Battle of Sheriffmuir. 
 
 Fidgin'-fain, extremely anxious; 
 from jldge, the English fidget, to 
 be restless or anxious, and /aw, 
 willing or desirous. 
 
 It pat m& fdgin fain to hear it. 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 Fiel. The glossaries to Burns 
 explain this word to mean 
 " smooth and comfortable," 
 apparently from the context : — 
 
 Oh, leeze me on my spinnin'-wheel, 
 And leeze me on my rock and reel, 
 Frae tap to tae that deeds me bien, 
 And haps m^.fiel and warm at e'en ! 
 — Bess and her Spinning- Wheel. 
 
 Jamieson, who has fe\i and 
 fiel, defines the words to mean 
 " soft and smooth like velvet, 
 silky to the touch, and also 
 clean, neat, comfortable." The 
 word must not be confounded 
 with/eiZ, fe\Jl, fele, which signify 
 much, many, and very, and 
 are clearly derivable from the 
 Teutonic viel, which has the 
 same meaning ; as viel gelt, much 
 money. Jamieson derives the 
 word used by Burns from the 
 Icelandic /eZ^rfr, habitis idorem ; 
 but this is exceedingly doubtful. 
 The Gaelic has fial, generous, 
 liberal, bountiful, good, hos- 
 pitable ; and possibly it is in 
 this sense that Bess applies the 
 word to the spinnin'-wheel that 
 provides her with raiment. 
 
 Fient, none, not a particle of; 
 equivalent to " the devil a bit," 
 from fiend, the devil ; fient-hait, 
 not an iota, the devil a bit. 
 
 But though he was o' high degree, 
 The^^«^ o' pride — nae pride had he. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 The queerest shape that e'er I saw, 
 Yor fient a wame it had ava ! 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Fient-haet o't wad hae pierced the heart 
 O' a kail runt. — Burns : Idem. 
 
58 
 
 Fiere — Flaw. 
 
 Fiere, a friend, a comrade. This 
 word is supposed by some to be 
 a misprint for frere, a brother. 
 And here's a hand, my trnsiy Jiere, 
 And gie's a hand o' thine. 
 
 — Burns: Auld Langsyne- 
 This word may either be a 
 synonym for the Latin vir and 
 the Gaelic fear, a man, or may 
 be derived from fior, true, or a 
 true man. The Scottish poet 
 Douglas has fior for sound and 
 healthy. It is sometimes spelt 
 feer. 
 
 First-foot, the first person who is 
 met by lad or lass in the morning. 
 
 Early morning she drest up 
 
 And all her maides fair, 
 The ploughman chiel was her _first-/oot 
 
 As she went to take the air. 
 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Flaff, a momentary display. 
 
 Ga' I ever for a flaff in the Park forget 
 my ain cosie bield. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Flamfoo. According to Jamieson 
 this word signifies a gaudily- 
 dressed woman, or any gaudy 
 ornament of female dress. He 
 derives it from an alleged old 
 English word meaning " moon- 
 shine in the water ! " It seems, 
 however, to come from the Gaelic 
 fiann, corrupted into fiam, red, 
 the showy colour so much ad- 
 mired by people of uneducated 
 taste ; conjoined with the Scot- 
 tish fu' for full. The English 
 word flaunting, and the phrase 
 flaunts, fiery red ribbons, are 
 from the same root. 
 
 Flannen, the Scottish as well as the 
 English vernacular Hannen for 
 
 flannel, seems to be preferable 
 to flannel as the correct pronun- 
 ciation of the word. Both are 
 correct if the etymology be cor- 
 rect, which traces the word to 
 the Gaelic flann, red, and olann, 
 wool. In the early ages of 
 civilisation, when wool was first 
 woven for garments to clothe 
 mankind, the favourite colours 
 were red and yellow. In Hak- 
 luyt's Voyages it is said — "By 
 chance they met a canoe of Domi- 
 nicans, to the people whereof he 
 gave a waistcoat of yeUow flan- 
 nel." Probably red was the first 
 dye used, whence/ann-oZanw, red 
 wool. At an after time, when 
 gaudy colours were not so much 
 in request, the wool was bleach- 
 ed, whence blanket or blanquette, 
 whitened. 
 
 I wadna be surprised to spy 
 
 You on an auld wife's flannen toy (cap), 
 
 Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, 
 
 On's wylie-coat ; 
 But Miss's fine Lunardi, fy ! 
 
 How daur ye do't ? 
 — Burns : To a Louse, on seeing' one 
 
 on a Ladys Bonnet at Church. 
 
 Flaucht or flaught, a flash of 
 lightning, a sudden blaze in the 
 sky ; from the Flemish flakkeren 
 2ind. flihherin, to flicker, to shine 
 out quickly or instantaneously. 
 
 The thundeir crack'd, andflauchts did rift 
 Frae the black vizard o' the lift. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Vision. 
 Fierce as ony flre-flaught fell. 
 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Flaw, a burst of bad weather, 
 from the Gaelic fliuch, a rain- 
 storm. 
 
 Like an auld scart (cormorant) before a 
 flaw. — The A ntiquary. 
 
Fleech — Flit, 
 
 59 
 
 Fleech or fleich, to pet, to 
 wheedle, to cajole ; also, to en- 
 treat or supplicate with fair 
 words. A fieeching day is a day 
 that promises to be fine, but 
 that possibly may not turn out 
 so. Possibly from the French 
 jlechir, to give way, to ask 
 humbly, instead of demanding 
 loudly. 
 
 Duncan _fieeched and Duncan prayed — 
 Ha ! ha ! the wooin' o't. — Burns. 
 Expect na, sir, in this narration, 
 Kfleechin, flatterin' dedication. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Gavin Hamilton. 
 Hoot ! toot ! man — keep a calm sough. 
 Better to Jleech a fool than fight wi' him. 
 — Scott : The Monastery. 
 
 Fleer, a gibe, a taunt — etymology 
 doubtful. The Flemish has 
 fieerSy a box on the ear. 
 
 Oh, dinna ye mind o' this v&ryjieer, 
 When we were a' riggit out to gang to 
 Sherramuir, 
 Wi' stanes in our aprons ? 
 — Chambers's Scottish Ballads : The 
 Threatened Invasion. 
 
 Fley, to scare, to frighten. Ety- 
 mology unknown, but possibly 
 from /ee, to run away for fear, 
 whence jity, to cause to run 
 away for fear, to frighten. 
 
 A wee thing Jleys cowards. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 It spak' right howe, My name is Death, 
 But be rvafleyd. 
 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Flichter, to flutter, to fly feebly ; 
 a great number of small objects 
 flying in the air, as *' a flichter 
 of birds ; " a multitude of small 
 objects flying, floating, or flut- 
 tering in the air, as a flichter 
 
 or flight of birds ; a flichter of 
 motes in the sunbeams ; a 
 flichter of heavy or large snow- 
 flakes. To flichter is to flutter, 
 to quiver with joyous excite- 
 ment, and also to startle or 
 alarm. The word is evidently 
 akin to the English flight and 
 the Teutonic /mcA^ 
 
 The bird maun flichter that has but ae 
 
 wing.— Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The expectant wee things, toddlin', sprachle 
 
 through, 
 
 To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise 
 
 and glee. 
 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Flinders, fragments, splinters. 
 
 He put his fingers to the lock, 
 
 I wat he handled them sickerlie ; 
 
 And doors of deal and bands of steel 
 
 He gart them all m flinders flee. 
 
 —Bvckkh's Ancient Ballads : The 
 
 Three Brothers. 
 
 Flinging-tree, a flail, the pole of 
 a carriage, a bar of wood in any 
 agricultural implement. 
 
 The thresher's -w^zxy flingin -tree 
 The lee-lang day had tired me, 
 And when the day had closed his e'e 
 
 Far i' the west, 
 Ben i' the spence, right pensivelie, 
 
 I gaed to rest. 
 
 —Burns : The Vision. 
 
 Flit, to remove from one residence 
 to another ; aflittin', a removal. 
 
 As doun the burnside she gaed slow in the 
 flittin, 
 Fare ye weel, Lucy, was ilka bird's sang ; 
 She gaed by the stable where Jamie was 
 stannin', 
 Richt sair was his kind heart the flittin 
 to see. 
 — Lucy's Plittin', by William Laidlaw 
 {the steward, amanuensis, and 
 trusted friend of Sir Walter 
 Scott). 
 
6o 
 
 Elite — Fogte. 
 
 Flite or fljrte, to reproach, to 
 blame, to animadvert, to find 
 fault with. 
 
 Theyyfj'/^ me wi' Jamie because he is poor ; 
 But summer is comin', cauld winter's awa, 
 An' he'll come back an' see me in spite 
 o' them a' 
 — George Halket : Logie o' Bttchan. 
 Hed ! gude-wife I ye 're 2.Jlytiti body ; 
 Ye hae the will, but ye want the wit. 
 — Sir Alexander Boswell : A Matri- 
 monial Duel. 
 
 Floan, to flirt. Jamieson says 
 that ''■floan means to show 
 attachment, or court regard in 
 an indiscreet way," and derives 
 the word from the Icelandic 
 jion, stolidus. Is it not rather 
 from the old English jione, 
 arrows (Halliwell and Wright), 
 whence metaphorically to dart 
 glances from the eye, and con- 
 sequently to flirt or cast amor- 
 ous looks ? The Kymric Celtic 
 has ffloyn, a splinter, a thin 
 wand, an arrow. 
 
 And for yon giglet hussies i' the glen. 
 That night and day zx& Jloaning at the 
 men.— Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Flunkey, a servant in livery ; 
 metaphorically applied to a per- 
 son who abjectly flatters the 
 great. The word was unknown 
 to literature until the time of 
 Burns. Thackeray and Carlyle 
 in our own day have made it 
 classical English, although the 
 most recent lexicographers have 
 not admitted it or its derivative, 
 jiunkeyism, to the honours of the 
 dictionary. 
 Our laird gets in his racked rents. 
 
 He rises when he likes himsel', 
 His flunkeys answer to his bell. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 The word is supposed to be 
 derived from the Gaelic flann, 
 red, and cas, a leg or foot — red- 
 legs, applied to the red or crim- 
 son plush breeches of footmen. 
 The word red-shanks was ap- 
 plied to the kilted Highlanders 
 by the English, and hence the 
 Highland retort of flunkey to 
 the English. 
 
 I think this derivation wrong ; vlonk in 
 Danish signifies proud, haughty. — Lord 
 Neaves. 
 
 Fodgel, sometimes written and 
 pronounced /o(iyeW plump, short, 
 corpulent, and good-tempered. 
 A man in Scottish parlance 
 may be stout and plump 
 without being fodyd, as fodgel 
 implies good nature, urbanity, 
 and cheerfulness, as well as 
 plumpness. 
 
 If in your bounds ye chance to light 
 Upon a fine, izx fodgel wight, 
 Of stature short, but genius bright, 
 That's he, mark weel. 
 — Burns : On the Peregrinations of 
 Captain Grose Collecting A ntiquities 
 throughout the Kingdom. 
 
 Fog, moss; from the Gaelic hog 
 or hhog, moist, soft. 
 
 " And so, John," said the minister, " I 
 understand ye have gone over to the In- 
 dependents ? " " Deed, sir," said John, 
 "that's true." "Oh, John," rejoined the 
 minister, "I'm sure ye ken that a rowin' 
 stone gathers nz&fog." "Aye," said John, 
 " that's true, too ; but can ye tell me what 
 gude the fog does to the stone ? " — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Fogie, a dull, slow man, unable 
 or unwilling to reconcile him- 
 
Fog-moss — Fou, 
 
 6i 
 
 self to the ideas and manners 
 of the new generation. The 
 derivation of this word, which 
 Thackeray did much to popu- 
 larise in England, is uncertain, 
 though it seems most probable 
 that it comes from "foggy," for 
 a foggy, misty, hazy intellect, 
 unable to see the things that 
 are obvious to clearer minds ; 
 or it may be from the Gaelic 
 fogaire, an exile, a banished man. 
 In the United States the word 
 is generally applied to an ultra- 
 Conservative in politics. 
 
 Ay, though we be 
 
 0\A/ogies three, 
 We're not so dulled as not to dine ; 
 
 And not.so old 
 
 As to be cold 
 To wit, to beauty, and to wine. 
 
 — A II the Year Round. 
 
 Fog-moss, f oggage, tall grass used 
 for fodder. The etymology is 
 uncertain. The English fodder 
 is from the Gaelic fodar; but 
 this scarcely affords a clue to 
 fog or f oggage. Though possibly 
 f oggage may be a corruption of 
 the old and not yet obsolete 
 fodderage. 
 
 Thy wee bit housie too in ruin ! 
 Its silly wa's the winds are strewin', 
 An' naething left to big a new ane, 
 
 O' foggage gr&&n, 
 An' bleak December's winds ensuin', 
 
 Baith snell and keen. 
 
 — Burns : To a Mouse. 
 
 Forbears, ancestors. 
 
 Forbye, besides, in addition to, 
 over and above. 
 
 Forbye sax mae I sell't awa. 
 
 —Burns ; Auld Farmer. 
 
 Forbye some new uncommon weapons. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Foreanent, directly opposite. 
 
 Foremost. In English this word 
 signifies first as regards place. 
 In Scottish parlance it also 
 signifies first as regards time. 
 
 They made a paction 'twixt them twa, 
 
 They made it firm and sure, 
 That whoe'er should speak ih.& foremost 
 word 
 Should get up an' bar the door. 
 
 — The Barrin'jo' oor Door. 
 
 Forfoughten, sometimes written 
 and pronounced/or/ow^^eri,worn 
 out with struggling or fatigue. 
 
 And \}ao\x^forfoughten sair eneugh, 
 Yet unco proud to leave. — Burns. 
 I am but like 2ifor/oughen hound, 
 Has been fighting in a syke (ditch). 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Hobbie Noble. 
 
 Forgather, to meet. 
 
 Twa dogs 
 Forgathered ance upon a time. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Forjeskit, wearied out, jaded, ex- 
 hausted ; derivation uncertain, 
 but probably from the Flemish 
 or Dutch patois. 
 
 The fi^nd, forjeskit, tried to escape 
 Thro' frequent changing o' his shape. 
 
 — Beattie : John o A mha\ 
 
 Fou, drunk, is generally supposed 
 to be a corruption otfvll {i.e., of 
 liquor) ; but if such were the fact 
 the word ought to be contracted 
 into fu\ as wae/t^', sorrow/w', 
 which cannot be written waefou 
 or soTTOwfou. Fou, in French, 
 signifies insane, a word that 
 might be applied to an intoxi- 
 
62 
 
 Fouter — Fusionless. 
 
 cated person ; but if the Scot- 
 tish phrase be not derived from 
 the French, it ought to be writ- 
 ten fu\ and not fou. Possibly 
 the root of the word is the 
 Gaelic fuath (pronounced fud), 
 which signifies hatred, abhor- 
 rence, aversion, whence it may 
 have been applied to a person 
 in a hateful and abhorrent state 
 of drunkenness. This, however, 
 is a mere suggestion. Jamieson 
 has fowsom, filthy, impure, ob- 
 scene. 
 
 We are na'ybu, we're na' that/bu, 
 We've just a wee drap in our e'e. 
 
 — Burns : Willie Brewed a Peck 
 o' Maut. 
 
 Fouter, an expression of extreme 
 contempt for a hateful person. 
 The French foutre has the same, 
 and even a worse meaning. Both 
 the Lowland Scotch and the 
 French are from the Gaelic and 
 Qelticfuathy hatred. 
 
 Fouth or rowth, abundance. 
 Fouth is from full, on the same 
 principle as the English words 
 tilth from till, spilth from spiU, 
 youth from youngeth, growth from 
 grow, drouth from dryeth. Rowth 
 has the same signification, and 
 is from row or roll, to flow on 
 like a stream. 
 
 He has afowth o auld knick-nackets. 
 Rusty aim and jinglin' jackets, 
 
 —Burns : To Captain Grose. 
 
 They that hae rowth o' butter may lay 
 it thick on their scones. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Fremit, frammit, strange, un- 
 related, unfamiliar ; from the 
 Teutonic fremd, foreign. 
 
 Ye ha'e lien a' wrang, lassie, 
 
 In an unco bed, 
 
 Wi' a. fremit man. — Burns. 
 
 And mony a friend that kissed his caup 
 
 Is now a/rantmit wight, 
 But it's ne'er sae wi' Whisky Jean. 
 
 — Burns : The Five Carlins. 
 
 Frist, to delay, to give credit; 
 from the Teutonic fristen, to 
 spare, to respite. 
 
 The thing that's fristed is nae forgi'en. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Prozierbs. 
 
 Fnish, brittle. 
 
 Oh, woe betide \!a& frusk saugh wand 
 (willow wand). 
 And woe betide the bush o' briar, 
 It brak into my true love's hand. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Annan Water. 
 
 Fulzie, surfeited with gluttony 
 and over-eating ; full of meat 
 and food. 
 
 Enough to sicken afulzie man. — Noctes 
 Ambrosiatue. 
 
 Furth, out of doors, to go forth, 
 to go out. The mucTde furth, is 
 the full, free open air. Furthy, 
 forward, frank, free, affable, open 
 in behaviour. Furth-setter, one 
 who sets forth or puts forth ; a 
 publisher, an author. 
 
 Sir Penny is of a noble spreit, 
 
 Kfurthy man, and a far seeand ; 
 There is no matter ends compleit 
 Till he set to his seil and hand. 
 
 — A Panegyrick on Sir Penny : 
 The Evergreen. 
 
 Fusionless, pithless, silly, sap- 
 less, senseless ; corrupted from 
 "foison," the old English word 
 for plenty ; the opposite of 
 "geason," scarce. 
 
Fy / — Fytte. 
 
 63 
 
 For seven lang years I ha'e lain by his side, 
 And he's but 3i/tisionless bodie, O 1 
 
 — Burns : The Deuks Dang oer my 
 Daddy. 
 The mouths of fasting multitudes are 
 crammed -wi Jizzenless bran, instead of the 
 sweet word in season. — Scott : Old Mor- 
 tality. 
 
 Fusionless.—ln Bailey's Dictionary the 
 ■word /oison means "the natural juice or 
 moisture of the grass or other herbs, the 
 heart and strength of it : " used in Suf- 
 folk. — R. D REN NAN. 
 
 Fy I or fye ! This exclamation is 
 not to be confounded with the 
 English fye! or fye! or the 
 Teutonic 'pfui! which are used 
 as mild reproofs of any act of 
 shame or impropriety. 
 
 Fy ! let us a' to the bridal. 
 
 For there will be lilting there ; 
 
 For Jock's to be married to Jeanie, 
 The lass wi' the gowden hair. 
 
 —Old Song. 
 
 In this old song, all the in- 
 cidents and allusions are ex- 
 pressive of joy and hilarity. 
 Jamieson suggests that/y means 
 " make haste ! " " Fye-gae-to" 
 he says, "means much ado, a 
 great hurry ; and fye haste, a 
 very great bustle, a hurry." He 
 gives no derivation. As the 
 Teutonic cannot supply one, it 
 is possible that the root is the 
 Gaelic faich, look 1 behold ! lo ! 
 in which sense ''Fye! let us a' 
 to the bridal," might be trans- 
 lated "Look ye! let us all go 
 to the bridal." 
 
 Fyke, to be ludicrously and fussily 
 busy about trifles, to be rest- 
 less without adequate reason, 
 akin to fidget, which is possibly 
 from the same root. The word 
 is also used as a noun. Fiddle- 
 fyTce and fiddle-ma-Jike are inten- 
 sifications of the meaning, and 
 imply contempt for the petty 
 trifling of the person who 
 fykes. 
 
 Some drowsy bummle, 
 Wha can do nought hutjyke and fumble. 
 — Burns : On a Scotch Bard. 
 
 Gin he 'bout Norrie lesser _;5''^^ had made. 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Weening that ane sae braw and gentle-like 
 For nae guid ends was makin' sic 2. fyke. 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Fjrtte, the subdivision of a long 
 poem, now called a canto. Percy, 
 in a note in his "Ancient Ke- 
 liques," considers the word to 
 signify no more than a division, 
 a part to "fit" on to another. 
 As the bards of the Druids, who 
 sung in their religious festivals, 
 and who delivered their precepts 
 to the people in short verses of 
 couplets or triads — better for 
 committal to memory than long 
 prose homilies would have been 
 — were called^ad^s or prophets, 
 it is possible that that word, and 
 not the English jf?«, as Dr. Percy 
 says, was the origin of fytte as 
 applied to the subdivision of a 
 sacred song. 
 
64 
 
 Gabbock — Gale. 
 
 G 
 
 Gabbock, a hunk, a large piece or 
 
 slice. 
 
 And there'll be 
 Fouth o' gude gabbocks o skate. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Gaberlunzie, a wallet or bag car- 
 ried by beggars for collecting 
 in kind the gifts of the chari- 
 table ; whence gaherlunzie-man, 
 a beggar. 
 
 Oh, blithe be the auld gaberlunzie-man, 
 Wi' his wallet o' wit he fills the Ian' ; 
 He's a warm Scotch heart an' a braid 
 
 Scotch tongue, 
 An' kens a' the auld sangs that ever were 
 
 sung ! — James Ballantine. 
 
 To love her for aye he gied her his aith, 
 
 Quo' she, To leave thee I will be laith, 
 
 My winsome gaberlunzie-man. 
 
 — The Gaberlunzie-Man (a ballad 
 attributed to King James V. ) 
 
 Much research and ingenuity 
 have been exercised to find the 
 etymological origin of this pecu- 
 liarly Scottish word. Jamieson 
 says that gaberlunzie or gaber- 
 hinyie means a beggar's bag or 
 wallet, and implies that the 
 word has been transferred from 
 the bag to the bearer of it. 
 
 Gae-through-land, a wanderer, a 
 vagrant, a pilgrim, an exile, a 
 gangrel. 
 
 Oh, God forbid, said fair Annie, 
 
 That e'er the like fa' in my hand ; 
 Should I forsake my ain gude lord. 
 And follow you, a. gae-through- land. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Scottish 
 Ballads, 1828. 
 
 Gair, the English gore, an inser- 
 tion in a skirt, robe, or other 
 article of dress ; also a strip of 
 a different colour inserted as a 
 plait or ornament, sometimes 
 signifying a coloured belt from 
 which the sword or other weapon 
 was suspended ; gaired or gairy, 
 streaked with many colours ; pie- 
 bald, as a gairy cow or horse. 
 
 Young Johnston had a nut-brown sword 
 
 Hung low down by his gair. 
 And he ritted it through the young colonel, 
 
 That word he never spak' mair. 
 
 — Herd's Collection: Young Johnston. 
 
 Gale, to sing, whence nightingale, 
 the bird that sings by night. 
 The word is usually derived 
 from the Teutonic, in which 
 language, however, it only exists 
 in the single word nachtigaU. 
 Jamieson refers it to the Swedish 
 gdU (gale), a sharp, penetrating, 
 or piercing sound. Probably, 
 however, it is akin to the Gaelic 
 guil, to lament, and guileag, that 
 which sings or warbles ; and a 
 gale of wind is referable to the 
 Kymric or Welsh galar, mourn- 
 ing, lamentation ; gaho, (galu), 
 to call, to invoke ; and galaries, 
 mournful, sad, so called because 
 of the whistling, piping sound 
 of a storm. 
 
 In May the gowk (cuckoo) begins to gale, 
 
 In May deer draw to down and dale. 
 In May men mell with feminie. 
 
 And ladies meet their lovers leal. 
 When Phebus is in Gemini. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay : The Evergreen 
 
Gallie-hooifi — Garraivery. 
 
 65 
 
 Gallic - hooin', making a loud 
 noise, blustering, talking vio- 
 lently without sense or reason. 
 GuUie-hooUe, a loud, blustering, 
 talkative, and conceited fool. 
 These two words seem to be 
 derivable from the Gaelic gal 
 or guil, to cry out, and uille, 
 all ; whence gal-uille, all outcry 
 or bluster, or nothing but out- 
 cry and noise. Gilhooly, a well- 
 known Irish patronymic, is pos- 
 sibly of the same Gaelic origin, 
 applied to a noisy orator. 
 
 Gang, gae, gaed, gate. These 
 words, that are scarcely retained 
 even in colloquial English, do 
 constant duty in the Lowland 
 Scotch ; they are all derived 
 from the Flemish. Gang and 
 gae are the English go ; gaed is 
 the English went, and gate is the 
 road or way by which one goes. 
 " Gang your ain gate" means go 
 your own road, or have your 
 own way. The English gate, 
 signifying a doorway, a barred 
 or defended entrance, is a relic 
 of the older and more extended 
 meaning of the Scotch. 
 
 I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, 
 \gate I fear I'll dearly rue. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Gangrel, vagrant, vagabond wan- 
 dering ; from gang, to go. 
 
 Ae night at e'en, a merry core 
 
 Of randie gangrel bodies 
 At Posie Nansie's held the splore. 
 —Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 This word is sometimes em- 
 ployed to designate a young child 
 who is first beginning to walk. 
 
 Gardies, defensive weapons ; from 
 the Gaelic gairdein, an arm or 
 armour, and the French garde; 
 as in the phrase prenez-garde, 
 take care, or defend yourself. 
 
 He wields his gardies, 
 Or at the worst his aiken r««^(oaken staff). 
 —George Beattie : John o Amha. 
 
 Garraivery. This curious word 
 signifies, according to Jamieson, 
 "folly and revelling of a frolic- 
 some kind." He thinks it is 
 evidently corrupted from gil- 
 ravery and gilravage, which are 
 words of a similar meaning. 
 Gilravage he defines as "to hold 
 a merry meeting with noise and 
 riot." He attempts no etymo- 
 logy. It seems, however, that 
 garraivery is akin to the French 
 charivari, or the loud, discordant 
 uproar of what in England is 
 called " marrow bones and 
 cleavers," when a gang of rough 
 people show their displeasure 
 by serenading an unpopular per- 
 son — such, for instance, as a 
 very old man who has married 
 a very young wife— by beating 
 bones against butchers' axes 
 and cleavers, or by rattling 
 pokers and shovels against iron 
 pots and pans under his windows, 
 so as to create a painful and dis- 
 cordant noise. The word and the 
 custom are both of Celtic origin, 
 and are derived from the Gaelic 
 garbh, rough, and bairich or 
 bhairich, any obstreperous and 
 disagreeable noise ; also the 
 lowing, roaring, or routing of 
 cattle. The initial gr or c of the 
 Gaelic is usually softened into 
 E 
 
66 
 
 Gash. — Gaunt. 
 
 the English and French ch, as 
 the Tc in Mrk becomes ch in the 
 English church, and as the Latin 
 cams and the Italian caro become 
 cher in French. 
 
 Gash, sagacious, talkative. Jamie- 
 son defines the word, as a verb, 
 "to talk much in a confident 
 way, to talk freely and fluently ; " 
 and as an adjective, "shrewd, 
 sagacious." It seems derivable 
 from the Gaelic gais (pronounced 
 gash), a torrent, an overflow ; 
 the English gush, i.e., an over- 
 flow or torrent of words, and 
 hence by extension of meaning 
 applied to one who has much to 
 say on every subject ; eloquent, 
 or, in an inferior sense, loqua- 
 cious. 
 
 He was a gash and faithful tyke. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 Here farmers ^a^A in ridin' graith. 
 
 —Burns: The Holy Fair. 
 In comes a gaucie gash good-wife. 
 And sits down by the tire. — Idem. 
 
 Gaucie, jolly, brisk, lively. 
 
 tils gaucie tail in upward curl. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 In comes a gaucie gash good-wife, 
 And sits down by the tire. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 Gaucie, big, of large dimensions ; jolly, 
 perhaps. It has almost the same meaning 
 as gash, with the additional idea of size ; 
 very like the English use of the word 
 "jolly" — a jolly lot — a jolly pudding, &c. 
 The Scotch use gaucie in precisely the 
 same way. — R. D. 
 
 Gaud, a bar, the shaft of a plough ; 
 gaudsman, a plough-boy. The 
 English groad signifies a bar or rod, 
 and to goad is to incite or drive 
 
 with a stick or prong. The word 
 is derived from the Gaelic gat, a 
 prong, a bar of wood or iron, and 
 gath, a sting. 
 
 Young Jockie was the blithest lad 
 
 In a' our town or here awa' ; 
 Fu' blithe he whistled at th^ gaud, 
 Fu' lightly danced he in the ha'. 
 
 — Burns: Young Jockie. 
 I've three mischievous boys, 
 Rum deils for rantin' and for noise — 
 A gaudsman ane, a thrasher t'other. 
 
 — Burns : The Inventory. 
 They'll turn me in your arms, Janet, 
 A red-hot gaud o' aim. 
 
 — Ballad of the Young Tatnlanc. 
 
 Gauf or gawf, a loud, discordant 
 laugh ; the English slang guffaw. 
 According to Jamieson, it was 
 used by John Knox. Gavrp, a 
 kindred word, signifies a large 
 mouth wide opened ; whence, 
 possibly, the origin of the Flem- 
 ish gapen, and the English gape, 
 which, according to the late 
 John Kemble, the tragedian, 
 ought to be pronounced with 
 the broad o, as in ah. Gauffin, 
 a giggling, light-headed person, 
 seems to be a word of the same 
 parentage. Gawpie is a silly 
 person who laughs without rea- 
 son. 
 
 Tehee, quo' she, and gied ZLgaiuf. 
 — Allan Ramsay : A Brash of 
 Wooing : The Evergreen. 
 
 Gauner, to bark, to scold vocifer- 
 ously. 
 
 Gaunt, to yawn. Gaunt-at-the-door, 
 an indolent, useless person, who 
 sits at the door and yawns ; an 
 idler, one without mental re- 
 sources. 
 
Gaupie — Cell. 
 
 67 
 
 This mony a day I've groaned onAgaunted 
 To ken what French mischief was brewing. 
 — Burns. 
 Auld gude-man, ye're a drunken carle, 
 And a' the day y&gape and gaunt. 
 
 —Sir Alexander Boswell. 
 
 Gaupie, a silly fellow, from gawp, 
 to yawn or gape ; one who 
 yawns, from weariness, indif- 
 ference, or stupidity, when he 
 is expected to pay intelligent 
 attention to what is said of 
 him. A word of similar import, 
 founded upon the same idea of 
 listless and foolish yawning, is 
 found in the English phrase to 
 go mooning about, a word that 
 has no reference to the moon, 
 but that is derived from the 
 Gaelic meunan, a yawn ; meuna- 
 nach, yawning ; and dean-meu- 
 nan, to yawn or make a yawn. 
 
 Gawk, to romp, applied to girls 
 who are too fond of the society 
 of men, and who either play 
 roughly themselves or suffer 
 men to play roughly in their 
 company. The word is pro- 
 bably a variety of gecJc, to sport 
 or mock [see that word). 
 
 Gawkie, a clumsy or inexpert 
 person, from the French gauche, 
 the left hand, and gaucherie, 
 clumsiness. The word is collo- 
 quial in England as well as in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Gear, money, wealth, property, 
 appurtenance ; from the Teu- 
 tonic gehorig, belonging to, ap- 
 pertaining to. 
 
 He'll poind (seize) their gear. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 And gather gear by every wile 
 That's justified by honour. 
 — Burns : Epistle to a Young Friend. 
 
 Geek, to bear one's self haughtily, 
 to toss the head in glee or 
 scorn, to mock ; possibly from 
 the Flemish geh, a vain fool. 
 Adieu, my liege ! may freedom geek 
 Beneath your high protection. 
 ■ — Burns : The Dream. To George III. 
 
 Gee. To take the gee, is an old 
 colloquialism, signifying to take 
 umbrage or offence, to give way 
 to a sudden start of petulance 
 and ill-humour. Jamieson de- 
 rives it from the Icelandic geig, 
 offence, in default of tracing 
 it to another origin. But the 
 derivation is doubtful. 
 
 On Tuesday, to the bridal feast, 
 
 Came fiddlers flocking free ; 
 But hey I play up the rinaway bride, 
 
 For she has ta'en the gee. 
 Woman's love a wilfu' thing, 
 
 An' fancy flies fu' free ; 
 Then hey ! play up the rinaway bride 
 
 For she has ta'en the gee. 
 
 — Herd's Collection. 
 
 " My wife has ta'en the gee" 
 is the title of an old and once 
 extremely popular song. 
 
 Gell, brisk, keen, sharp, active; 
 from the Gaelic geaU, ardour, 
 desire, love; geallmhor, greatly 
 desirous ; and geaUmhorachd, 
 high desire and aspiration. 
 
 Gell, intense, as applied to the weather ; 
 a gell frost is a keen frost. "There's a 
 gey gell in the market to-day," i.e., a 
 pretty quick sale ; "in great gell," in 
 great spirits and activity; "on the gell," 
 a phrase applied to one who is bent on 
 making merry.— Jamieson. 
 
6S 
 
 Gerss — Gielanger. 
 
 Gerss. " This term," says Jamie- 
 son, " is well known in the 
 councils of boroughs. When a 
 member becomes refractory, the 
 ruling party vote him out at the 
 next election. This they call 
 gerssing him, or turning him 
 out to gerss. The phrase," he 
 adds, " is evidently borrowed 
 from the custom of turning out 
 a horse to graze when there is 
 no immediate use for his ser- 
 vice." Perhaps, however, the 
 etymology is not quite so evi- 
 dent as Jamieson supposed. 
 The Gaelic geur or gearr sig- 
 nifies to cut, to cut off, to 
 shear ; gearraich or geurraich, to 
 shorten, and geariadh, a cutting ; 
 gearran, a gelding ; gearrta, cut. 
 To cut or shorten, rather than 
 to graze or turn out to graze, 
 appears, pace Jamieson, to be 
 the real root of the word. 
 Jamieson has the same word 
 differently spelled as girse, to 
 turn out of office ; girse-folk, 
 cotters at will, liable to be 
 ejected at short notice, to which 
 the Gaelic etymology of geurr 
 and its derivatives applies with 
 more force than that which he 
 suggests from grass. 
 
 Gey, a humorous synonym for 
 very. This word in Jamieson's 
 Dictionary is rendered "toler- 
 able, considerable, worthy of 
 notice." "A gey wheen," he 
 says, means "a great number." 
 It is doubtful whether the de- 
 rivation be from the English gay 
 or the Gaelic gu. In vulgar Eng- 
 lish, when " jolly" is sometimes 
 
 used for "gay," "a jolly lot" 
 would be equivalent to the Scot- 
 tish " a, gey -wheen.'^ In Gaelic 
 gu is an adverbial prefix, as in 
 gu leoir, plentiful or plentifully, 
 whence the phrase, "whisky 
 galore,'' plenty of whisky; gu 
 fior, with truth or truly. 
 
 A miller laughing at him (the fool of the 
 parish) for his witlessness, the fool i said, 
 "There are some things I ken and some 
 things I dinna ken." On being asked what 
 he knew, he said, " I ken a miller has aye 
 a gey fat sow ! " " And what do ye no 
 ken?" said the miller. "I dinna ken at 
 wha's expense she's fed." — Dean Ram- 
 say's Reminiscences. 
 
 The word is sometimes fol- 
 lowed by an\ as in the phrase 
 ''gey an toom," very empty; 
 ''gey an fou," very drunk. The 
 word gaylies, meaning tolerably 
 well in health, is probably from 
 the same source as gey, as in the 
 common salutation in Glasgow 
 and Edinburgh, "How's a' wi' 
 ye the day?" "Oh, gailies, 
 gailies I " The editor of Nodes 
 Ambrosiance, Edinburgh, 1866, 
 erroneously explains gey an to 
 mean rather. 
 
 Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies, 
 I canna say but they do gailies. 
 
 — Burns : Address of Beelzebub. 
 Mr. Clark, of Dalreach, whose head was 
 vastly disproportioned to his body, met 
 Mr. Dunlop one day. " Weel, Mr. Clark, 
 that's a great head of yours." " Indeed, 
 it is, Mr. Dunlop ; it could contain yours 
 inside of it." "Just sae," replied Mr. 
 Dunlop, " I was e'en thinking it •ws&geyan 
 toom (very empty)." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Gielanger, one who is slow to pay 
 his debts ; etymology unknown. 
 It has been thought that this 
 
Gillravage — Glaik. 
 
 69 
 
 word is an abbreviation of the 
 request to give longer or gie langer 
 time to pay a debt, but this is 
 doubtful. The Flemish and 
 Dutch gijzelen signifies to arrest 
 for debt, gijzding, arrest for debt, 
 and gizzel kammer, a debtor's 
 prison; and this is most pro- 
 bably the origin of gielanger. 
 
 The greedy man and the gielanger are 
 well met.— Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 Gillravage, to plunder, also to 
 live riotously, uproariously, and 
 violently ; from the Gaelic gille, 
 a young man, and rabair, liti- 
 gious, troublesome ; 7*a6acA, quar- 
 relsome. 
 
 Ye had better stick to your auld trade o' 
 blackmail and gillravaging. Better steal 
 nowte than nations. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Gilpie or gilpey, a saucy young 
 girl. 
 
 I was a gilpey then, I'm sure 
 I wasna past fifteen. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 I mind when I was z. gilpie o a lassock, 
 seeing the Duke — him that lost his head in 
 London. — Scott : Old Mortality. 
 
 Gin {g hard, as in give) signifies 
 
 if' 
 
 Oh, gin my love were yon red rose 
 That grows upon the castle wa ; 
 And I myself a drap o' dew, 
 Into her bonnie breast to fa*. 
 
 — Herd's Collection, 1776. 
 Gin a body meet a body 
 
 Comin' through the rye. 
 —Old Song (^rearranged by Burns). 
 
 Home Tooke, in his letter to 
 Dunning, Lord Ashburton, on 
 the English particles, conjunc- 
 tions, and prepositions, derives 
 
 if from given; ^'' if you are 
 there," i.e., given the fact that 
 you are there. The more poeti- 
 cal Scottish word gin is strongly 
 corroborative of Home Tooke's 
 inference. 
 
 Girdle, a gridiron or brander, a 
 circular iron plate used for 
 roasting oat-cakes over the fire. 
 
 Wi' quaffing and daffing, 
 They ranted and they sang, 
 
 Wi' jumping and thumping 
 The very girdle rang. 
 
 — Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 The carline brocht her kebbuck ben, 
 Wi' girdle-cakes weel toasted broon. 
 
 — Tea- Table Miscellany : A ndro 
 and his Cutty Gun. 
 On reading the passage in the Bible to 
 a child where the words occur, " He took 
 Paul's girdle" the child said with much 
 confidence, " I ken what he took that 
 for." On being asked to explain, she 
 replied at once, "To bake his bannocks 
 on ! " — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Girnagain, from gim or grin; a 
 derisive epithet applied to a 
 person who was always on the 
 grin, with or without reason. 
 
 An' there'll be gimagain Gibbie 
 An' his glaikit wife, Jeannie Bell. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. \ 
 
 Girnel, a meal-chest ; from cwn, 
 
 kern, and kernel. 
 
 Amaist as roomy as a minister's girnel. 
 — Nodes A tnbrosiana. 
 
 Glack, a ravine, a cleft in the 
 ground. 
 
 Deep i' the glack and round the well, 
 Their mystic rites I canna tell. 
 
 —John o Amha. 
 
 Glaik, glaikit, giddy-headed, 
 thoughtless, dazed, silly, foolish, 
 giddy, volatile. From the Gaelic 
 
70 
 
 Glamour, 
 
 gleog, a silly look ; gleogach, silly, 
 stupid; gleogair, a stupid fel- 
 low; gleosgach, a vain, silly 
 woman. 
 That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door 
 For glaikit Folly's portals. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Unco Guid. 
 Wi' \i\s glaikit wife, Jeannie Bell. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Glamour, enchantment, witch- 
 craft, fascination; once sup- 
 posed to be from the Gaelic 
 glac, to seize, to lay hold of, 
 to fascinate; and mor, great; 
 whence great fascination, or 
 magic not to be resisted. Lord 
 Neaves thought the word was 
 a corruption of grammar, in 
 which magic was once supposed 
 to reside. This word, once pecu- 
 liar to the Scotch, has with- 
 in the present century been 
 adopted by English writers both 
 of prose and verse, and has be- 
 come familiar in the conversa- 
 tion of educated people. It 
 signifies the kind of halo, 
 fascination, and magical charm 
 that a person or thing receives 
 from the imagination ; the high 
 and fanciful reputation which 
 the French language expresses 
 by 'prestige, a word which has 
 also striven to naturalise itself 
 in Enghsh. Its etymology has 
 scarcely been attempted by Eng- 
 lish philologists, some few of 
 whom, however, have disco- 
 vered, as they think, a kindred 
 origin for it in clamor, from the 
 Latin clamxire, to cry out, or 
 make a great noise. It is pos- 
 sible that this idea lies in reality 
 at the root of the poetical word 
 
 glamour, in its signification of 
 a glorified repute ; repute itself 
 being the outward manifesta- 
 tion of the popular belief in 
 the excellence of the person 
 or thing spoken of, and which 
 would not be known unless for 
 the spoken opinion or voice of 
 the multitude, which gives and 
 extends fame and glory. In 
 the Gaelic and British lan- 
 guages, fuaim signifies noise, 
 sound, recalling the classical 
 embodying of Fame as an angel 
 blowing a trumpet, making a 
 loud sound ; and glair signifies 
 praise loudly expressed, and 
 therefore glory. In like manner, 
 glamour may resolve itself into 
 the two Gaelic words, glaodk, 
 pronounced glao, a shout, and 
 mor, great, whence glao-mor or 
 glamour, a great or loud cry or 
 shout, attesting the applause 
 and approbation of those who 
 raise it. Stormonth, the latest 
 etymologist who has attempted 
 to explain the word, adopts 
 the etymology that found fa- 
 vour with Jamieson, and de- 
 rives it from glimmer or glitter, 
 " a false lustre, a charm on the 
 eyes, making them see things 
 different from what they are." 
 This etymology is plausible, and 
 will possibly be accepted by all 
 to whom the Gaelic derivation 
 has not been offered for con- 
 sideration ; but the Gaelic, sup- 
 ported as it is by the primitive 
 but highly philosophic ideas 
 that gave rise to the simple 
 but now grandiose words of 
 "fame" and "glory," merits 
 
Glamp — Gleg, 
 
 n 
 
 the attention and study of all 
 students who love to trace 
 words to their origin, and en- 
 deavour by their means to sound 
 the depths of human intelli- 
 gence in the infancy of society 
 and of language. 
 
 And one short spell therein he read, 
 It had much oi glamour might, 
 Could make a lady seem a knight. 
 The cobweb on a dungeon wall 
 Seem tapestry in a lordly hall. 
 
 — Scott : The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel. 
 As soon as they saw her weel-faur'd face, 
 They cast their glamour o'er her. 
 
 — Johnnie Faa, the Gipsie Laddie. 
 Ye gipsy gang that deal in glamour. 
 And you, deep read in Hell's black gram- 
 mar, 
 
 Warlocks and witches. 
 
 — Burns : On Captain Grose. 
 
 This Scottish word has been 
 admitted into some recent Eng- 
 lish dictionaries. Mr. Wedg- 
 wood seems to think it is akin 
 to gliTtimer. The fascination of 
 the eye is exemplified in Cole- 
 ridge's Ancient Mariner : — 
 
 Lie holds him with his glittering eye. 
 The wedding-guest stood still. 
 
 And listens like a three-year child — 
 The mariner hath his will. 
 
 Gaelic glam, to devour greedily ; 
 glavfiair, a glutton. 
 
 Clans frae wuds in tartan duds, 
 
 'Whz. glaumed at kingdoms three, man. 
 —Burns : The Battle of Sherifftnuir. 
 
 Gled or glaid, a kite, a hawk, a 
 vulture ; etymology uncertain. 
 
 And aye as ye gang furth and in, 
 Keep well the gaislings frae the gled. 
 
 He ca'd the gaislings forth to feed, 
 There was but sevensone o' them a', 
 
 And by them cam' the greedy gled, 
 And lickit up five— left him but twa. 
 — The Wife of Auchtemtuchty. 
 
 The name of Gladstone is 
 derived from gled-stane, the 
 hawk or vulture stone, and 
 synonymous with the German 
 Geir-stein, the title of one of 
 the novels of Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 deed or gleid, a burning coal, 
 a temporary blaze, a sparkle, a 
 splinter that starts from the fire. 
 
 And cheerily blinks the ingle gleed 
 Of honest Lucky.— Burns. 
 
 Mend up the fire to me, brother. 
 Mend up the gleed to me ; 
 
 For I see him coming hard and fast 
 Will mend it up for thee. 
 
 — Ballad of Lady Maisry. 
 
 Glamp, to clutch at, to seize 
 greedily or violently ; from the 
 Gaelic ^rZam, to seize voraciously. 
 
 Some glower'd wi' open jaws. 
 Syne glampit on the vacant air. 
 George Beattie ; John d Amhd . 
 Glampin round, he kent nae whither. 
 —Ibid. 
 
 Glaum, to grasp at, to clutch, to 
 endeavour to seize, without 
 strength to hold; from the 
 
 Gleg, sharp, acute, quick-witted ; 
 gleg - tongued, voluble ; gleg- 
 lugg'd, sharp of hearing; gleg- 
 ee'd, sharp-sighted. 
 
 Sae for my part I'm willing to submit 
 To what your glegger wisdom shall think 
 fit. — Ross's Helenore. 
 Unskaithed by Death's gleg gullie. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn. Samsons Livin. 
 He'll shape you aff fu' gleg 
 The cut of Adam's philibeg. 
 
 —Burns : Captain Grose. 
 
72 
 
 Glent — Glunch, 
 
 Jamieson derives gleg from 
 the Icelandic and Swedish, un- 
 aware of the Gaelic etymology 
 from glac, to seize, to snatch, 
 to lay hold of quickly. 
 
 Glent, glint, a moment, a glance, 
 a twinkling; also to glance, to 
 shine forth, to peep out. From 
 the same root as the English 
 glance, the Teutonic gldnzen, and 
 Flemish glinster. 
 
 And in a. glent, my child, ye'll find it sae. 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 
 Amid the storm. 
 — Burns : To a Mountain Daisy. 
 The risin' sun owre Galston muir 
 Wi' glowing light was glintin. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 Gley, to squint ; aglee or agley, 
 crooked, aslant, in the wrong 
 direction ; probably from the 
 Gaelic gli, the left hand, awk- 
 ward. 
 
 There's a time to gley and a time to look 
 even. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 Gleyed Sandy he came here yestreen, 
 And speired when I saw Pate. 
 
 — James Carnegie, 1765. 
 The best -laid schemes of mice and men 
 Gang aft aglee. 
 
 — Burns : To a Mouse. 
 
 Glib-g^abbet, having "the gift of 
 the gab," speaking glibly with 
 voluble ease ; apparently derived 
 from the Gaelic glib or gliob, 
 slippery, and gah, a mouth. 
 
 And that glib-gabbet Highland baron, 
 The Laird o' Graham. 
 
 — Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Gliff, a moment, a short slumber, 
 a nap. 
 
 I '11 win out a gliff the night for a' that, 
 to dance in the moonlight. — Scott : The 
 Heart of Midlothian. 
 
 " Laid down on her bed for a gliff" 
 said her grandmother. — Scott: The An- 
 tiquary. 
 
 Gloaming, the twilight ; from the 
 English gloom or darkness. This 
 word has been adopted by the 
 best English writers. 
 
 When ance life's day draws near its 
 gloaming. 
 
 — Burns : To James Smith. 
 'Twixt the gloaming and the mirk, 
 When the kye come hame. 
 
 —Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. 
 
 Glower, to look stupidly or in- 
 tently, to glare, to stare. 
 
 Ye glowered at the moon and fell in 
 the midden. — Allan '^MAStci'% Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 I am a bard of no regard, 
 
 Wi' gentle folks and a' that ; 
 But Homer-like, ih^glowrin byke (swarm) 
 
 Frae town to town I draw that. 
 
 —Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 He on\y glowered at her, taking no notice 
 whatever of her hints. — A. Trollope : 
 Vicar of Bullhampton. 
 
 Glunch, an angry frown, a sulky or 
 forbidding expression of counte- 
 nance. ' ' To glunch and gloom," 
 to look angry, discontented, 
 sulky, and gloomy. Glunschoch, 
 one who has a frowning or 
 morose countenance ; from the 
 Gaelic glonn, a qualm, a feeling 
 of nausea ; glonnach, one who 
 has a disagreeable or stupid ex- 
 pression on his face : — 
 
 A glunch 
 O' sour disdain. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 Does ony great man glunch and gloom ? 
 — Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 
Gotneril — Gowpen. 
 
 73 
 
 Gluftch and gloom.— Glunch, giving 
 audible expression to discontent in a series 
 of interjectional humphs; gloom, a frown- 
 ing, silent expression of displeasure. — 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Gomeril, a fool, a loud -talking 
 fool; from the Gaelic geum, to 
 bellow. The English and Cock- 
 ney slang " Give us none of your 
 gum" i.e., of your impudence 
 or loud bellowing, is from the 
 root of geum. 
 He's naught but 3.gotneril, never tired of 
 
 talking. — Nodes AmbrosiancB. 
 
 Gowan, a daisy ; goioany, sprin- 
 kled with go wans or daisies. 
 Chaucer was partial to the word 
 daisy, which he derived from 
 ** day's eye ; " though it is more 
 probably to be traced to the 
 Gaelic deise, pretty, a pretty 
 flower. The word gowan, to a 
 Scottish ear, is far more beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk 
 lowly unseen. — Burns. 
 
 The night was fair, the moon was up, 
 The wind blew low among the go-wans. 
 — Legends of the Isles. 
 Her eyes shown bright amid her tears, 
 Her lips were fresh asgowans growing. 
 
 — Idem. 
 In gowany glens the burnie strays. 
 
 —Burns. 
 I'd not be buried in the Atlantic wave, 
 But in brown earth with gowans on my 
 
 grave, 
 Fresh gowans gathered on Lochaber's 
 braes. — All the Year Round. 
 
 Gowdspink, the goldfinch. 
 
 Nancy's to the greenwood gane. 
 To hear the gowdspink chattering ; 
 
 And Willie he has followed her, 
 To win her love by flattering. 
 
 — Scornful Nancy. 
 
 Gowff or goufif, to pull violently. 
 
 She broke the bicker, spilt the drink. 
 And tightly gouj^d his haffets (long hair). 
 —Herd's Collection : The Three- 
 Girred Cog. 
 
 Gowk, the cuckoo ; also a fool, or 
 a person who has but one idea 
 and is always repeating it ; from 
 the Gaelic cuach, with the same 
 meaning. 
 
 Ye breed o' the gowk, ye hae never a 
 song but ane. — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Conceited gowk, puffed up wi' windy pride. 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Gowl, to weep loudly, to whine 
 and blubber ; from the Gaelic 
 gul, with the same meaning. 
 The French has gueule, a mouth 
 that is very wide open. Gowl 
 also signifies large and empty, 
 as **a gowl or gowlsome house," 
 and " a gowl (a hollow) between 
 the hills ; " possibly allied in 
 idea to the French gueule. 
 
 Ne'er may Misfortune's gowling bark 
 Howl through the dwelling o' the clerk. 
 
 — Burns : To Gavin Hamilton. 
 Gowl means to bawl, to howl, but has 
 the additional idea of threatening or terrify- 
 ing. To gowl at a person is to speak in a 
 loud threatening tone — "He gied me a 
 gowl," " What mak's y&gowl that way at 
 the weans ? " I have an idea that this is 
 one of the words that have crept into the 
 Scotch through the French.— R. Dren- 
 nan. 
 
 Gowpen, two handfuls ; from the 
 Flemish gaps, which has the 
 same meaning. 
 
 Those who carried meal seldom failed 
 to add a gowpen to the alms-bag of the 
 deformed cripple. — Scott : The Black 
 Dwarf. 
 
74 
 
 Grade — Gree. 
 
 Gowpen means placing the two palms 
 together, and the hollow formed thereby is 
 a gowpen. The miller would have had but 
 a scanty " mouter " if his gowpen had been 
 only a handful. An ord inary beggar would 
 get a nievefu' o' meal, but a weel kent 
 ane and a favourite would get 2l gowpen. 
 Hence, you never heard the crucial test of 
 an Englishman's knowledge of Scotch when 
 he was asked ' ' What's a gowpen d glaur ? " 
 and his acquaintance with the tongue fail- 
 ing him, he was enlightened by the ex- 
 planation that it was " twa neivefu' o' 
 clairts." — R. Drennan. 
 
 Grade, well-behaved, graceful, of 
 pleasant manners and behaviour. 
 
 "A wife's ae dochter is never grade." 
 ^Proverb. 
 
 Signifying that an only daughter 
 is likely to be spoiled by over- 
 indulgence, and therefore not 
 likely to be as agreeable in man- 
 ners as if she had sisters to 
 compete with her for favour. 
 
 Gradden, the coarse meal that is 
 ground in the quern by hand. 
 
 Grind the gradden, grind it ; 
 We'll a' get crowdie when it's done, 
 An' bannocks steeve to bind it. 
 
 Whisky gars the bark of life 
 . Drive merrily and rarely, 
 But gradden is the ballast gars 
 It steady gang and fairly. 
 
 — R. Jamieson : The Queen Lily. 
 
 Graith, tools, requisites, imple- 
 ments, appurtenances of a busi- 
 ness or work, harness ; graiihinrj- 
 dolhes, accoutrements. 
 
 Then he in wrath put up his graith — 
 " The deevil's in the hizzie." 
 
 — Jacob and Rachel : attributed 
 to Burns, 1825. 
 
 And ploughmen gather wi' their graith. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Ye'll bid her shoe her steed before 
 An' a gowd graithing was behind. 
 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Gramarye, magic ; French gri- 
 moire, a magic-book. Attempts 
 have been made to derive this 
 word from grammar. It is more 
 likely, considering the gloomy 
 ideas attached to the French 
 grimoire (the immediate root of 
 the word), that it comes origi- 
 nally from the Gaelic gruaim, 
 gloom, melancholy, wrath, in- 
 tense sadness or indignation ; 
 and gruamach, sullen, surly, 
 morose, gloomy, grim, frowning. 
 
 Whate'er he did o{ gramarye. 
 Was always done maliciously. 
 —Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 The wild yell and visage strange, 
 And the dark woods oi gramarye, 
 — Idem. 
 
 Grandgore, sometimes written 
 glengore and glandgore, the 
 venereal disease. Jamieson sug- 
 gests its origin from the French 
 grand, great, and gorre; but does 
 not explain the meaning of gorre, 
 which does not appear in French 
 dictionaries. 
 
 The word appears to be rightly 
 grandgore, and not glen or gland 
 gore, and to be derived from the 
 Gaelic grain, horrid, disgusting, 
 and gaorr, filth, 
 
 Gree, to bear the gree, to excel, 
 to be acknowledged to excel. 
 The origin of this phrase is un- 
 certain, though supposed to be 
 connected with degree, i.e., a 
 degree of excellence and supe- 
 riority. 
 
Greetie — Grien. 
 
 75- 
 
 Then let us pray that come it may, 
 
 As come it will for a' that, 
 That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth. 
 
 Shall bear the gree and a' that. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 I wad hae nane o' them, though they wad 
 
 fancy me, 
 For my bonnie mason laddie he bears 
 awa' the gree. 
 —Chambers's Scottish Songs : The 
 Mason Laddie. 
 
 Greetie, the affectionate diminu- 
 tive of greet, to weep or cry ; 
 not to be rendered into English 
 except by a weak paraphrase 
 and dilution of the touching 
 Scottish phrase, such as a small, 
 faint, or little cry or lament. 
 The same remark applies to the 
 diminutive of jeet in the sub- 
 joined verse. 
 
 We'll hap an' row, we'll hap an' row. 
 
 We'll hap an' row the^^^^zV o't ; 
 It is a wee bit wearie thing, 
 
 I downa bide the greetie o't. 
 — William Creech, Lord Proriost of 
 Edinburgh, and publisher of the 
 Poems of Robert Bums. 
 
 Gregorian, a popular name for a 
 wig in the seventeenth century, 
 introduced into England by the 
 Scottish followers of James VI. 
 when he succeeded to the Eng- 
 lish throne. Blount, in his 
 " Glossographia," says : " Wigs 
 were so called from one Gre- 
 gorie, a barber in the Strand, 
 who was a famous perruque- 
 maker." 
 
 He cannot be a cuckold that wears a 
 gregorian, for a periwig will never fit 
 such a head. — Nares. 
 
 Yet, though one Gregorie, a 
 wig-maker, may have lived and 
 
 flourished in London in the 
 early part of the seventeenth 
 century, it does not follow that 
 the word gregorian was derived 
 from his name, any more than 
 that of the designation of a 
 tailor by trade had its origin in 
 the patronymic of taylor. At 
 all events, it is worthy of note 
 that in Gaelic gruaig signifies a 
 wig; gruagach, hairy; gruagag, 
 a little wig, or a bunch of hair ; 
 and gruagair, a wig-maker and 
 hairdresser. 
 
 Grien or grene, to covet, to long 
 for, to desire ardently and un- 
 reasonably ; grening, longing, 
 akin to the English yearn, "a 
 yearning desire," German gem, 
 Flemish gearne, willingly, de- 
 sirous of. From this comes pro- 
 bably "grreen sickness," a malady 
 that afflicts growing girls when 
 they long for unwholesome and 
 unnatural food, and would eat 
 chalk, charcoal, unripe fruit, and 
 any kind of trash. The medical 
 name of this malady is chlorosis, 
 a Greek translation of "green 
 sickness," arising from the fact 
 that English physicians under- 
 stood the popular word green, 
 the colour, but not grien or 
 grene, to covet, which is the 
 main symptom of the dis- 
 
 Teuch Johnnie, staunch Geordie an' Walie, 
 That griens for the fishes an' loaves. 
 
 — Burns : The Election. 
 
 They came there justice for to gett, 
 They'll never grene to come again. 
 —Border Minstrelsy : The Raid of the 
 Redswire. 
 
76 
 
 Grip — Grue. 
 
 Grip, tenacity, moral or physical ; 
 to hold fast. 
 
 Will Shore couldna conceive how it was 
 that when he was drunk his feet wadna 
 baud the grip. — Laird of Logan. 
 
 But where you feel your \\ono\xv grip, 
 
 Let that be aye your border. 
 — Burns : Epistle to a Young Friend. 
 
 I like the Scotch ; they have more gHp 
 than any people I know. — Sam Slick. 
 
 Grog^, a mixture of spirits and 
 water; usually applied to hot 
 gin and water, as distinguished 
 from rum-punch and whisky- 
 toddy. The word is now com- 
 mon in England, and is sup- 
 posed by careless philologists, 
 who follow blindly where their 
 predecessors lead them, to have 
 been first used by the sailors in 
 a ship of war commanded by 
 Captain, afterwards Admiral 
 Vernon, commonly called *' Old 
 Grog," from the grogram jacket 
 or coat which he usually wore. 
 But (jrog was known and named 
 long before the days of Admiral 
 Vernon, and was in common 
 use in Scotland, as well as in 
 England, as croc, afterwards 
 corrupted into grog. The word 
 croc in Gaelic signifies a horn, 
 used in districts and in houses 
 where glass was too expensive 
 for purchase. A horn or croc of 
 liquor was synonymous with a 
 glass of liquor, and to offer a 
 guest a croc or grog of spirit 
 of any kind was the same as 
 to invite him to take a social 
 glass ; and in time croc came to 
 signify the liquor in the horn, 
 as well as the horn itself. To 
 
 invite a man to take a friendly 
 glass is not to invite him to 
 take the glass itself, but the 
 drink that is in it. Hence the 
 word grog, which has no more 
 connection with the grogram 
 suit of Admiral Vernon than it 
 has with ** the man in the 
 moon." The French have the 
 phrase "eric et croc''' in the 
 slang vernacular. 
 
 Groof, the belly, so called from its 
 rumbling when deprived of food ; 
 from the Gaelic gromhan {grovan), 
 to growl. 
 
 Rowin' yoursel' on the floor on your 
 groof, wi' your hair on end and your e'en 
 on fire. — Noctes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Gnie or grew, a greyhound. 
 
 I dreamed a weary dream yestre'en, 
 
 I wish it may come to gude ; 
 I dreamed that ye slew my best grew- 
 hound, 
 And gied me his lapper'd blude. 
 
 — Ballad of Sir Roland. 
 
 What has come ower ye, Muirland Tam ? 
 Your leg's now grown like a wheelbarrow 
 
 tram ; 
 Ye'd the strength o' a stot, the weight o' a 
 
 cow. 
 Now, Tammy, my man, ye have grown 
 
 like a gre^v. 
 — Hew Ainslie : Tam d the Balloch. 
 
 A grew is a female greyhound in 
 the South of England, according 
 to Mr. Halliwell Phillips, while 
 in the eastern counties the word 
 is a grewin, and in Shropshire 
 groun. In old French grous 
 signifies any kind of hunting- 
 dog — a greyhound among the 
 rest. 
 
 The modern French do not 
 
Gruesome — Gruntle. 
 
 77 
 
 call the animal a ** chien gris" 
 but a limier, which means a dog 
 which leaps or springs, from the 
 Celtic leum, to leap, or a levrier, 
 because it courses the lUvre 
 or hare. In "Anglo-Saxon," 
 which is merely Teutonic with 
 a large substratum of Gaelic, it 
 appears that this word is grig- 
 hound. The pure Teutonic calls 
 it a windd spiel, a grotesque 
 term, for which it is difficult 
 to account. The Dutch and 
 Flemish call it a speurhond, or 
 tracking-hound. The Italians 
 call the animal a veltro. It is 
 evident from aU these examples 
 that the dog was not named 
 from grey, which is not its in- 
 variable colour. Grey is not 
 adopted as its designation by any 
 other nation than the English. 
 Philology is thus justified in seek- 
 ing elsewhere for the root oigrue, 
 which the Teutonic nations do 
 not afford. The old grammarian 
 Minshew thought he had found 
 it in grcecus, and that the hound 
 was so called because the Greeks 
 hunted with it ; but this deriva- 
 tion is manifestly inadmissible, 
 as is that from grip, the hound 
 which grips or snatches. Pos- 
 sibly the Scottish hound came 
 from the Highlands and not 
 from the Lowlands, or may be 
 derived from gaoth, wind or 
 breath, and gaothar (pronounced 
 gao-ar), long-winded, strong- 
 winded, provided with wind for 
 rapid motion. Gaothar is ren- 
 dered in the Gaelic dictionaries 
 as a lurcher, half foxhound and 
 half greyhound, and anciently 
 
 as greyhound only. As gaor is 
 easy of corruption, first into 
 grao, and afterwards into grew 
 or grue, it is extremely probable 
 that this is the true derivation 
 of a word that has long been 
 the despair of all lexicographers 
 who were not so confident as 
 Minshew and Dr. Johnson. 
 
 Gruesome, highly ill-favoured, 
 disagreeable, horrible, cruel. 
 Grue, to shudder, to be horrified. 
 From the Teutonic grau, horror ; 
 grausam, horrible, cruel; and 
 grausamkeit, cruelty. This word 
 has been recently used by some 
 of the best English writers, 
 though not yet admitted to the 
 honours of the dictionaries. 
 
 Ae day as Death, that gruesome carle. 
 
 Was driving to the ither warl (world). 
 — Burns : Verses to J. Rankine. 
 
 And now, let us change the discourse. 
 These stories make one's very \)\ooA grew. 
 — Scott : Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
 " They're the Hieland hills," said the 
 Bailie; "ye '11 see and hear eneuch about 
 them before ye see Glasgow Green again. 
 I downa look at them, I never see them, 
 but they gar me grew. " — Scott : Rod Roy. 
 
 Grugous or allagru^ous, grim, 
 ghastly, disagreeable, morose, 
 ill-natured; from the GaeUc 
 grug, morose, ill-conditioned and 
 surly, and uiJle, all. 
 
 Whilk added horror to his mien, 
 A grugous sight he was, I ween, 
 
 — George Beattie : John o 
 Amha. 
 An allagrugous, gruesome spectre, 
 A' gored and bored like Trojan Hector. 
 —Ibid. 
 
 Gruntle, a word of contempt for 
 a snub nose or snout ; erro- 
 
78 
 
 Grunzie — Gumlie. 
 
 neously rendered by "counten- 
 ance " in some of the glos- 
 saries to Burns ; gruntle-thrawn, 
 crooked in the nose. 
 
 May gouts torment him, inch by inch, 
 Wha twists his gruntle wi' a glunch 
 
 O' sour disdain, 
 Out owre a glass o' whisky -punch 
 
 Wi' honest men. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Akin to the Gaelic graineif, 
 ugly, loathsome ; graineUachd, 
 ugliness. 
 
 Grunzie, a ludicrous name for the 
 nose or mouth ; possibly applied 
 originally to the snout of a hog, 
 in reference to the grunting of 
 the animal. {See Geuntle.) 
 
 But Willie's wife is nae sae trig, 
 She dights her grunzie wi' a hushon 
 
 {i.e., she wipes her nose with a cushion). 
 — Burns : Sic a Wife as Willie had. 
 
 Grushie, of rapid growth, thickly 
 sown. 
 
 The dearest comfort o' their lives, 
 Their grushie weans and faithful wives. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Gryce, a young pig. 
 
 A yeld (barren) sow was ne'er good to 
 gryces. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 My bairn has tocher o' her ain, 
 
 Although her friends do nane her len', 
 A stirk, a staig, an acre sawn, 
 A goose, a gryce, a clocking-hen. 
 —The Wooing o' Jenny and Jock. 
 
 Gryme, to sprinkle; gryming, a 
 sprinkling. The English word 
 grimy signifies foul with dirt. 
 The Scottish gryme has a wider 
 meaning, and is applied both 
 to pure and impure substances 
 when out of place. 
 
 The sun wasna up, but the moon was 
 
 down. 
 It was the griming of new fa'n snaw. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Jamie Telfer. 
 
 Guller, an indistinct noise in the 
 throat. {See Gowl.) 
 
 Between a grunt, a groan, and a guller 
 — Noctes A mbrosiame. 
 
 Gullie or gully (sometimes written 
 goolie), a large pocket-knife ; 
 gullie-gaw, a broil in which 
 knives are likely to be drawn 
 and used. GuUie-wUlie, accord- 
 ing to Jamieson, is a noisy, 
 blustering fool — possibly from 
 his threatening the knife, but 
 not using it. 
 
 I rede ye weel, tak' care o' skaith — 
 See, there's a gullie. — Burns. 
 
 The carles of Kilmarnock had spits and 
 
 had spears, 
 And lang-hafted gullies to kill Cavaliers. 
 —Sir Walter Scott : Bonnie Dundee. 
 
 Stickin' gangs nae by strength, but by 
 right guidin' o' the gully.— K\.\.KH Ram- 
 say's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 " To guide the gullie," is a 
 proverbial phrase, signifying to 
 have the management of an 
 affair. The derivation is un- 
 certain, but is perhaps from the 
 Gaelic guaillich, to go hand in 
 hand, to accompany; applied 
 to the weapon from its ready 
 conveniency to the hand in case 
 of need. 
 
 Gumlie, muddy, turbid, synony- 
 mous with drumZie {q.v.). Ety- 
 mology obscure. 
 
 O ye wha leave the springs o' Calvin, 
 For gumlie dubs [pools] o' your ain delvin'. 
 —Burns : To Gavin Hamilton. 
 
Gump — Gurr, 
 
 79 
 
 Gump, a stupid old woman, of 
 the kind so well portrayed in 
 the Mrs. Gamp of Dickens, and 
 which possibly may have sug- 
 gested the name to the brilliant 
 novelist, who married a Scots- 
 woman, the grand-daughter of 
 George Thompson,the celebrated 
 
 . correspondent of Robert Burns. 
 Gumphie, a fool ; gommeril, a 
 foolish or stupid person ; gomf 
 or gomph, an idiot. The root 
 is possibly the Gaelic geum, to 
 low or bellow like a cow or a 
 bull, and which finds its equi- 
 valent in the English slang, 
 " Give us none of your gum.^' 
 
 Gump not only signifies an 
 old woman not over-wise, but a 
 fat and chubby infant, so that 
 the Gaelic etymology for geum, 
 if correct, can only be accepted 
 in the case of the child, on the 
 supposition that the child is a 
 noisy one, and bellows or lows 
 in expression of its wants or 
 its ill-temper. To take the 
 gumps is to indulge in a fit 
 of ill-temper. Jamieson defines 
 gamer il or gomrell as a stupid 
 fellow, so called, he intimates, 
 from the French goimpre, " one 
 who minds nothing but his 
 belly." The word, however, is 
 not to be found in the " Dic- 
 tionnaire Etymologique " of Noel 
 and Carpentier (1857), nor in 
 the comprehensive dictionary 
 of *' argot," or French slang, 
 by the erudite and industrious 
 Professor Barr^re, published in 
 1887, nor in that of M. Brachet, 
 published by the Clarendon 
 Press in 1882, or in the volumi- 
 
 nous work of M. Littrd, the 
 last recognised exponent of the 
 French language. Professor 
 Barr^re, however, has goinfre — 
 slang of thieves — from a pie- 
 eater, * ' an allusion to his open- 
 ing his mouth like a glutton," 
 which may possibly be the 
 word which Jamieson adopts 
 as goimfre. But neither goinfre 
 nor goimfre throws any light 
 upon gump or the closely-related 
 words that spring out of it, 
 unless it be in support of the 
 Gaelic derivation from geum, to 
 low or bellow, and consequently 
 to open the mouth widely. 
 
 Gumption, wit, sense, knowledge. 
 This word is akin to the Gaelic 
 cuimse (cumshe), moderation, ad- 
 aptation, and cuimsiehte, well- 
 aimed, that hits the mark. 
 Nor a' the quacks with all their gumption 
 Will ever mend her. 
 — Burns : Letter to John Goudie. 
 
 Gurl, to growl ; gurly, boister- 
 ous, stormy, savage, growly ; 
 from the German and Flemish 
 grollen, the English growl, to 
 express displeasure or anger by 
 murmurs, and low, inarticulate 
 sounds. 
 
 The lift grew dark and the wind blew sair, 
 And gurly grew the sea. 
 
 — Sir Patrick Spens. 
 Waesome wailed the snow-white sprites, 
 Upon the gurly sea. 
 
 — Laidlaw : The Demon Lover. 
 There's a strong gurly blast blawing 
 snell frae the south. — James Ballan- 
 TINE : The Spunk Splitters. 
 
 Gurr, to snarl, to growl like 
 an angry dog ; gurrie, a loud 
 and angry disputation, and 
 
8o 
 
 Gurthie — Gyte, 
 
 also the growling, yelping, and 
 barking of dogs in a fight. 
 Allied in meaning and deriva- 
 tion, though spelled with % in- 
 stead of u, are girnie, peevish; 
 girnigoe and gimigoe-gibhie, a 
 snarling and ill-natured person ; 
 and girnin' gyte, a fractious child. 
 
 Gurthie, corpulent, obese, large 
 round the waist or girth. 
 Applied especially to what burdens the 
 stomach. Roquefort renders it pesant, 
 ponderous, burdensome. — Jamieson. 
 
 Gutcher, a grandfather. This un- 
 gainly word seems to be a cor- 
 ruption of gude-sire, gnde-sir, 
 gudsir, or good sir, a title of 
 reverence for a grandfather. 
 
 God bless auld lang syne, when our 
 gutchers ate their trenchers. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 This was a reproach directed 
 
 against over-dainty people who 
 
 objected to their food. 
 
 Gae 'wa wi' your plaidie, auld Donald, 
 gae 'wa; 
 
 I fear na the cauld blast, the drift, nor 
 the sna', 
 
 Gae 'wa wi' your plaidie — I'll no sit be- 
 side ye ; 
 
 Ye might be my gutcher 1 auld Donald, 
 gae 'wa ! 
 
 — Hector Macneil : Cotne under 
 jny Plaidie. 
 
 The derivation from good-sire 
 is rendered the more probable 
 by the common use of the word 
 good in Scotland to express de- 
 grees of relationship, as good- 
 mother, a mother-in-law ; good- 
 brother, a brother-in-law ; good- 
 sister, a sister-in-law ; good-son, 
 a son-in-law, &c., as also in the 
 familiarly affectionate phrases 
 of good-wite for wife, and good- 
 
 man for husband. The French 
 use beau or belle in a similar 
 sense, as fteaw-pere, a father-in- 
 law ; belle-Glle, a daughter-in- 
 law ; belle-mhTe, a mother-in- 
 law. Possibly the English words 
 ^rorf-father and ^'od-mother, ap- 
 plied to the sponsors at the 
 baptism of a child, were ori- 
 ginally good, and not god. 
 
 Gyre-carline. This is in some 
 parts of Scotland the name given 
 to a woman suspected of witch- 
 craft, and is from gyre, the 
 Teutonic geier, a vulture, and 
 carline, an old woman. The 
 harpies in Grecian mythology 
 are represented as having the 
 beaks and claws of vultures, and 
 are fabled to devour the bodies 
 of warriors left unburied on 
 the battle-field. The name of 
 " Harpy," given in the ancient 
 mythology to these supposed 
 malevolent creatures, has been 
 conclusively shown to be de- 
 rived from the Gaelic, and to 
 be traceable to ar, a battle- 
 field, and pighe (pronounced 
 pee), a bird, whence ar pighe, a 
 harpy, the bird of the battlefield, 
 the great carrion hawk or vulture. 
 
 I wad like ill to see a secret house 
 haunted wi' ghaists and gyre-carlines. — 
 Scott : The Monastery. 
 
 Gyte, deranged, mad; from 
 the Flemish guit, mischievous, 
 roguish ; guitenstuJc, a piece of 
 mischief. 
 
 Surprised at once out of decorum, philo- 
 sophy, and phlegm, he skimmed his cocked- 
 hat in the air. " Lord sake," said Edie, 
 " he's gaun ^/^."— ScoTT : The Anti- 
 quary. 
 
Hadden — Haggis. 
 
 8l 
 
 Hadden and dung:, a phrase 
 that signifies *' held down and 
 beaten," i.e., held in bondage 
 and ill-used ; from hadden, pre- 
 terite of hold, and dung, the 
 preterite of ding, to beat or 
 strike. (5'ceDiNG.) 
 
 Haddin, furniture, plenishment, 
 household stujff. 
 
 Oh, Sandie has owsen an' siller an' kye, 
 A house an' a haddin, an' a' things forbye ; 
 But I'd rather ha'e Jamie wi 's bonnet in 
 
 hand. 
 Than I wad ha'e Sandie wi' houses an' land. 
 — Logie o' Buchan. 
 
 Haet, a whit, an iota ; deH a haet, 
 the devil a bit. 
 
 But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, 
 Wi' evendoun want o' wark are curst ; 
 They loiter, lounging, lank and lazy, 
 Hhou^ de'il haet ails them, yet uneasy. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 In Bartlett's "Dictionary of 
 Americanisms" the word occurs 
 as hate. 
 I don't care a hate — I didn't eat a hate. 
 
 HafTets or haffits, the long hair 
 of men, also applied to the long 
 hair of women when old, but 
 never when they are young. 
 
 Jamieson says that haffits 
 means the cheeks, but as used 
 by Burns in " The Cotter's 
 Saturday Night " it clearly signi- 
 fies the front hair on the vene- 
 rable cotter—" His lyart haffits 
 wearin' thin an' bare." His 
 lyart (grey) haffits are evidently 
 
 not meant for grey cheeks, and 
 cheeks, though they may grow 
 thin, do not necessarily grow 
 hare. The etymology of haffits 
 as long hair is unknown; but 
 supposing it to be cheeks, Jamie- 
 son derives it from the Anglo- 
 Saxon healf heafod, half head, a 
 semi-cranium. 
 
 His lyart haffits wearin' thin an' bare. 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Lyart signifies grey, from the 
 Gaelic liath, grey, and liathach, 
 grey-headed. 
 
 Hafflins, almost or nearly one- 
 half, formed from half and tins, 
 pertaining to or approaching to- 
 wards half, as in aiblins (which 
 see). 
 
 While Jeanie hajfflins is afraid to speak, 
 Weel pleased the mother hears he's nae 
 wild worthless rake. 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 When it's cardit, row'd and spun, 
 Then the work is hafflins done. 
 —Tea-Table Miscellany : Tarry Woo. 
 
 Haggis, the national dish -par 
 excellence of Scotland, which 
 shares with cock-a-leekie and 
 hotch-potch the particular fa- 
 vour of Scotsmen all over the 
 world. Sir Walter Scott de- 
 scribes it in the introduction to 
 "Johnnie Armstrong," in the 
 "Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border," as "an olio composed 
 of the liver, head, &c., of a 
 sheep, minced down with oat- 
 
82 
 
 Haimert — Hain. 
 
 meal, onions, and spices, and 
 boiled in the stomach of the 
 animal by way of bag." In 
 Tim Bobbin's Glossary hag and 
 haggus are defined as meaning 
 the helly. 
 
 Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, 
 Great chieftain o' the puddin' race ; 
 Aboon them a' you tak' your place, 
 
 Painch, tripe, or thairm ; 
 Weel are ye worthy o' a grace 
 
 As lang's my arm. 
 
 — Burns : To a Haggis. 
 
 Even a haggis, God bless her ! could 
 charge down the hill. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 An illustrious American, travelling in 
 Scotland, was entertained at a public 
 dinner, when towards the end of the repast 
 a very large haggis was brought in on a 
 gigantic dish, carried by four waiters, to 
 the tune of "See the Conquering Hero 
 Comes," played by the band. He was very 
 much amused at the incident, and having 
 heard much of the national dish, but 
 never having tasted it, was easily induced 
 to partake of it. He did not appear to 
 ike its flavour very much, and being asked 
 his opinion of it, replied that "the haggis 
 must have been invented to give Scotsmen 
 an excuse for a dram of whisky after it, to 
 take the taste out of the mouth," adding, 
 " But if I were a Scotsman, I should make 
 it a patriotic duty to love it, with or with- 
 out the dram — but especially with it ! " 
 — C. M. 
 
 The word, formerly spelled 
 haggass, is usually derived from 
 the French hachis, a hash of 
 viands cut into small pieces, 
 from hacher, to mince, the Eng- 
 lish hack, to cut. The dish is 
 quite unknown to the French, 
 though the etymology is pos- 
 sibly correct. The allusion of 
 Burns to the "sonsie face" of 
 the pudding which he praised 
 so highly, renders it possible 
 
 that he knew the Gaelic words 
 aogas, a face, and aogasach, 
 seemly, comely, sonsie. Any- 
 how, the coincidence is curious. 
 
 Haimert, homely, homerlike, or 
 tending homewards, of which 
 latter word it is a variety or 
 corruption. 
 
 Quoth John, They're late ; but, by jingo, 
 Ye'se get the rest in haimert lingo. 
 — George Beattie : John o' AmhcC. 
 
 Haiti, to preserve, to economise, 
 so as to prevent waste and ex- 
 travagance ; to protect with a 
 hedge or fence ; to spare for 
 future use. Uain seems to be 
 derived from the German ha- 
 gen, to enclose with a hedge or 
 fence; the Danish hegne, with 
 the same meaning ; and the 
 Dutch and Flemish heenen; 
 omheenen, to fence around, and 
 onheining, an enclosure. From 
 the practical idea of enclosing 
 anything to protect it came 
 the metaphorical use of this 
 word in Scotland, in the sense 
 of preservation of a thing by 
 means of care, economy, and 
 frugality. 
 
 The weel-hained kebbock (cheese). 
 — Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 Wha waste your v/ee\-hained gear on 
 damned new brigs and harbours. 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 Kail hains bread. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 We've won to crazy years thegither, 
 We'll toyte about wi' ane anither ; 
 Wi* tentie care 111 flit thy tether 
 To some haind rig. 
 — Burns; The Auld Farmer. 
 
 Hain, to preserve, does not seem to me 
 
 J 
 
Haiver — Hams. 
 
 83 
 
 to be a correct synonym ; the word rather 
 means to use economically. " Her weel- 
 hain'd kebbuck " does not mean that the 
 cheese had been preserved from danger, 
 from mites, or the cheese-fly and maggots, 
 but that it had not been used wastefuUy ; 
 haining clothes, means a second goodish 
 suit to save your best one. The English 
 expression "eke it out" comes very near 
 the meaning of hain. In Fifeshire the 
 word used instead of hain is tape — tape it, 
 make it last a good while, don't gobble up 
 a nice thing all at once ; in fact, hain it.— 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Haiver, to talk in a desultory 
 manner, foolishly, or idly, to 
 drivel. 
 
 Wi' clavers and haivers 
 Wearin' the day awa'. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 flaiver or haver seems to be 
 a corruption of the Gaelic dbair, 
 to talk, to say. 
 
 Hale-scart, without scratch or 
 damage ; from scart, to scratch, 
 and hale, well or intact. 
 
 Hale-scart frae the wars without skaith- 
 
 ing, 
 Gaed bannin' the French awa' hame. 
 — Andrew Scott : Sytnon and Janet. 
 
 Hallan-shaker, a sturdy, impor- 
 tunate beggar. Jamieson de- 
 rives the word from haUan, a 
 partition in a cottage between 
 the "but" and the "ben;" 
 and shaker, one who shakes the 
 hallan by the noise he makes. 
 If he had sought in the Gaelic, 
 he might have found a better 
 derivation in alia, allan, allanta, 
 wild, ferocious, savage ; and 
 seachran (the Irish shaughraun), 
 a vagrant, a wanderer, a beggar. 
 
 Right scornfully she answered him, 
 Begone, you hallan-shaker I 
 
 Jog on your gate, you bladderskate. 
 My name is Maggie Lauder. 
 
 — Francis Semple. 
 
 Hantle, a good deal, a quantity ; 
 from the Flemish hand, a hand, 
 and tel, to count or number ; a 
 quantity that may be reckoned 
 by the handful. 
 
 A Scottish clergyman related as his ex- 
 perience after killing his first pig, that 
 " nae doot there was a hantle o' miscel- 
 laneous eating about a swine." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Some hae a hantle o" fauts ; ye are only 
 a ne'er-do-weel.— Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Are we better now than before? In a 
 few things better; in a hantle waur. — 
 Nodes Ambrosiame. 
 
 Hap, to cover, to wrap up. 
 
 I digged a grave and laid him in. 
 And happ'd him wi' the sod sae green. 
 — Lament of the Border Widow. 
 Hap and rowe, hap and rowe the feetie o't, 
 
 It is a wee bit ourie thing, 
 I downa bide the greetie o't. 
 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 Happer, thin, lank, shrunken ; 
 haip-per-Yv^^^^, having thin lips ; 
 Aajjper-hipped, having small or 
 shrunken hips. 
 
 An' there'll be ^a://^r-hipped Nannie, 
 An' fairy-faced Flora by name ; 
 
 Muck Maudie, and fat-luggit Girzie, 
 The lass wi' the gowden wame. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Harns, brains ; from the German 
 him or gehirn, the brain ; hirn- 
 schale, the brain-pan; Dutch 
 and Flemish, her sens. 
 A wheen midden-cocks pike ilk others' 
 hams out (a lot of dunghill cocks pick each 
 others' brains out).— Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
H 
 
 Hatter — Havins. 
 
 Lastly, Bailie, because if I saw a sign o' 
 your betraying me, I would plaster that 
 wa' wi' your harns, ere the hand o' man 
 could rescue ye. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Hatter (sometimes written hotter) 
 signifies, according to Jamieson, 
 to bubble, to boil up and also a 
 crowd in motion or in confusion. 
 The English slang expression 
 " Mad as a hatter " does not 
 apply — though commonly sup- 
 posed to do so — to a hat-maker, 
 any more than it does to a tailor 
 or a shoemaker. It seems to 
 have been borrowed by the Low- 
 land Scotch from the Gaelic 
 at, to swell like boiling water, 
 and ataircachd, the swelling 
 and foaming of waters as in 
 a cataract, and, by extension 
 of the image, to the tumul- 
 tuous action of a noisy crowd. 
 In Tim Bobbin's Lancashire 
 Glossary hotter signifies to vex, 
 and hottering, mad, very mad, 
 very vexed. 
 
 Haugh, low ground or meadows 
 by the river-side ; from the 
 Gaelic ac, ach, and auch ; the 
 Teutonic aue, a meadow. Holm 
 and hagg have the same mean- 
 ing. The word acre is from the 
 same etymological root. 
 
 By Leader haughs and Yarrow. 
 
 Let husky wheat the haughs adorn, 
 And aits set up their awnie horn. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Haur, an easterly wind ; and hoar, 
 frost produced by an easterly 
 wind. 
 
 The sleet and the ^«r— misty, easterly 
 kaur. — Nodes Ambrosiana, . 
 
 Hause-bane, the neck -bone ; from 
 the Flemish and German hah, 
 the neck. 
 
 Ye shall sit on his white hatise-bane. 
 And I'll pike out his bonny blue een ; 
 Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair 
 We'll theek our nest when it grows bare. 
 — The Tiva Corbies. 
 
 To hauze or haU signifies to 
 embrace, i.e., to put the arms 
 round the neck. 
 
 Haveril, a half-witted person, a 
 silly talker ; from haiver, to talk 
 nonsense ; the Gaelic abair, to 
 talk. 
 
 Poor haveril Will fell afF the drift. 
 And wandered through the bow-kail, 
 
 And pu'd, for want o' better shift, 
 A runt was like a sow-tail. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 Havers, oats; haver-meal, oat- 
 meal ; from the French avoine. 
 
 Oh, where did ye get that haver-meal 
 bannock ? 
 Oh, silly auld body, dinna ye see ? 
 I got it frae a sodger laddie 
 Betwixt St. Johnstoun and Bonnie 
 Dundee. 
 — Herd's Collection : altered and 
 amended by Burns. 
 
 Havins, good manners and beha- 
 viour, courteous and kindly de- 
 meanour, personal accomplish- 
 ments which one has; thence 
 havings or acquirements. 
 
 Awa, ye selfish warldly race, 
 
 Wha think that havifis, sense, and grace. 
 
 E'en love and friendship, should give place 
 
 To catch-the-plack (the money) ; 
 I dinna like to see your face 
 
 Or hear you crack (talk). 
 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraikt 
 
Hawkie — Heckle. 
 
 85 
 
 Hawkie, a pet name for a 
 favourite cow or one who is a 
 good milker. 
 
 Dawtit twal-pint Hawkie s gaen 
 As yell's the bull. 
 — Burns : Address to the De'il. 
 I'd rather sell my petticoat, 
 
 Though it were made o' silk, 
 Than sell my bonnie broun Hawkie., 
 That gies the sup o' milk. 
 
 —Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 ** Brown hawkie," says Jamie- 
 son, "is a cant name for a 
 barrel of ale" — i.e., the milk 
 of drunkards' and topers. The 
 word is traceable to the Gaelic 
 adhach (pronounced awk or 
 hawk), lucky, fortunate. 
 
 Heartsome, cordial, hearty; full 
 of heartiness. 
 
 Farewell to Lochaber, fareweel to my Jean, 
 Where heartsome wi' her I ha'e mony a 
 day been. — Lochaber no More. 
 
 Hech, an exclamation of surprise, 
 of joy, or of pain; softened 
 from the Gaelic oich. On the 
 shore of Loch Ness, near the 
 waterfall of Ahriadian, where 
 the road is steep and difficult, 
 the rock near the summit of the 
 ascent has received from the 
 shepherds and drovers the name 
 of " Craig Oich," from their 
 stopping to draw breath and 
 exclaiming, ''Oich! oich!" (in 
 the Lowland Scottish, hech). The 
 English heigho is a kindred 
 exclamation, and is possibly of 
 the same etymology. Ilech-howe 
 signifies heigh-ho 1 "In the auld 
 hech-howe," i.e., as in the old 
 heigho condition, a mode of com- 
 
 plaining that one is in the cus- 
 tomary state of ill-health. 
 
 Hecht, to offer, to promise. This 
 verb seems to have no present 
 tense, no future, and no de- 
 clensions or infiexions, and to 
 be only used in the past, as : — 
 
 Willie's rare, Willie's fair, 
 
 And Willie's wondrous bonny, ] 
 And Willie hecht to marry me, 
 Gin e'er he married ony. 
 
 — Tea-Table Miscellany. 
 The miller he hecht her a heart leal and 
 
 loving, 
 The laird did address her wi' matter mair 
 
 moving. — Burns : Meg d the Mill. 
 He hecht me baith rings and mony braw 
 
 things. 
 And were na my heart light I wad die. 
 
 — Lady Grizzel Baillie. 1 
 
 The word is of doubtful ety- 
 mology : perhaps from the Teu- 
 tonic echt, sincere, true, genuine 
 — which a promise ought to be. 
 
 Heckle, a sort of rough comb 
 used by hemp and flax dressers. 
 Metaphorically the word signi- 
 fies to worry a person by cross - 
 questioning or impertinence. 
 To heckle a parliamentary can- 
 didate at election time is a 
 favourite amusement of voters, 
 who think themselves much 
 wiser than any candidate can 
 possibly be ; and of insolent 
 barristers in a court of law, 
 who cross-examine a hostile 
 witness with undue severity — 
 an operation which is some- 
 times called "badgering." There 
 was a well - known butcher in 
 Tiverton who always made it 
 a point to hecMe the late Lord 
 
86 
 
 Heership — Her nain sel\ 
 
 Palmerston when he stood as 
 candidate for that borough. 
 Lord Palmerston bore the in- 
 fliction with great good-humour, 
 and always vanquished the im- 
 pudent butcher in the wordy 
 warfare. 
 
 Adown my beard the slavers trickle, 
 I throw the wee stools o'er the mickle, 
 As round the fire the giglets keckle 
 
 To see me loup ; 
 While raving mad I wish a heckle 
 
 Were in their doup ! 
 — Burns : Address to the Toothache. 
 
 He was a hedge unto his friends, 
 
 A heckle to his foes, lads, 
 And every one that did him wrang, 
 He took him by the nose, lads. 
 — Chambers's Scottish Ballads: 
 Rob Roy. 
 
 This was the son of the fam- 
 ous Rob Roy, and was called 
 Robin Og. Chambers translates 
 Robin Og, " Robin the Little." 
 Og, in Gaelic, signifies not little, 
 but young. 
 
 Heership, plunder ; from \eTry or 
 harry, to rob, to pillage. 
 
 But wi' some hope he travels on while he 
 The way the heership had been driven 
 could see. — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Heft, the haft or handle of a 
 knife. The heft of a sword 
 is called the hilt. To give a 
 thing " heft and blade," is to 
 give it wholly and without re- 
 striction, " stock, lock, and 
 barrel." 
 
 A knife, a father's thrpat had mangled, 
 ■ Whom his ain son o' life bereft — 
 The grey hairs yet stuck to the heft; 
 Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu'. 
 Which e'en to name would be unlawfu'. 
 — Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 
 Hein-shinn'd, having large ankles. 
 Ain or an, the augmentative 
 prefix in Gaelic to nouns and 
 adjectives, signifying size, or 
 excess, is probably the root of 
 hein in this word. 
 
 She's bough-houghed and hein-shinn'd. 
 — Burns. 
 
 Her nain sel', " his own self," and 
 "■ my own self." This phrase is 
 supposed by the Lowland Scotch 
 to be the usual mode of ex- 
 pression employed by the High- 
 landers, on account of the pau- 
 city of pronouns in the Gaelic 
 language. 
 
 Oh, fie for shame, ye're three for ane, 
 Her nain sefs won the day, man. 
 
 — Battle of Killiecrankie. 
 
 Mr. Robert Chambers, in a 
 note on this passage, says: "T/te 
 Highlanders have only one 'pro- 
 noun, and as it happens to re- 
 semble the English word her, it 
 has caused the Lowlanders to 
 have a general impression that 
 they mistake the masculine for 
 the feminine gender." Mr. 
 Chambers, knowing nothing of 
 Gaelic, was utterly wrong in 
 this matter of the pronouns. 
 The Gaelic has the same num- 
 ber of personal pronouns as the 
 English, namely — mi, I ; do, 
 thou ; e, he ; i, she ; sinn^ we ; 
 sihh, you or yours ; iad, they or 
 theirs. They have also the pos- 
 sessive pronouns— wo, mine; ar, 
 ours ; hhur and ur, yours ; and 
 all the rest of the series. It 
 was doubtless the ur or the ar 
 of the Gaelic which, by its re- 
 
Herryment — Hinnie. 
 
 87 
 
 semblance to ^er, suggested to 
 Mr. Chambers the error into 
 which he fell. 
 
 Herryment, plague, devastation, 
 ruin ; from Jierry or harry, to 
 plunder and lay waste. 
 
 The herryment and ruin of the country. 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Heuchs and haughs, bands, legs, 
 or thigh. Heuchs is probably a 
 corruption of hooks, as applied to 
 the hands, or, as Shakespeare 
 calls them, " pickers and 
 stealers." Haughs is the Scottish 
 form of the English hocks, the 
 hind part of the knee. 
 
 The kelpie grinned an eldrich laugh, 
 And rubbed his hetichs upon his haughs. 
 — George Beattie : John d Arnha. 
 
 Hiddil, a hiding-place, the hole or 
 refuge of a shy or wild animal 
 
 The otter yap his prey let drap, 
 
 And to his hiddil flew. 
 — Water Kelpie : Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 Hinnie or honey, a term of en- 
 dearment among the Scottish 
 Highlanders, and more particu- 
 larly among the Irish. 
 
 Oh, open the door, my hinnie, my heart, 
 Oh, open the door, my ain true love. 
 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs : 
 Legend 0/ the Padda. 
 
 Honey, in the sense of hinnie, 
 occurs in the nursery-rhymes of 
 England : — 
 
 There was a lady loved a swine ; 
 
 " Honey I my dear," quoth she, 
 " My darling pig, wilt thou be mine ? " 
 
 *' Hoogh, hoogh 1 " grunted he. 
 
 The word hinnie is supposed 
 to be a corruption of honey, 
 
 though honey in the English 
 may be a corruption of hinnie. 
 They both express the idea of 
 fondness ; and those who be- 
 lieve honey to be the correct 
 term explain it by assuming that 
 the beloved object is as " sweet 
 as honey." But if this be really 
 the fundamental idea, the Gaelic- 
 speaking population of Ireland 
 and the Highlands might be sup- 
 posed to have used the native 
 word mil, rather than the Teu- 
 tonic honey or honig, which does 
 not exist in their language. 
 However this may be, it is at 
 all events suggestive that the 
 Gaelic ion signifies fitting ; and 
 the compound ion-amhuil means 
 like, equal, well-matched; and 
 ion-mhuin, dear, beloved, kind, 
 loving. The Irish Gaelic has 
 ionadh (pronounced hinna), ad- 
 miration, or an object of ad- 
 miration ; whence ionadh-rhuigte^ 
 adorable. The Scotch and old 
 English marroiv is a term of 
 endearment to a lover, and sig- 
 nifies mate, one of a pair, as in 
 the ballad : — 
 
 Busk ye, busk ye ! my bonnie bride, 
 Busk ye, busk ye ! my winsome marrow. 
 — Hamilton of Bangour. 
 
 In Scotland hinnie and joe 
 (Jamieson) signify a lass and 
 her lover who are very fond of 
 each other. This phrase is equi- 
 valent to the English "Darby 
 and Joan," and describes a 
 greatly-attached wedded pair. 
 The opinions of philologists will 
 doubtless differ between the 
 Teutonic and the possible Gaelic 
 
88 
 
 Hirple — Hodden- Grey. 
 
 derivation of honey or hinnie ; 
 but the fact that the Teutonic 
 nations do not draw the similar 
 expression of fondness, as ap- 
 plied to a woman, from honey, 
 is worthy of consideration in 
 attempting to decide the doubt- 
 ful point. 
 
 Hirple, to limp, to run with a 
 limping motion. 
 
 The hares were hi-rplin doun the furs. 
 
 —Burns: The Holy Fair. 
 And when wi' age we're worn doun, 
 An' hirpliti at the door. 
 
 — The Boatie Rmvs. 
 I'm a pair silly auld man, 
 An' hirplin at the door. 
 
 — Gin Kirk wad Let vie he. 
 
 Hirsel, a flock, a multitude ; de- 
 rived by Jamieson from the 
 Teutonic heer, an army ; but 
 more probably from the Gaelic 
 earras, wealth (in flocks and 
 herds), and earrasail, wealthy. 
 Hirsel, among shepherds, means 
 to arrange or dispose the sheep 
 in separate flocks, and hirseling, 
 the separating into flocks or 
 herds ; sometimes written and 
 pronounced hissel. 
 
 Ac scabbed sheep will smit the hale 
 hirsel. — AhLAti Ramsay's Scois Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 "Jock, man," said he, " ye're just tell- 
 ing a hirsel d e'endown [downright] lies." 
 — Hogg : Brownie of Bodsbeck. 
 
 The herds and hissels were alarmed. 
 — Burns : Epistle to W. Simpson. 
 
 Hirsel or hersel. The primary 
 idea of this word is to remove 
 the body, when in a sitting 
 position, to another or conti- 
 
 guous seat without absolutely 
 rising. Jamieson suggests the 
 derivation from the coarse word 
 applied to the posteriors in all 
 the Teutonic languages, includ- 
 ing English. He is probably 
 correct ; though, as a verb, 
 aerselen, which he cites, is not 
 to be found in the Swedish, 
 Danish, Dutch, Flemish, or 
 German dictionaries. 
 
 An English gentleman once boasted to 
 the Duchess of Gordon of his familiarity 
 with the Scottish language. " Hirsel 
 yont, my braw birkie," said she. To her 
 great amusement, as well as triumph, he 
 could not understand one word except 
 "my." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Hizzie, a lass, a huzzy ; a term of 
 jocular endearment. Supposed 
 to be a corruption of housewife. 
 
 Buirdly chiels and clever hizzies 
 Are bred in sic a way as this is. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Hoast, a cough, or to cough. 
 
 Jamie Fraser, a poor half-witted person, 
 who was accustomed to make inconvenient 
 or unseemly noises in the kirk, was one 
 day cautioned not to make fidgety move- 
 ments during divine service, under the 
 penalty of being turned out. The poor 
 creature sat quite still and silent, till in a 
 very important part of the sermon he felt 
 an irresistible inclination to cough. Un- 
 able to restrain himself, he rose in his seat, 
 and shouted out, " Minister, may not a 
 pair body like me gie a hoast?" — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Hodden-grey. In the glossary 
 to the first edition of Allan 
 Kamsay's "Tea -Table Miscel- 
 lany," 1724, ''hodden" is de- 
 scribed as a coarse cloth. Hod- 
 den appears to be a corruption 
 of the Gaelic adhan, warm : so 
 
Hogmanay — Hoodock. 
 
 89 
 
 that hodden-grej would signify 
 warm grey. It was usually 
 home - made by the Scottish 
 peasantry of the Lowlands, and 
 formed the material of their 
 working-day clothes. 
 
 What though on homely fare we dine. 
 
 Wear hodden-grey, and a' that ; 
 Gi'e fools their silks an' knaves their wine, 
 A man's a man for a' that. — Burns. 
 If a man did his best to murder me, I 
 should not rest comfortably until I knew 
 that he was safe in a well-ventilated cell, 
 with the hodden-grey garment of the gaol 
 upon him. — Trial of Prince Pierre Bona- 
 parte, Daily Telegraph, March 26, 1870. 
 
 Hogmanay or Hogmenay. This 
 is a peculiarly Scottish name 
 for a festival by no means pe- 
 culiar to Scotland — that of New 
 Year's Day, or the last hours 
 of the old year and the first of 
 the new. On these occasions, 
 before the world grew as prosaic 
 as it is with regard to old 
 customs and observances, the 
 young men, and sometimes the 
 old, paid visits of congratulation 
 to the girls and women of their 
 acquaintance, with words of 
 goodwill or affection, and very 
 commonly bore with them gifts 
 of more or less value according 
 to their means. It was a time 
 of good-fellowship, conviviality, 
 and kindly offices. Many at- 
 tempts have been made to trace 
 the word. Some have held it to 
 be from the Greek hagia (ayta), 
 holy, and ix.'f\v€, a month. But 
 as the festival lasted for a few 
 hours only, the etymology is 
 unsatisfactory. Others have 
 thought to find its source in 
 
 the French gui, the mistletoe, 
 and TJiener, to lead — au gui mener, 
 to lead to the mistletoe ; and 
 others, again, to the Gaelic oige, 
 youth ; and madhuin, the morn- 
 ing, because the celebration 
 took place in the earliest hours 
 of the daylight. It cannot be 
 admitted that any one of these 
 derivations is wholly satisfac- 
 tory. Nobody has ever thought 
 of looking to the Flemish — 
 which has supplied so many 
 words to the vocabulary of the 
 Lowland Scotch— for a solu- 
 tion of the difiiculty. In 
 that language we find hoog, 
 high or great ; min, love, affec- 
 tion, and dag, a day — hoog-min- 
 dag, the high or great day of 
 affection. The transition from 
 hoog-min-dag to hog-man-ay, 
 with the corruption of dag into 
 ay, is easily accomplished. This 
 etymology is offered with diffi- 
 dence, not with dogmatic asser- 
 tion, and solely with this plea 
 on its behalf — that it meets the 
 meaning better perhaps than 
 any other, or, if not better, at 
 least as well as the Greek, 
 French, or Gaelic. 
 
 Holme, holm, sometimes written 
 houm, a meadow. 
 
 Doun in a glen he spied nine armed men, 
 On the dowie holms o' Yarrow. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Dowie Dens 
 d Yarrow. 
 
 Hoodock, the hooded owl. 
 
 The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race 
 Wha count a' poortith as disgrace. 
 They've tuneless hearts. 
 —Burns : Epistle to Major Logan. 
 
90 
 
 Hool — Hoolie. 
 
 The glossaries to Burns ex- 
 plain this word as meaning 
 "miserly," which is a mere con- 
 jecture from the context, to fit 
 it into " purse-proud; " whereas 
 it is but a continuation of the 
 ornithological idea of harpy, a 
 vulture. The origin is the 
 French due, an owl, of which 
 in that language there are three 
 varieties — grand diic, or great 
 owl ; petit due, or little owl ; 
 and haut due, large, great owl. 
 Possibly, however, the first 
 syllable in Aoorfock is the Eng- 
 lish hood. The idea in Burns 
 is that of a greedy bird or 
 harpy. Jamieson has '' hoodit 
 craw " for carrion crow ; and 
 hoody, the hooded crow. 
 
 HooI, the husk of grain, the in- 
 tegument, the case or covering. 
 
 Ilk kind o' corn has its ain hool; 
 I think the world is a' gane wrang 
 When ilka wife her man wad rule. 
 — Tak' your A uld Cloak about ye. 
 
 Poor Leezie's heart maist lap the hool, 
 Near laverock height she loupit. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 In Dutch, tivlU, cover, in- 
 tegument, veil ; Swedish, holja, 
 cover, envelope, case, or hull; 
 whence also the English liolster, 
 the case of a pistol ; and uphol- 
 ster, to make cases or coverings 
 for furniture, and upholsterer, one 
 who upholsters. The unneces- 
 sary and corrupt prefix of up to 
 this word has led philologists 
 to derive it erroneously from 
 uphold. 
 
 The English hoils, applied to 
 
 the beard and husks of barley, 
 and hull, a husk or shell of peas 
 and beans, seems to be from 
 the same source as the Scottish 
 hool, and in like manner the hull 
 or outer case of a ship. 
 
 Sad was the chase that they ha'e gi'en to 
 
 me, 
 My heart's near out o* hoolhy getting free. 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Hoolie or hooly. This word is 
 commonly used in conjunction 
 with " fairly," as in the phrase 
 ''hooly and fairly." Jamieson 
 renders it " slowly and cau- 
 tiously." It is derived from 
 the Gaelic uigheil, ui-eil, heed- 
 ful, cautious. The glossaries to 
 Burns render it " stop 1 " There 
 is an old Scottish song — " Oh, 
 that my wife would drink hooly 
 and fairly." In the glossary 
 to Mr. Alexander Smith's edi- 
 tion of Bums, where "stop" 
 would not convey the meaning, 
 the explanation that the word 
 means " stop " is a mere guess 
 from the context, which proves 
 that the editor did not really 
 understand th^ word. 
 
 Still the mair I'm that way bent, 
 Something cries " Hoolie I " 
 
 I rede you, honest man, tak' tent. 
 You'll show your folly. 
 — Burns : Epistle to James Smith. 
 
 Sin' every pastime is a pleasure, 
 
 I counsel you to sport with measure ; 
 
 And, namely now, May, June, and July, 
 Delight not long in Lorea's leisure, 
 But weit your lipps and labour hooly. 
 —On May : Alex. Scott in the 
 Evergreen, 
 
 Oh, hooly, hooly, rose she up 
 To the place where he was lyin', 
 
Hootie — Horn-mad. 
 
 91 
 
 And when she drew the curtain bye — 
 
 " Young man, I think ye're dyin'." 
 
 — Ballad of Barbara Allan. 
 
 Hooly and fair gangs far in a day. — 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 In the North of England hooly means 
 tenderly, gently. — Halliwell. 
 
 Hootie, a ludicrous but expres- 
 sive word, applied to a man 
 like Pococurante in Voltaire's 
 romance, who impresses the 
 ingenuous Candide with an 
 idea of the immensity of his 
 wisdom, because nothing could 
 please him. The word is de- 
 rivable from lioot ! or liooU ! an 
 interjection expressive of con- 
 tempt, or of more or less angry 
 dissent. Hoot! toot I is an in- 
 tensification of the same idea. 
 The English have pshaw / pish / 
 and tut ! The word in the form 
 of ut ! ut ! is very common 
 among Highlanders. 
 
 Horn. Drinking vessels, before 
 glass was much used for the 
 purpose, were made of horn, 
 and are still to be found both 
 among the poor and the rich. 
 " To take a horn " ultimately 
 came to signify to take a drink 
 — just as the modern phrase, 
 ** Take a glass," does not mean 
 to take the glass itself, but the 
 liquor contained in it. {See 
 Grog, ante.) 
 
 By the gods of the ancients ! Glenriddel 
 
 replies, 
 Before I surrender so glorious a prize, 
 I'll conjure the ghost of the great Rorie 
 
 More, 
 And bumper his horn with him twenty 
 
 times o'er. — Burns : The Whistle. 
 
 Horn-dry, according to Jamieson, 
 means " dry as a horn ; eager 
 for drink ; an expression fre- 
 quently used by reapers when 
 exhausted by the labours of the 
 harvest." But the obvious ety- 
 mology — viewed in the light of 
 the other words that have been 
 cited — is not dry as a horn, but 
 dry for want of a hoi^ of liquor. 
 (For further reference to horn 
 as signifying a drink, see Grog, 
 ante.) To take a croc, or grog 
 (the same as to take a horn or a 
 glass), meant simply to take a 
 drink. The French have eric 
 and croc for a glass of spirits, as 
 in the chorus of the old song : — 
 Cric, croc ! a ta sante ! 
 
 Horn-mad is defined in the Dic- 
 tionary of Lowland Scotch 
 (1 81 8) as signifying quite mad; 
 though the compiler did not 
 seem to be aware that the mad- 
 ness was that which came from 
 • intoxication or the too frequent 
 emptying of the horn. Horn- 
 daft is of similar meaning and 
 origin, though expressive of a 
 minor degree of intoxication. 
 Jamieson renders it *' outrage- 
 ous," and imagines it may be 
 an allusion to an animal that 
 pushes with its horns. Horn- 
 idle is defined by Jamieson to 
 mean " having nothing to do, 
 completely unemployed." He 
 derives the first syllable from 
 the Saxon, and the second from 
 the Gaelic. Horn is certainly 
 Teutonic or Flemish, but idle is as 
 certainly not Gaelic. The allu- 
 sion in this case is obviously to 
 
92 
 
 Hornie — Houghmagandie. 
 
 the sloth or drowsiness that in 
 lethargic persons often results 
 from intoxication. 
 
 Hornie is a word used in Ayr- 
 shire, according to Jamieson, 
 to signify amorous, lecherous, 
 libidinous. Still, with the notion 
 in his head that horn is to be taken 
 literally, and not metaphorically, 
 he suggests that a hornie person 
 is one who is apt to reduce an- 
 other to the state of cuckoldom, 
 or a cornutus ; and to confer 
 upon him the imaginary horns 
 that are supposed to grace the 
 forehead of those ill-used and 
 unfortunate persons. It is evi- 
 dent, however, that hornie meant 
 nothing more than intoxicated 
 to such an extent as to excite 
 the intoxicated person to take 
 improper liberties with women. 
 Burns employs the word as one 
 of the names popularly and 
 jocularly bestowed upon the 
 devil. 
 
 Host, to cough with effort or diffi- 
 culty. The colloquial phrase, 
 *' It didna cost him a hoast to 
 do it," signifies that the thing 
 was done easily and without 
 effort. From the German husten, 
 the Flemish hosten, to cough. 
 {See Hoast, ante. ) 
 
 Joyless Eild (old age), 
 
 Wi' wrinkled face, 
 Comes hosiin', hirplin' ow'r the field 
 
 Wi' creepin' pace. 
 — Burns ; Epistle to James Smith. 
 
 Houghmagandie, child-bearing ; 
 wrongly supposed to mean the 
 illicit intercourse of the sexes. 
 This word has not been found 
 
 in any author before Burns, and 
 is considered by some to have 
 been coined by that poet. But 
 this is not likely. It is usually 
 translated by " fornication." No 
 etymology of the word has 
 hitherto been suggested. Never- 
 theless, its component parts seem 
 to exist in the Flemish. In that 
 language hoog signifies high or 
 great, and maag, the stomach or 
 belly ; maagen, bellies ; and je, a 
 diminutive particle commonly 
 added to Flemish and Dutch 
 words, and equivalent to the 
 Scottish ie in bairnie, wijie, 
 laddie, lassie, &c. These words 
 would form hoog-maagan-je — a 
 very near approach to the hough- 
 magandie of Burns. If this be 
 the derivation, it would make 
 better sense of the passage in 
 which it occurs than that 
 usually attributed to it. The 
 context shows that it is not 
 fornication which is meant — 
 for that has already been com- 
 mitted — but the possible result 
 of the sin which may appear 
 *' some other day," in the en- 
 larged circumference of the 
 female sinner. 
 
 There's some are fu' o' love divine, 
 
 And some are fu' o' brandy ; 
 
 And mony a job that day begun 
 
 May end in houghmagandie 
 
 Some other day. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire 
 retained for a longer time than 
 the eastern counties of Scot- 
 land the words and phrases of 
 the Gaelic language, though 
 often greatly corrupted ; and in 
 
Howdie. 
 
 93 
 
 ■ the poems and songs of Bums 
 words from the Gaelic are of 
 frequent occurrence. It is not 
 likely that Bums ever took it 
 upon himself to invent a word ; 
 and if he did, it is even more 
 than unlikely that it should 
 find acceptance. Whatever it 
 may mean, houghmagandie does 
 not mean fornication, for the 
 whole spirit and contents of 
 the ''Holy Fair" show that 
 fornication is what he stigma- 
 tises as the practice of the 
 gatherings which he satirises ; 
 and that which he calls hough- 
 magandie is, or is likely to be, 
 the future result of the too 
 promiscuous intercourse of the 
 sexes, against which he jocosely 
 declaims. The Gaelic og and 
 macan, a little son, may possibly 
 afford a clue to the word ; but 
 this is a suggestion merely. 
 
 I don't remember to have met with this 
 word anywhere except in the "Holy 
 Fair." It may have been a word in use in 
 Burns's day, or it may have been a coinage 
 of Bums, that would readily convey to the 
 minds of his readers what he meant. It 
 may have conveyed the idea of a " dyke- 
 louper " appearing before the Session, the 
 "snoovin* awa afore the Session" for a 
 fault, the doing penance for "jobbing." 
 Gangdays were the three days In Rogation 
 week, on which priest and parishioners 
 were accustomed to walk in procession 
 about the parish ; a remnant of the custom 
 is still to be seen in London in the peram- 
 bulations of boys about the bounds of the 
 parish. Gandie would not be a very violent 
 alteration oi gandeye, the more especially 
 that the spelling of Scotch words partook 
 a good deal of the phonetic, and gangday 
 was very probably pronounced gandie. 
 Now, we know as a fact that, in the lapse 
 of time, many of the ceremonies of the 
 Church became corrupted from their origi- 
 
 nal intention, and processions became in 
 time a sort of penance for faults, and in 
 this way it is just possible that gandie 
 came itself to mean a penance, and hough- 
 magandie conveyed the idea of doing 
 penance for some wrong action that the 
 hough or leg had something to do with. — 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Howdie or howdie-wife, a mid- 
 wife, an accoucheuse. This 
 word is preferable to the Eng- 
 lish and the foreign term 
 borrowed from the French. 
 Howdie-fee, the payment given 
 to a midwife. 
 
 When skirlin' weanies see the light. 
 Thou makes the gossips clatter bright, 
 How funkin' cuifs their dearies slight — 
 
 Wae worth the name ! 
 Nae howdie gets a social night 
 
 Or plack frae them. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 No satisfactory clue to the 
 etymology of this word has been 
 made known. In Gaelic the 
 midwife is called the "knee- 
 woman," heart gloinne ; in French, 
 the sage femme, or wise woman ; 
 in Teutonic, the weh mutter ; in 
 Spanish, partera, and in Italian, 
 comare, the latter word signify- 
 ing the French comm^re — the 
 old English and Scotch cummer 
 — or gossip. Possibly the true 
 origin of the Scottish word is 
 to be found in houd or haud, to 
 hold, to sustain ; and the mid- 
 wife was the holder, helper, sus- 
 tainer, and comforter of the 
 woman who suffered the pains 
 of labour ; the sage femme of the 
 French, who was wise and 
 skilful enough to perform her 
 delicate function. 
 
94 
 
 Howff — Hunkers, 
 
 HowfF, a favourite public-house, 
 where friends and acquaint- 
 ances were accustomed to re- 
 sort ; from the Gaelic wawi A (■wa/), 
 a cave. " Caves of harmony," as 
 they were called, were formerly 
 known in Paris, and one long 
 existed in London under the 
 name of the Coalhole. They 
 were small places of convivial 
 resort, which, in London, have 
 grown into music-halls. Jamie- 
 son traces liovaff to the Teutonic 
 hof, a court-yard, and gast-hof, an 
 inn or yard. It is possible that 
 he is right, though it is equally 
 possible that the German hof 
 is but a form of the Gaelic 
 uamh. 
 
 This will be delivered to you* by a Mrs. 
 Hyslop, landlady of the Globe Tavern 
 here, which for many years has been my 
 h(nvff, and where our friend Clarke and I 
 have had many a merry squeeze.— Burns : 
 Letter to George Thompson. 
 
 Burns's ^^TTt^at Dumfries. — Chambers. 
 
 Where was't that Robertson and you 
 were used to howff thegither ? — Scott : 
 Heart of Midlothian. 
 
 Howk, formerly spelled hoik, to 
 dig, to grub up, to root up, to 
 form a hole in the ground. 
 
 Whiles mice and moudieworts (moles) 
 they howkit. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 And in kirkyards renew their leagues 
 Owre howkit dead. 
 — Burns : Address to the De'il. 
 He has howkit a grave that was lang and 
 
 was deep, 
 And he has iDuried his sister wi' her baby 
 at her feet. 
 
 — Motherwell : The Broom 
 Blooms Bonnie. 
 Howk the tow out o' your lug an' hear 
 till a sang. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 How-towdies, barndoor fowls ; 
 origin of the word unknown, 
 though it has been suggested 
 that it may be a corruption of 
 the Gaelic eun-doide, a fowl to 
 the hand, or a fowl ready to 
 the hand if wanted. 
 
 Hunting the fox prevents him from 
 growing ower fat on how-towdies. — Noctes 
 A tnbrosiancB. 
 
 Hungers, stockings or hose with- 
 out feet. 
 
 But a' her skill lies in her buskin. 
 And oh, if her braws were awa. 
 
 She soon would wear out o' the fashion, 
 And knit up her huggers wi' straw. 
 — Woo'd and Married and a. 
 
 Hummel-corn, mean, shabby, of 
 small account ; a term applied 
 to the lighter grain which falls 
 from the rest when it is win- 
 nowed. 
 
 A lady returning from church ex- 
 pressed her low opinion of the sermon she 
 had heard by calling it a hummel-corn 
 discourse. — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 The derivation is unknown, 
 though humble-corn has been 
 suggested. 
 
 Hummel-doddie, dowdy, ill-fit- 
 ting, in bad taste. 
 
 Whatna hummel-doddie o' a mutch 
 [cap] hae ye gotten? — Dean Ramsay's 
 Reminiscences. 
 
 Humple, to walk lamely and 
 painfully, to hobble. 
 
 Then humpled he out in a hurry, 
 While Janet his courage bewails. 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 Hunkers, the loins ; to hunker 
 dovm, to squat on the ground. 
 
Hurdles — Hynde. 
 
 95 
 
 The word seems to be allied to 
 the English hunk^ a lump ; 
 whence to squat down on the 
 earth in a lumpish fashion. 
 
 Wi' ghastly ee, poor Tweedle Dee 
 Upon his hunkers bended, 
 
 And prayed for grace wi' cuthless face 
 To see the quarrel ended. 
 
 —Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Hurdies, the hips, the 'podcx of 
 the Komans, the 'pyge of the 
 Greeks. From the Gaelic aird, 
 a rounded muscle or swelling ; 
 plural airde, also airdhe, a wave, 
 or of a wavy form. 
 
 His tail 
 Hung o'er his hurdies wi' a swirl. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Ye godly brethren o' the sacred gown, 
 Wha meekly gie your hurdies to the 
 smiters.— Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
 That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair, 
 I wad ha'e gi'en them aflf my hurdies^ 
 \ For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! 
 
 —Burns : Tarn O' Shunter. 
 
 Pendable ? ye may say that ; his craig 
 wad ken the weight of his hurdies if they 
 could get baud o' Rob. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 The old French poet, Fran9ois 
 Villon, when condemned to be 
 hung, wrote a stanza in which 
 the above idea of Sir Walter 
 Scott occurs in language about 
 as forcible and not a whit more 
 elegant : — 
 
 Je suis Frangais (dont ce me poise), 
 N6 de Paris, empres Ponthoise, 
 Or d'une corde d'une toise 
 Sgaura mon col que mon cul poise. 
 
 Burns also uses the word in 
 the sense of *' rounded or swell- 
 
 ing," without reference to any 
 portion of the human frame, as 
 in the following : — 
 
 The groaning trencher there ye fill ; 
 Your hurdies like a distant hill. 
 
 — To a Haggis. 
 
 Hurkle, to yield obedience or 
 deference. 
 
 Grant, an' Mackenzie, an' Murray, 
 An' Cameron will hurkle to nane. 
 Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. 
 
 Hurl, to wheel; hurl -harrow, 
 wheel-barrow ; a corruption of 
 whirl, to turn round ; hurlcy- 
 hacJcet, a contemptuous name 
 for an ill-hung carriage or other 
 vehicle. 
 
 It's kittle for the cheeks when the hurl- 
 barrow gangs o'er the brig o* the nose. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 " I never thought to have entered ane 
 o' these hurley-hackets," she said, as she 
 seated herself, " and sic a thing as it is — 
 scarce room for twa folk." — Scott : St. 
 Ronan's JVell. 
 
 Hynde, gentle, courteous. An illi- 
 terate member of Parliament in 
 the unruly session of 1887 ob- 
 jected to the use of this word 
 as applied to an agricultural 
 labourer, believing that it signi- 
 fied a deer or other quadruped, 
 and never having suspected that 
 it was a term of courtesy. The 
 member himself, called honour- 
 able by the courtesy of Parlia- 
 ment, was ignorant of the fact 
 that courtesy was extended even 
 to farm-labourers by all gentle- 
 men and men of good heart and 
 good manners. 
 
§6 
 
 Hyte — Ingine. 
 
 Then she is to yon hynde squire's yetts, 
 
 And tirled at the pin, 
 And wha sae busy as the hynde squire 
 
 To let the lady in. 
 
 — Bvchan's Ancigat Bal/ads : Hynd 
 Horn. 
 
 Hyte, joyous; excited unduly or 
 overmuch. 
 
 Ochone for poor Castalian drinkers ! 
 The witchin', cursed, delicious blinkers 
 Ha'e put me hyte. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Major Logan. 
 
 This word is derived from the 
 Gaelic aite, joy, gladness, fun, 
 and appears to be related to 
 the English hoity-toity. 
 
 ler-oe, agreat grandchild; errone- 
 ously spelled jeroy in the new 
 editions of Jamieson, and cited 
 as a " Shetland word." 
 
 May health and peace with mutual rays 
 I Shine on the evening o' his days, 
 Till his wee curlie John's ieroe, 
 When ebbing life nae mair shall flow, 
 The last sad mournful rites bestow. 
 
 — Burns : A Dedication to Gavin 
 Hamilton. 
 
 The word is from the Gaelic 
 oghe, a grandchild, and iar, 
 after; whence an after grand- 
 child, or great grandchild. 
 
 Igo and ago, iram, coram, dago. 
 
 The chorus of ancient Gaelic 
 boat-songs, or Ramh-rans, intro- 
 duced by Burns in his song, 
 •' Ken ye aught o' Captain 
 Grose?" The words resolve 
 themselves into the Gaelic 
 aighe, aghach, iorram, corruig- 
 heartih dachaidh, which signify 
 " Joyous and brave is the song 
 of the boat that is rowing 
 homewards." 
 
 Ilka, each, as " ilka ane," each 
 one ; Uk, that same. Uk is used 
 
 for the designation of a person 
 whose patronymic is the same 
 as the name of his estate — such 
 as Mackintosh of Mackintosh — 
 i.e., Mackintosh of that Ilk. 
 This Scottish word has crept 
 into English, though with a 
 strange perversion of its mean- 
 ing, as in the following : — 
 
 We know, however, that many bar- 
 barians of their ilk, and even of later 
 times, knowingly destroyed many a gold 
 and silver vessel that fell into their 
 hands. — vS"^. James s Gazette. 
 
 Matilda lived in St. John's Villas, 
 Twickenham ; Mr. Passmore in King 
 Street of the same ilk. — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Ingine, genius, "the fire of 
 genius" or "poetic fire," are 
 common expressions. Burns, in 
 an "Epistle to John Lapraik," 
 whose poetry he greatly ad- 
 mired, and thought equal to 
 that of Alexander Pope or 
 James Beattie, made inquiries 
 concerning him, and was told 
 that he was " an odd kind o' 
 chiel about Muirkirk." 
 
Ingle, 
 
 97 
 
 An' sae about him there I spier't, 
 Then a' that ken'd him round declar't 
 
 He had ingine. 
 That nane excelled it — few cam near't, 
 
 It was sae fine. 
 
 It would seem on first con- 
 sideration that this peculiarly 
 Scottish word was of the same 
 Latin derivation as genius, in- 
 genious, ingenuity, and the 
 archaic English word cited in 
 Halliwell, "ingene," which is 
 translated " genius or wit." It 
 is open to inquiry, however, 
 whether the idea of fire does 
 not underlie the word, and 
 whether it is not in the form 
 in which Burns employs it, 
 traceable to the Gaelic am, an 
 intransitive prefix or particle 
 signifying great, very, or in- 
 tense ; and teine^ fire. 
 
 The late Samuel Rogers, author of the 
 *' Pleasures of Memory," in a controversy 
 with me on the character of Lord Byron, 
 spoke very unfavourably of his poetical 
 genius, which I praised and defended to 
 the best of my ability. Mr. Rogers, how- 
 ever, always returned to the attack with re- 
 newed vigour. Driven at last to extremity, 
 I thought to clench all argument by saying 
 — "At least you will admit, Mr. Rogers, 
 that there was Jire in Byron's poetry?" 
 " Yes," he answered, '^^ hell-fire I" — C M. 
 
 Ingle, the fire; ingle- side, the 
 fireside, the hearth ; ingle-neuk, 
 the chimney corner ; ingle-hred, 
 home-bred, or bred at the 
 domestic hearth ; inglin, fuel. 
 
 Better a wee zn^^le to warm you, than a 
 muckle fire to burn you.— Allan Ram- 
 say's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 His wee bit ingle blinkin' bonnille. 
 — Burns. 
 
 It's an auld story now, and everybody 
 tells it, as we were doing, in thtir ain 
 
 way by the ingle-side.— Scott : Guy Man- 
 nering. 
 
 The derivation of ingle, in the 
 Scottish sense of the word, is 
 either from the Gaelic aingeal, 
 the Kymric engyl, heat, fire, or 
 from ion, fit, becoming, com- 
 fortable ; and cuil, a corner. 
 That of the English ingle, mean- 
 ing a favourite, a friend, or 
 lover, is not easy to discover. 
 The word occurs in a passage 
 from an Elizabethan play, with 
 a detestable title, quoted by 
 Nares : — 
 
 Call me your love, your ingle, your 
 cousin, or so ; but sister at no hand. 
 
 Also in Massinger's " City 
 Madam" : — 
 His quondam patrons, his dear ingils now. 
 
 Ingle, from one signifying a 
 lover in the legitimate use of 
 that word, was corrupted into 
 an epithet for the male lover 
 of a male, in the most odious 
 sense. In " Donne's Elegies," 
 it is used as signifying amorous 
 endearment of a child to its 
 father : — 
 
 Thy little brother, which like fairy spirits, 
 Oft skipped into our chamber those sweet 
 
 nights 
 And kissed and ingled on thy father's knee. 
 
 No satisfactory etymology for 
 the English word has ever been 
 suggested, and that from the 
 Spanish yngle, the groin, which 
 finds favour with Nares and 
 other philologists, is manifestly 
 inadmissible. It is possible, 
 however, that the English ingle 
 was originally the same as the 
 Scottish, and that its first 
 G 
 
98 
 
 Inttll — / Wish Ye were in Heckie-burnie. 
 
 meaning as "love" was derived 
 from the idea still current, that 
 calls a beloved object a flame. 
 Hotten's Slang Dictionary has 
 *'flame, a sweetheart." Ingle 
 was sometimes written enghle, 
 which latter word, according 
 to Mr. Halliwell, signifies, as 
 used by Ben Jonson, a gull — 
 also, to coax or to wheedle. 
 
 Intill, into ; till, to. What's in- 
 tiWt .? What's in it ? 
 
 An English traveller, staying at a great 
 hotel in Edinburgh, was much pleased 
 with the excellence of the hotch-potch at 
 dinner, and asked the head-waiter how 
 it was made, and of what it was made? 
 The waiter replied that there were peas 
 intiirt, and beans intilCt, and onions 
 intill't. " But what's intiU't ? " asked the 
 Englishman. " I'm just tellin' you that 
 there's beans intilTt, and peas intiirt, and 
 neeps intiirt, and carrots intilft " 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! I know — beans, peas, 
 onions, turnips, and carrots," said the 
 Englishman ; " but what's intiirt ? Is 
 it salt, pepper, or what? Please tell me 
 what's intill't ? " 
 
 "Eh, man!" replied the impatient 
 waiter, "ye maun be unco' slow o' com- 
 prehension. I was tellin' ye owre and 
 owre again that there are beans intiirt, 
 and peas intiltt " 
 
 "And tult! What the devil is tult, or 
 intiirt, or whatever the name is? Can 
 you not give a plain answer to a plain 
 question? Does tult mean barley, or 
 mutton, or mustard, or some nameless in- 
 gredient that is a trade secret, or that you 
 are afraid to mention ? " 
 
 " Oh, man ! " said the waiter, with a 
 groan, " if I had your head in my keeping, 
 I'd gie it sic a thumpin' as wad put some 
 smeddum intiltt." 
 
 Tradition records that the Englishman 
 has never yet ascertained what intiltt 
 means, but wanders through Scotland 
 vainly seeking enlightenment. — Knife and 
 Fork, edited by B^anchard Jerrold. 
 
 I wish ye were in Heckie-burnie. 
 
 "This," says Jamieson, "is a 
 strange form of imprecation. 
 The only account given of this 
 place is that it is three miles 
 beyond lieU. In Aberdeen, if 
 one says, ' go to the devil ! ' 
 the other often replies, ' go you 
 to Heckie-hiimie ! ^' No etymo- 
 logy is given. Possibly it 
 originated in the pulpit, when 
 some Gaelic preacher had taken 
 the story of Dives and Lazarus 
 for his text ; and the rich Dives, 
 amid his torments in hell, asked 
 in vain for a drop of water 
 to cool his parched tongue. 
 The intolerable thirst was his 
 greatest punishment ; and in 
 Gaelic Aicheadh is refusal, and 
 buirne, water from the burn 
 or stream, whence the phrase 
 would signify the refusal or 
 denial of water. This is oilered 
 as a suggestion only, to account 
 for an expression that has 
 been hitherto given up as in- 
 explicable. 
 
Jamph — Jimp. 
 
 ^ or THE X 
 
 UNIVERSITY j 
 99 
 
 A\ 
 
 f 
 
 Jamph, to trudge, to plod, to 
 make way laboriously, to grow 
 weary with toil; also, to en- 
 deavour to take liberties with 
 an unwilling or angry woman ; 
 to pursue her under difficulty 
 and obstruction. 
 
 " Oh bonnie lass ! " says he, " ye'U gie's a 
 
 kiss, 
 And I shall set you right on, hit or miss." 
 "A hit or miss, I want na help of you, — 
 Kiss ye sklate stanes, they winna wat your 
 
 mou." 
 And off she goes ; — the fellow loot a rin, 
 As gin he ween'd with speed to tak her in ; 
 But as luck was, a knibbloch took his tae. 
 And o'er fa's he, and tumbles down the 
 
 brae ; 
 His neebor leugh, and said it was well 
 
 wair'd — 
 " Let never j'am^kers yet be better sair'd." 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 The etymology of jamph — 
 whether it means to plod or 
 flirt, or both — is obscure. It is 
 possibly, but not certainly, from 
 the Gaelic deanamh {de pro- 
 nounced as je), doing, acting, 
 performing. Jamieson thinks 
 that, in the sense of flirting, it 
 may come from the Teutonic 
 schimpfen, to mock ; and in the 
 sense of plod or trudge, from 
 schampfen, to slip aside. 
 
 Jauner, idle talk ; to wander list- 
 lessly about without any par- 
 ticular object. 
 
 Oh, baud your tongue now, Luckie Laing, 
 Oh, baud your tongue and jauner. 
 
 — Burns : The Lass of Ecclefechan. 
 We'se had a good jauner this forenoon. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 In the sense of wandering 
 idly, this word seems to be 
 but a variety or corruption of 
 dauner. 
 
 Jawp, to bespatter with mud or 
 water. To ''jatop the water" 
 is a metaphor for spending time 
 in any negotiation or transac- 
 tion without coming to a definite 
 conclusion, " I'U no jau-p water 
 wi' ye" — "I'll not enter into 
 further discussions or wrangles 
 with you." "To jatop waters 
 with one," to play fast and loose, 
 to strive to be off a bargain once 
 made. 
 
 Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise, 
 And dash the gumly j'awps up to the skies. 
 — Burns : TAe Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Jawthers, quasi synonymous 
 with the English slang " to 
 jaw," to dispute or argue abu- 
 sively, as in the phrase " let me 
 have none of your yaw." Jaw- 
 thers, idle wranglings, and also 
 any frivolous discourse. 
 
 Jee, to move. This word survives 
 in English as a command to a 
 horse, in the phrase jee-up and 
 jee-ico. 
 
 I am sick an' very love sick, 
 Ae foot I cannay^^. 
 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Jimp, slender in the waist. 
 
 She is as jimp i the middle sae fou* 
 As is a willow wand. 
 
 — The Laird d Warriston. 
 
100 
 
 Jink — Jock. 
 
 Jink, to play, to sport, to dodge 
 in and out, from whence the 
 phrase "high- jinks," sometimes 
 . used in England to describe the 
 . merriment and sport of servants 
 in the kitchen when their mas- 
 ters and mistresses are out ; a 
 quick or sudden movement ; 
 also to escape, to trick, " to gie 
 the jink" to give the slip, to 
 elude. 
 
 And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin' 
 A certain bardie, rantin', drinkin', 
 Some luckless hour will send him linkin' 
 
 To your black pit ; 
 But faith hell turn a comex Jinkin , 
 And cheat ye yet ! 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 \ Lang may your elbucky/«/t and diddle. 
 
 — Burns : Second Epistle to Davie. 
 
 Oh, thou, my muse ! guid auld Scotch 
 
 drink. 
 Whether through wimplin' worms thou 
 
 jink. 
 Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink 
 In glorious faem. 
 
 —Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Jamieson derives the word 
 from the Swedish dwink-a, and 
 the German schwinken, to move 
 quickly, but no such word ap- 
 pears in the German diction- 
 aries, and the etymology is 
 otherwise unsatisfactory. The 
 Gaelic dian (pronounced jian) 
 and dianach signifies brisk, 
 nimble, which is probably the 
 root of jink as used by Burns. 
 
 Jirble, jirgle. Both of these 
 words signify to spill any liquid 
 by making it move from side to 
 side in the vessel that contains 
 it ; to empty any liquid from 
 one vessel to another ; also, the 
 
 small quantity left in a glass or 
 tea -cup. 
 
 The waur for themselves and for the 
 country baith, St. Ronan's ; it's the junket- 
 ing and Xhejirbling in tea and sic trumpery 
 that brings our nobles to ninepence, and 
 mony a het ha' house to a hired lodging in 
 the Abbey.— Scott : St. Ronan's Well. 
 
 Jock in Scottish, and in English 
 Jack, are used as familiar sub- 
 stitutes for the Christian name 
 John, and are supposed to be de- 
 rived from the French Jacques. 
 This word, however, means 
 James, and not John. The use 
 of the prefixes Jack and Jock 
 in many English and Scottish 
 compounds that have no obvious 
 reference to the Christian names 
 either of James or John, sug- 
 gests that there may possibly 
 be a different origin for the 
 word. Among others that may 
 be cited, are Jack-i&r, Jack- 
 priest, /acA;-of-all-trades, and 
 such implements in common 
 use as hoot-jack, roasting-^'ac/t, 
 yac^-knife, the jacks or hammers 
 of a pianoforte, the jack or 
 clapper of a bell, jcuik-hoois, 
 jack-chaAn, the Union-^acA; or 
 flag, jack-stdiS., jack-tovroi, jack- 
 block, and many others which 
 are duly set forth in the dic- 
 tionaries, without suggestion of 
 any other etymology than that 
 from John. Shakspeare in his 
 sonnets uses the word jack for 
 the hammers of the virginal, 
 and in Richard II. employs it to 
 signify a working-man : — 
 
 Since t.vt.ry jack became a gentleman. 
 There's many a gentle person made z.jack. 
 
Jock. 
 
 lOI 
 
 Besides the Scottish term of 
 familiarity or affection for a 
 man, the word Jock occurs in 
 two singular words cited by 
 Jamieson — Jock-te-leer, which he 
 says is a cant term for a pocket 
 almanack, "derived from Jock 
 the liar," from the loose or false 
 predictions with regard to the 
 weather which are contained in 
 such publications ; and Jock-te- 
 leg, a folding or clasp-knife. 
 
 It is diflacult to connect either 
 the Scottish Jock or the English 
 Jack in these words with the 
 name of John, unless upon the 
 supposition that John and Jack 
 are synonymous with man, and 
 that the terms are transferable 
 to any and every implement 
 that aids or serves the purpose 
 of a man's work. Is it not pos- 
 sible that Jock and Jack are 
 mere varieties of the Gaelic 
 dcagh (the de pronounced as j), 
 which signifies good, excellent, 
 useful, befitting ? or the Kymric 
 iach, whole, useful ? and deach, 
 a movement for a purpose ? 
 This derivation would meet the 
 sense of all the compound words 
 and phrases in which jock and 
 jack enter, other than those in 
 which it indubitably signifies a 
 Christian name. 
 
 The word jocteleer — an alman- 
 ack, in Jamieson— tried by this 
 test, would signify, good to 
 examine, to learn ; from deayh, 
 good, and leir, perception. 
 
 In like manner, the English 
 words and phrases, /acA:-tar, 
 /acA;-priest, /oc^-of -all-trades, 
 might signify good, able-bodied 
 
 sailor, good priest, and good 
 at all trades. Even jockey, a 
 good rider, may be derivable 
 from the same source. Thus, 
 too, in Shakspeare's phrase, 
 Jack may signify, not a John, 
 as a generic name, but deagk 
 {jeack), as applied in the com- 
 mon phrase " my good man," 
 and in French bon homme — 
 epithets which, although in 
 one sense respectful, are only 
 employed by superiors to infe- 
 riors, and infer somewhat of 
 social depreciation. 
 
 In reference to Jocteleg or 
 Jocktelag, it should be men- 
 tioned that Burns spells the 
 word in the first manner, and 
 Allan Ramsay in the second. 
 Jamieson says that there was 
 once a famous cutler of Liege, 
 in Belgium, named Jacques, and 
 that his cutlery being in repute, 
 any article of his make was 
 called a Jacques de Liege. As 
 no mention of this man or his 
 business has been found any- 
 where except in the pages of 
 Jamieson, it has been suspected 
 that the name was evolved from 
 the imagination of that philo- 
 logist. Whether that be so or 
 not, it is curious that the Gaelic 
 dioghail signifies to avenge, and 
 dioghail taiche (pronounced jog- 
 al taiche), an avenger. In early 
 times it was customary to be- 
 stow names of affection upon 
 swords, such as Excalibur, the 
 sword of King Arthur, Duran- 
 darte, and many others, the 
 swords of renowned knights of 
 romance and chivalry ; and if 
 
102 
 
 Joe — -Jowler, 
 
 upon swords, probably upon 
 daggers and knives ; and no epi- 
 thet in a barbarous age — when 
 every man had to depend upon 
 his own prowess for self-defence 
 or revenge for injuries — could be 
 more appropriate for a strong 
 knife than the " avenger." 
 
 Joe or Jo, a lover, a friend, a dear 
 companion; derived not from 
 Joseph, as has been asserted, 
 nor from the French ^'oie or 
 English joy, as Jamieson sup- 
 poses, but more probably from 
 the Gaelic deo (the d pronounced 
 as 3), the soul, the vital spark, 
 the life ; Greek ^CyT\. 
 
 John Anderson my Jo, John. 
 
 — Burns. 
 Kind sir, for your courtesy, 
 
 As ye gae by the Bass, then, 
 For the love ye bear to me. 
 
 Buy me a keeking-glass, then. 
 Keek into the clear draw-well, 
 
 Janet, Janet, 
 There ye'll see your bonnie sel', 
 My Jo, Janet. 
 — Old Song: retnodelled by "BxiRiiS. 
 
 J Oram, a boat song ; a rowing 
 song, in which the singers keep 
 time with their voices to the 
 motion of the oars ; from the 
 modern Gaelic iorram. This 
 word is often erroneously used 
 in the phrase "push about the 
 jorum,'" as if jorum signified a 
 bowl of liquor which had to be 
 passed round the table. An in- 
 stance of this mistake occurs in 
 Burns : — 
 
 And here's to them that, like oursel', 
 Can push about the. Jorujn ; 
 
 And here's to them that wish us weel — 
 May a' that s guid watch o'er 'em. 
 —Oh May, thy Mom. 
 
 The ancient and correct Gaelic 
 for a boat song is oran iomraidh 
 or iomramh ; from oran, a song ; 
 torn, many, and ramh, an oar, of 
 which iorram, or the song of many 
 oars, is a corruption. The con- 
 nection between iorram, a boat 
 song, siud jorum, a drinking ves- 
 sel, is probably due to the cir- 
 cumstance that the chorus of 
 the boat song was often sung by 
 the guests at a convivial party, 
 when the bottle or bowl was put 
 in circulation. 
 
 Jouk, to stoop down ; in the Eng- 
 lish vernacular to duck the 
 head, or duck down; also to 
 evade a question. Jouker, a 
 dissembler, a deceiver. 
 
 Neath the brae the hurnie Jouks. 
 
 — Tannahill : Gloomy Winter. 
 
 Jouk and let the jaw go by {ProzierU) — 
 i.e., evade replying to intemperate or 
 abusive language. 
 
 Jow, the swing or boom of a large 
 bell. 
 
 Now Clinkumbell 
 Began to Jow. 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair, 
 
 And every JoTV the kirk bell gied. 
 
 Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Jow means to swing, and not the " clang 
 or boom of a large bell." 
 
 Now Clinkumbell, wi' rattling tone 
 
 Began to Jow and croon. 
 The bell-rope began to shake, — the bell 
 began to swing (Jow) and (croon) ring out. 
 — R. Drennan. 
 
 Jowler. This word is used by 
 Burns in the " Address of Beel- 
 zebub to the President of the 
 Highland Society," in which, 
 speaking of gipsies, he says : — 
 
Jundie — Kail-runt. 
 
 103 
 
 An' if the wives an' dirty brats 
 E'en thigger at your doors an' yetts, 
 Get out a horsewhip or s.jowler. 
 
 An' gar the tattered gipsies pack 
 Wi' a' their bastards on their back. 
 
 Jamieson does not include the 
 word in his Dictionary, nor do 
 the glossaries to Allan Kamsay 
 or Burns contain it. By the con- 
 text, it would seem to mean a 
 cudgel. In this sense the word 
 has support in the northern 
 counties of England. JoUe, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Halliwell Phillips, 
 . signifies to beat ; and jowler 
 means thick and clumsy — epi- 
 thets which describe a bludgeon 
 and a cudgel. 
 
 " Did you give him a good drubbing?" 
 "I gave him a good uAy jowling." — 
 Wright's Archaic Dictionary. 
 
 In the sense of thick and 
 clumsy, ^olle and ^owl are ap- 
 parently the roots of English 
 joUer-head, a thick-headed fel- 
 low. Jowler, as the name of 
 an instrument of punishment, 
 whether a cudgel or not, is pro- 
 bably from the Gaelic diol {jole, 
 
 d pronounced as j), to punish, 
 to avenge, to requite, to pay ; 
 diolair, an avenger. In collo- 
 quial English the threat, '• I'll 
 pay you out," has a similar 
 meaning. 
 
 Jundie, to jostle, to struggle, to 
 contend and push in a crowd ; 
 to hog-shouther, or push with 
 the shoulders in order to force 
 a way. 
 
 If a man's gaun down the brae, ilk ane 
 gi'es him a jundie. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The warldly race may drudge and drive, 
 Hog-shouther, y««^zV, stretch, and strive. 
 — Burns : To William Simpson. 
 
 Jute, a term of reproach applied 
 to a weak, worthless, spiritless 
 person, especially to a woman. 
 It is also used in reference to 
 sour or stale liquor, and to weak 
 broth or tea. It seems to be 
 derived from the Gaelic diiiid 
 {diu pronounced as /w), sneak- 
 ing, mean-spirited, silly, weak ; 
 and diu, the worst, the refuse 
 of things. 
 
 Kail, cabbage, the German Icohl ; 
 a word that survives in English 
 in the first syllable of cauliflower. 
 By an extension of meaning Tcail 
 sometimes signifies dinner, as 
 in the familiar invitation once 
 common, "Come an' tak' your 
 Tcail wi' me," i.e., come and dine 
 with me. 
 
 Kail -runt, a cabbage stalk ; kail- 
 blade, a cabbage leaf. 
 When I lookit to my dart, 
 
 It was sae blunt, 
 Fient haet it wad hae pierced the heart 
 O' a kail-runt. 
 —Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Just in a kail-blade and send it, — 
 
 Baith the disease and what '11 mend it, 
 At ance he'll i&W'i.— Idem. 
 
I04 
 
 Kain — Keek. 
 
 Kain, tribute, tax, tithe ; from 
 the Gaelic cain, tribute ; cain- 
 cach, tributary. 
 
 Our laird gets in his racked rents, 
 His coal, his kaz'n. 
 
 — Burns : TAe Twa Dogs. 
 Kain to the King. 
 
 — Jacobite Song (17 15). 
 
 Kain-bairns, says a note in Sir 
 Walter Scott's "Minstrelsy of 
 the Scottish Border," were in- 
 fants, according to Scottish 
 superstition, that were seized 
 in their cradles by warlocks 
 and witches, and paid as a kain, 
 or tax, to their master the devlL 
 Jamieson is in error in deriving 
 kain from the Gaelic cean, the 
 head. 
 
 Kaur-handit, left-handed. In 
 this combination, haur does not 
 signify the left as distinguished 
 from the right, but is from the 
 Gaelic car, signifying a twist or 
 turn. The hand so designated 
 implies that it is twisted or 
 turned into a function that 
 ought to be performed by the 
 other. 
 
 Kaury-maury is used in the 
 "Vision of Piers Ploughman." 
 
 Clothed in a kaury-maury 
 I couthe it nought descryve. 
 
 In the glossary to Mr. Thomas 
 - Wright's edition of this ancient 
 poem, he suggests that kaury- 
 maury only means care and 
 trouble ; a conjecture that is 
 supported by the Gaelic car, 
 and mearachd, an error, a mis- 
 take, a wrong, an injustice. 
 
 Kebar, a rafter, a beam in the 
 roof of a house ; from the Gaelic 
 cubar, a pole, the trunk of a 
 tree. "Putting" or throwing 
 the cabar is a gymnastic feat 
 still popular at Highland games 
 in Scotland. 
 
 He ended, and the kebars shook 
 Above the chorus roar. 
 
 — Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Kebbuck, a cheese ; kebbuck heel, 
 a remnant or hunk of cheese. 
 From the Gaelic cabag, a cheese. 
 
 The weel-hained kebbuck. 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 In comes a gaucie, gash, gude wife, 
 
 An' sits down by the fire ; 
 Syne draws her kebbuck and her knife — 
 The lasses they are shyer. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Keck or keckle, to draw back 
 from a bargain, to change one's 
 mind, to flinch ; from the Gaelic 
 caochail, to change. 
 
 "I have keck'd"—! decline adhering to 
 the offer.— Jamieson. 
 
 Keckle is also a form of the 
 English cackle, and has no 
 affinity or synonymity with 
 keck. 
 
 Keek, to peep, to pry, to look 
 cautiously about ; possibly from 
 the Gaelic cldh, pronounced 
 kidh or kee, to see ; a cidhis, a 
 mask to cover the face all but 
 the eyes, a vizor. 
 
 The robin came to the wren's nest 
 
 And keekit in. — Nursery Rhyme. 
 Stars dinna keek in. 
 And see me wi' Mary.— Burns. 
 When the tod [fox] is in the wood, he 
 cares na how many folk keek at his tail.— 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
Keeking-glass — Keltie. 
 
 105 
 
 A clergyman in the West of Scotland 
 once concluded a prayer as follows : — " O 
 Lord ! Thou art like a mouse in a drystane 
 dyke, aye keekiti out at us frae holes 
 and crannies, but we canna see Thee." — 
 Rogers' Illustrations of Scottish Life. 
 
 Keeking-glass, a looking-glass, 
 a mirror. 
 
 She. Kind sir, for your courtesy. 
 
 As ye gang by the Bass, then» 
 For the love ye bear to me, 
 Buy me a keeking-glass, then. 
 He. Keek into the draw-well, 
 Janet, Janet ! 
 There ye'll see your bonnie sel', 
 My jo, Janet. — Burns. 
 
 Keel or keill, a small vessel or 
 skiff, a lighter, and not merely 
 the Tceel of any ship or boat as 
 in English. It is synonymous 
 with coracle, or the Gaelic cur- 
 ach, and is probably derived 
 from the Gaelic caol, narrow, 
 from its length as distinguished 
 from its breadth. 
 
 Oh, merry may the keel row, 
 The keel row, the keel row ; 
 
 Oh, merry may the keel row. 
 The ship that my love's in. 
 
 — Northern Ballad. 
 
 Keelivine, a crayon pencil. Ori- 
 gin unknown. 
 
 Kell, a woman's cap ; from the 
 Gaelic ceil, a covering. 
 
 Then up and gat her seven sisters, 
 
 And served to her a kell, 
 And every steek that they put in 
 Sewed to a silver bell. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Gay 
 Goss-hawk. 
 
 Kelpie, a water-sprite. Etymo- 
 logy unknown; that suggested 
 by Jamieson from caZ/ is not 
 probable. 
 
 What is it ails my good bay mare ? 
 
 What is it makes her start and shiver ? 
 She sees a kelpie in the stream. 
 
 Or fears the rushing of the river. 
 
 — Legends of the Isles. 
 The kelpie gallop'd o'er the green. 
 He seemed a knight of noble mien ; 
 And old and young stood up to see. 
 And wondered who this knight could be. 
 
 — Idem. 
 The side was steep, the bottom deep, 
 
 Frae bank to bank the water pouring ; 
 And the bonnie lass did quake for fear. 
 
 She heard the -woX&r-kelpie roaring. 
 — Ballad of Annan Water. 
 
 Keltie, a large glass or bumper, 
 to drain which was imposed as 
 a punishment upon those who 
 were suspected of not drinking 
 fairly. *' Cleared Iceltie aff," ac- 
 cording to Jamieson, was a 
 phrase that signified that the 
 glass was quite empty. The 
 word seems to be derived from 
 kelter, to tilt up, to tip up, to 
 turn upside down, and to have 
 been applied to the glasses 
 used in the hard-drinking days 
 of our great-grandfathers, that 
 were made without stems, and 
 rounded at the bottom like the 
 Dutch dolls that roll from side 
 to side, from inability to stand 
 upright. With a glass of this 
 kind in his hand, the toper had 
 to empty it before he could re- 
 place it on the table. Jamieson 
 was probably ignorant of this 
 etymology, though he refers to 
 the German kelter, which signi- 
 fies a wine-press. Keltem, in the 
 same language, is to tread the 
 grapes. But these words do not 
 apply to either the Scottish 
 keltie or kelter. 
 
io6 
 
 Kemmin — Kidney. 
 
 Kemmin, a champion, a corrup- 
 tion of ^emp (g-.v.)' 
 
 He works like a kemmin. 
 He fechts like a kemmin. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 The Kymric has ceimmyn, a 
 striver in games ; the Flemish 
 kampen; and German Tcdmpfen, 
 to fight, to struggle, to contend. 
 
 Kemp, a warrior, a hero, a cham- 
 pion ; also to fight, to strive, to 
 contend for the superiority or 
 the mastery. Kemper is one who 
 kcmps or contends ; used in the 
 harvest field to signify a reaper 
 who excels his comrades in 
 the quantity and quality of his 
 work. Kempion, or Kemp Owain, 
 is the name of the champion 
 in two old Scottish ballads who 
 "borrows," or ransoms, a fair 
 lady from the spells cast upon 
 her by demoniacal agency, by 
 which she was turned into the 
 shape of a wild beast. Kempion, 
 or Kemp Owain, kisses her thrice, 
 notwithstanding her hideousness 
 and loathsomeness, and so re- 
 stores her to her original beauty. 
 Kempion is printed in Scott's 
 " Border Minstrelsy," and Kemp 
 Owain in Motherwell's "Min- 
 strelsy, Ancient and Modern." 
 
 Kennawhat, a nondescript, a "je 
 ne sais quoi," or know-not -what. 
 
 Kenspeckle, noticeable, conspi- 
 cuous, noteworthy. 
 
 Kep, to catch, to receive ; from 
 the Gaelic ceap, to intercept, to 
 stop, to receive. 
 
 Ilka blade o' grass ke^s its ain drap o' dew. 
 —James Ballantine. 
 
 Ilk cowslip cup shall ke/ a tear. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Ker haund or ker-handed, left- 
 handed, awkward; from the 
 Gaelic, cer, a twist ; and cearr, 
 wrong, awkward. See Kaur- 
 HANDIT, ante. 
 
 It maun be his left foot foremost, unless 
 he was ker-haund. — Nodes Atnbrosiatice. 
 
 Ket, a fleece ; tawted ket, a matted 
 or ropy fleece. From the Gaelic 
 ceath, a sheep or sheep-skin. 
 
 She was nae get o' moorland tips, 
 Wi' tawted ket an' hairy hips. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Kevil, a lot ; to cast kevils, to draw 
 lots. 
 
 Let every man be content with his ain 
 kevil. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 And they coost kevils them amang 
 Wha should to the greenwood gang. 
 — CosPATRiCK : Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 Kidney. " Of the same kidney,'' 
 of a like sort. The Slang Dic- 
 tionary has, " Two of a kidney, 
 or two of a sort — as like as two 
 pears, or two kidneys in a bunch." 
 Sir Kichard Ayscough says that 
 Shakspeare's phrase, which he 
 put into the mouth of Falstaff, 
 means "a man whose kidneys 
 are as fat as mine — i.e., a man 
 as fat as I am." A little know- 
 ledge of the original language 
 of the British people would show 
 the true root of the word to be 
 the Gaelic ceudna — pronounced 
 keudna, sort, or of the same sort ; 
 ceudnachd, identity, similarity. 
 
 Think of that ! a man of my kidney, that 
 am as subject to heat as butter. — Merry 
 Wives of Windsor. 
 
Kill-cow — Kinnen, 
 
 107 
 
 Your poets, spendthrifts, and other fools 
 of that /t/^«<y.— Burns : Letter to Mr. 
 Robert A itislie. 
 
 Kill-cow, an expressive collo- 
 quialism which signifies a diffi- 
 culty that maybe surmounted by 
 resolution and energy. Jamie- 
 son translates it "a matter of 
 consequence, a serious affair ; 
 as in the phrase, *Ye needna 
 mind ; I'm sure it's nae sic great 
 kill-cow ; ' " and adds, " in refer- 
 ence, most probably, to a blow- 
 that is sufficient to knock down 
 or kill a cow ! " Jamieson forgot 
 the reference in his own Dic- 
 tionary to cow, in which the 
 word signifies a ghost, spectre, 
 or goblin. The phrase might 
 be rendered, "a ghost that 
 might be laid without much 
 difficulty." 
 
 Killicoup, a somersault, head- 
 over-heels. 
 
 That gang tried to keep violent lease- 
 hold o' your ain fields, an' your ain ha', 
 till ye gied them a killicoup. — Hogg's 
 Brownie of Bodsbeck. 
 
 Kilt, a garment worn by High- 
 landers, descending from the 
 waist to the middle of the knee ; 
 to lift the petticoats up to the 
 knee, or wear them no lower 
 than the knee ; to raise the 
 clothes in fording a stream. 
 "High kilted" is a metaphor 
 applied to conversation or 
 writing that savours of immo- 
 desty. From the Gaelic ceil, to 
 cover ; cdlte, covered. 
 
 Her tartan petticoat she'll kilt. 
 
 —Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 
 She's kilted her coats o' green satin, 
 She's kilted them up to the knee, 
 And she's off wi' Lord Ronald M' Donald, 
 His bride and his darling to be. 
 
 — Old Song: Lizzie Lindsay. 
 
 Kimmer, a female friend, gossip, 
 or companion ; from the French 
 commere ; synonymous with the 
 English gammer. 
 
 My kimmer and I gaed to the fair 
 Wi' twal punds Scots on sarkin' to wear ; 
 But we drank the gude braw hawkie dry, 
 And sarkless cam hame, my kimmer and I. 
 — Cromek's Remains. 
 
 Kink, a knot, an entanglement, 
 an involution ; the same in 
 Flemish ; whence kink-host, or 
 kink-cough, the hooping-cough, 
 or generally a violent fit of 
 coughing, in which the paroxysm 
 seems to twist knots into each 
 other. The word kink is some- 
 times applied to a fit of irre- 
 pressible laughter. Kink-cough 
 has been corrupted in English 
 into king-cough. Mr. Robert 
 Chambers, on a note on kink, 
 which occurs in the "Ballad of 
 the Laird o' Logic," explains it 
 as meaning to wring the fingers 
 till the joints crack, which he 
 says is a very striking though a 
 simple delineation of grief. 
 
 And sae she tore her yellow hair, 
 Kinking her fingers ane by ane, 
 And cursed the day that she was born. 
 
 Kinnen, rabbits ; corruption of 
 the English coney. 
 
 Make kinnen and caper ready, then. 
 
 And venison in greit plentie, 
 We'll welcome here our royal King. 
 — Ballad 0/ Johnnie Armstrong. 
 
io8 
 
 Kinsh — Kipper. 
 
 Kinsh. According to Jamieson, 
 this word signifies kindred. 
 
 The man may eithly tine a stot that 
 canna count h.\s kinsh. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 " The man may easily lose a 
 young ox that cannot count 
 his kinsh." The meaning of 
 Jcinsh in this passage is not 
 clear. It has been suggested 
 that it is a misprint for either 
 Icine or kindred. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, the true meaning is to 
 be sought in the Gaelic cin- 
 neas {kinneash), which means 
 growth or natural increase. 
 This interpretation renders the 
 proverb intelligible — a man may 
 afford to lose one stot who can- 
 not count the increase of his 
 flocks and herds. 
 
 Kintra cooser, one who runs 
 about the country ; a term 
 sometimes applied to an entire 
 horse, which is taken from place 
 to place for the service of mares. 
 
 If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales, 
 Was threshin' still at hizzie's tails. 
 Or if he was grown oughtlins douser. 
 And no a perfect kintra cooser. 
 
 — Burns : To one who had sent him 
 a newspaper. 
 
 The word cooser appears in 
 Shakspeare as cosier or cozier, 
 and has puzzled all the com- 
 mentators to explain it. Cosier'' s 
 catches were songs sung by work- 
 ing men over their libations in 
 roadside ale-houses. Johnson 
 thought that cosier must mean 
 a tailor, from coudre, to sew ; 
 and cousue, that which is sewed ; 
 
 while others equally erudite 
 were of opinion that costers were 
 cobblers or tinkers. The cosiers 
 who sang catches might have 
 belonged to all or any of these 
 trades ; but the word, now ob- 
 solete in English, and almost 
 obsolete in Scotch, is the Gaelic 
 cosaire, a pedestrian, a way- 
 farer, a tramp. Up to the time 
 of Dr. Johnson's visit to the 
 Hebrides, Highland gentlemen 
 of wealth or importance used 
 to keep servants or gillies to 
 run before them, who were 
 known as cosiers — misprinted by 
 Bos well as coshirs. Jamieson, 
 unaware of the simple origin 
 of the word, as applied to a 
 horse made to perambulate the 
 country, states that cooser is a 
 stallion, and derives it from the 
 French coursier, a courser. But 
 courser itself is from the same 
 root, from course, a journey. The 
 coarse allusion of Burns to the 
 Prince of Wales expressed a 
 hope that he had ceased to run 
 about the country after women. 
 
 Kipper, to split, dry, and cure 
 fish by salting them. Kippered 
 herrings, haddocks, and salmon 
 are largely prepared and con- 
 sumed in Scotland, and to a 
 much smaller extent in the large 
 cities of England. The mode 
 of kippering is scarcely known 
 to the south of the Tweed, and 
 where known, is not so success- 
 fully practised, or with such 
 delicate and satisfactory results, 
 as in Scotland. The derivation 
 of the word is uncertain. 
 
Kirk — Kittle. 
 
 109 
 
 Kirk, is the original form of the 
 word, which has been Anglicised 
 into church. It is derived from 
 the idea of, and is identical 
 with, circle or kirkle, the form 
 in which, in the primitive ages 
 of the world, and still later, in 
 the Druidical era, all places 
 of worship — whether of the 
 supreme God or of the Sun, 
 supposed to be His visible re- 
 presentative — were always con- 
 structed. The great stone circle, 
 or kirkle, of Stonehenge was 
 one of the earliest kirks, or 
 churches, erected in these is- 
 lands. The traces of many- 
 smaller stone circles are still to 
 be found in Scotland. The word 
 is derived feom the Gaelic coir, 
 a circle ; whence also court, and 
 the French cour. 
 
 Kimie, a forward boy who gives 
 himself prematurely and offen- 
 sively the airs and habits of 
 a man. Shakspeare speaks of 
 "kerns and gallowglasses," 
 kern being a contraction of the 
 Gaelicc eathairneach [kearneach], 
 an armed peasant serving in the 
 army, also a boor or sturdy 
 fellow. Jamieson derives kimie 
 from the Kymric coryn or cor, 
 a dwarf or pigmy ; but as the 
 Lowland Scottish people were 
 more conversant with their 
 neighbours of the Highlands 
 than with the distant Welsh, 
 it is probable that the Gaelic 
 and not the Kymric derivation 
 of the word is the correct one. 
 
 Kist, a chest, a trunk, a box ; 
 from the French caisse. 
 
 Steele the awmrie, shut the h'st, 
 
 Or else some gear will soon be mist. 
 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Donald Caird. 
 
 A man who had had four wives, and who 
 meditated a fifth time entering the mar- 
 riage state, was conversing with a friend 
 on the subject, who was rather disposed to 
 barter upon his past matrimonial experi- 
 ence, as having made a good deal of money 
 by his wives. " Na ! na ! " said he, " they 
 came to me wi' auld kzsis, an' I sent them 
 hame (to the grave) wi' new anes." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Kith, known to or acquainted 
 with ; from kythe, to show, and 
 the old English couth, to know 
 or see ; a word that survives in 
 concouth, with a somewhat diffe- 
 rent meaning, as strange, odd, 
 or unfamiliar. Kith is generally 
 in modern English used in com- 
 bination with kin, as kith and 
 kin, whence the word is errone- 
 ously supposed to mean relation- 
 ship in blood and ancestry, and 
 to be synonymous with kin and 
 kinship. 
 
 Whether thousands of our own h'ik shall 
 be sacrificed to an obsolete shibboleth and 
 the bloodthirsty operations of an artificial 
 competition. — Letter on Large Weights, 
 by Arnold White — Times, November 2,0, 
 1887. 
 
 Kittle, difficult, ticklish, danger- 
 ous. From the Dutch and 
 Flemish kittelen, to tickle. 
 
 It's kittle shooting at corbies and clergy. 
 It's kittle for the cheeks when the hurl- 
 barrow gangs o'er the brig o' the nose. 
 Cats and maidens are kittle ware. 
 It's kittle to waken sleeping dogs. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 As for your priesthood I shall say but 
 
 little. 
 Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle. 
 —Burns : The Brigs of Ayr, 
 
no 
 
 Kivan — Kneef. 
 
 Kivan, kivin. These words 
 signify a covey, a bevy, a troop, 
 a company, a flock, a crowd, or 
 an assemblage. They are evi- 
 dently from the Gaelic coimh 
 {coiv), equivalent to the prefix 
 CO or con, and feadhain {d silent), 
 a troop or band of people, or of 
 living animals of any description. 
 
 Klem or clem. In Lancashire 
 and other parts of England, 
 clem signifies to become stupefied 
 or worn out with hunger, to 
 starve. In Scotland, klem some- 
 times means perverse, obstinate, 
 insensible to reason and to argu- 
 ment ; and, according to Jamie- 
 son, "means low, paltry, un- 
 trustworthy, unprincipled ; and, 
 as used by the boys of the High 
 School of Edinburgh, curious, 
 singular, odd, queer." He de- 
 rives it from the Icelandic 
 Jcleima, macula, a blot or stain — 
 i.e., having a character that lies 
 under a stain. But the Ice- 
 landic does not convey either 
 the Scottish or the English 
 meaning of the word, which is 
 in reality the Flemish Tdeum, 
 lethargic, stupefied either from 
 cold, hunger, or by defect of 
 original vitality and force of 
 mind or body. The Flemish 
 verkleumte is translated in the 
 French dictionaries as engourdi, 
 benumbed, stupefied, stiffened. 
 By a metaphorical extension of 
 meaning, all these physical 
 senses of the word apply to 
 mental conditions, and thus 
 account for all the varieties of 
 the Scottish meaning. 
 
 The English clem may be 
 possibly traced to the German 
 Memmen, to pinch, to squeeze; 
 from klemme, a narrow place, 
 a strait, a diflSculty, whence 
 clemmed, pinched with hunger. 
 
 Knack, to taunt, to make a sharp 
 answer; the same apparently 
 as the English " nag," as applied 
 to the nagging of a disagreeable 
 woman. Knacky, or knacksy, 
 quick at repartee. 
 
 Knappin-hammer. A ham- 
 mer with a long handle used 
 for breaking stones on the road, 
 or in houses of detention for 
 vagrants or criminals. From 
 the English knap or nap, a 
 smart blow on the head, as in 
 the colloquial threat to an un- 
 ruly boy, "you'll nap it." 
 
 What's a' your jargon o' the schools— 
 Your Latin names for books or stools ; 
 If honest Nature made you fools, 
 
 What sairs your grammars ? 
 Ye'd better ta'en up spades or shools 
 
 Or knappin hammers. 
 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 Kneef, active, alert; " o-wei: kneef" 
 or over active suggests, accord- 
 ing to Jamieson, the charge of 
 illicit intercourse. The deriva- 
 tion is probably from the Gaelic 
 gniomh (gniof), a doer, to do, or 
 a deed. The word is sometimes 
 pronounced griomh, whence 
 grieve, a factor, bailiff, or agent. 
 
 Jenny sat jouking like a mouse, 
 But Jock was kneef ^is ony cock, 
 
 Says he to her, Haud up your brows, 
 And fa' to your meet. 
 — The Wooing o Jenny and Jock. 
 
Knowe — Kute. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Knowe, a hillock, a knoll. 
 
 Ca' the yowes [ewes] to the knowes. 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Upon a knowe they sat them down, 
 And there began a long digression, ' 
 About the lords of the creation. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Knowe-head, the hill top. 
 
 Yon sunny knowe-head clad wi' bonnie 
 wild flowers. — James Ballantine. 
 
 Knurl, a dwarf ; Tcnurlin, a dwarf- 
 ling, or very little dwarf. 
 
 The miller was strappin', the miller was 
 
 ruddy — 
 A heart like a lord, and a hue like a lady, 
 The laird was a widdiefu' fleerit knurl — 
 She's left the good fellow, and taken the 
 
 churl. — Burns : Meg d the Mill. 
 
 Wee Pope, the knurlin, rives Horatian 
 fame. — Burns : On Pastoral Poetry. 
 
 These words are apparently 
 derived from the English gnarl, 
 twisted, knotted, as in the 
 phrase, "the gnarled oak," and 
 the Teutonic hioiren, a knot, 
 a wart, a protuberance. They 
 were probably first applied in 
 derision to hunch -backed people , 
 not so much for their littleness 
 as for their deformity. Burns, 
 when speaking of Pope as a 
 knurlin, seems to have had in 
 memory the ill-natured com- 
 parison of that poet to a note 
 of interrogation, because "he 
 was a little crooked thing that 
 asked questions." 
 
 Through an English miscon- 
 ception of the meaning of "a 
 knurl " (pronounced exactly like 
 * ' an earl " ), arose the vulgar slang 
 of the London streets used to 
 insult a hunchback. 
 
 "My Lord" is a nickname given with 
 mock humility to a hunchback.— Hot- 
 ten's Slang Dictionary . 
 
 Koff or coflf, to buy; from the 
 Teutonic kaufen, Flemish koopen, 
 to buy ; whence by corruption 
 horse-kooper, a dealer in horses. 
 
 Kindness comes wi' will ; it canna be 
 ko_^t. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Kute, coot, or queete, the ankle. 
 Cutes or kutes, according to 
 Wright and Halliwell, is a 
 Northern word for the feet. 
 " To let one cool his cutes at the 
 door (or in the lobby)," is a 
 proverbial expression for letting 
 a man wait unduly long in ex- 
 pectation of an interview. Cootie 
 or kutie is a fowl whose legs are 
 feathered. Cootikins, spatter- 
 dashes or gaiters that go over 
 the shoe and cover the ankle. 
 
 Your stockings shall be 
 Narrow, narrow at the kutes, 
 And braid, braid at the braune 
 
 [the brawn or calf]. 
 — Chambers' Scottish Ballads. 
 
 The firsten step that she steppit in [the 
 water], 
 She steppit to the kute. 
 
 The neisten step that she wade in, , 
 
 She waded to the knee ; 
 Said she, " I wad wade further in, 
 
 Gin my true love I could see." 
 
 — Willie and May Margaret. 
 
 It is difficult to trace the 
 origin of this peculiarly Scottish 
 word. The French call the 
 ankle the '' cheville du pied." 
 Bescherelle defines chevUle as 
 " part of the two bones of the 
 leg which rise in a boss or hump 
 on each side of the foot." The 
 
112 
 
 Kyle — Kythe. 
 
 Germans call the ankle the 
 " knuckle of the foot." Jamie - 
 son derives cute from the Teu- 
 tonic kyte, "sura;" but the Latin 
 sura means the calf of the leg 
 and not the ankle ; and kyte is 
 not to be found in any German 
 or Teutonic dictionary. Kyte, 
 in the Scottish vernacular, has 
 nothing to do with kute, and 
 signifies a part of the body far 
 removed from the ankle, viz., 
 the belly. Possibly the Swedish 
 kut, a round boss or rising, as 
 suggested in the extract from 
 Bescherelle, may be the root 
 of cute. The Gaelic affords 
 no assistance to the discovery 
 of the etymology. The word 
 does not appear in the glossaries 
 to Ramsay or Burns. 
 
 Kyle, a narrow strait of water 
 between islands, or between an 
 island and the mainland, as the 
 Kyles of Bute, and Kyle Akin, be- 
 tween Skye and the continent 
 of Scotland. The word is de- 
 rived from the Gaelic caol, a 
 narrow passage, a strait, whence 
 Calais, the French town on the 
 straits of Dover. 
 
 Kyte, the belly. Kytie, corpulent, 
 big-bellied. The Gaelic cuid, 
 victuals, food, has been sug- 
 gested as the origin of the word, 
 on the principle that to *' have 
 
 a long purse," signifies to have 
 money, or much money, so that 
 to have a kyte is to have food to 
 put into it. But this etymology 
 is not satisfactory, nor is that 
 given by Jamieson from the 
 Icelandic. 
 
 Then horn for horn, they stretch and 
 
 strive — 
 Deil tak' the hindmost— on they drive, 
 Till a' their well-filled kytes belyve 
 Are stretched like drums. 
 
 —Burns : To a Haggis. 
 
 But while the wifie flate and gloom'd, 
 The tither cake wi' butter thoomb'd. 
 
 She forced us still to eat, 
 Till our wee kites were straughtit fou, 
 When wi' our hearties at our mou', 
 
 We felt maist like to greet. 
 —James Ballantine : TJte Pentland 
 Hills. 
 
 Kythe, to show or appear ; and 
 kythesome, of pleasant and prepos- 
 sessing appearance. Jamieson 
 has the phrase ' ' blythsome and 
 kythsome," used in Perthshire, 
 and signifying, as he thinks, 
 " happy in consequence of hav- 
 ing abundance of property in 
 cows." If he had remembered 
 his own correct definition of 
 kythe, "show, to be manifest," 
 he would not in this instance 
 have connected it with cows 
 or kye, but would have tran- 
 slated the phrase, "blytheand 
 pleasant of appearance." 
 
 ITyiAe is your ain colours, that folk may 
 ken ye.— Allan Ramsay. 
 
Laigh — Landlord. 
 
 "3 
 
 Laigh, low, or low-down, short. 
 
 The higher the hill, the laigher the grass. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Dance aye laigh and late at e'en. 
 
 — Burns : My Jo, Janet. 
 
 Laired, overthrown, cast to the 
 ground. From the Gaelic lar, 
 the ground; the English lair, 
 as applied to the retreat of a 
 wild animal ; or possibly from 
 lure, to entice or inveigle. 
 
 Laired by spunkies i' the mire. 
 
 — George Beattie : John o Amha\ 
 
 Lammas, the first day of August ; 
 supposed to be derived from the 
 Anglo-Saxon Klaf, a loaf, but 
 more probably from lamh, the 
 Lamb of God. All the ancient 
 festivals appropriated to par- 
 ticular days had an ecclesias- 
 tical origin — such as Mary-mass 
 (now called Lady Day), from the 
 Virgin Mary ; Michaelmas, Hal- 
 lowmas, Candlemas, Christmas, 
 &c. 
 
 Landart, rural, in the country; 
 from landward. 
 
 There was a jolly beggar, 
 
 And a begging he was boun', 
 And he took up his quarters 
 Into a landart town. 
 — Song : Well Gang nae mair a Roving. 
 
 Then come away, and dinna stay, 
 What gars ye look sae landart ? 
 I'd have ye run, and not delay, 
 To join my father's standard. 
 — CocKBURN : Chambers's Scottish 
 Songs. 
 
 Landlash, a great fall of rain, 
 accompanied by a high wind. 
 Jamieson is of opinion that this 
 word is suggested by the idea 
 that such a storm lashes the 
 land. It is more probably from 
 the Gaelic Ian, full ; and laiste, 
 ixnj ; whence lanlaiste (pro- 
 nounced lanLashte, and abbrevi- 
 ated into lardash), the storm in 
 full fury. A lash of water sig- 
 nifies a great, heavy, or furious 
 fall of rain- 
 Landlord and landlady. These 
 words, commonly pronounced 
 lanlord and lanlady, do not 
 solely imply the proprietor- 
 ship of land, as their constant 
 application to the owners of 
 public - houses, and to house- 
 owners generally, as well as to 
 women who merely let lodgings, 
 are sufficient to show. The 
 Scottish laird, without the pre- 
 fix land, conveys the idea of 
 proprietorship. Landlord and 
 landlady, in one of the senses in 
 which the words are continually 
 used, both in English and Scot- 
 tish parlance, are traceable not 
 to land in the Teutonic sense of 
 the word, but to Ian, the Gaelic 
 for full, or an enclosure, and 
 all that it contains or is full 
 of. Thus the keeper of a 
 public, or the owner of a private 
 house, is lord or master of the 
 Ian or enclosure which he occu- 
 pies or possesses. 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 Land-louper — Law. 
 
 Land-Iouper, a vagabond, a wan- 
 derer from place to place with- 
 out settled habitation ; some- 
 times called a forloupin or 
 forlopin, as in Allan Kamsay's 
 "Evergreen." 
 
 Lane, alone, lone, or lonely ; this 
 word, which in the English lone 
 or lonely is an adjective, is a 
 noun in the Scottish lane. "I 
 was all alone," or *' we were all 
 alone," are in Scottish, "I was 
 a' my lane," and "we were a' 
 our lane." " I canna lie my 
 lane," is, " Icannot sleep alone." 
 
 I waited lang beside the wood, 
 Sae wae and weary a' my lane, 
 
 Och hey ! Johnnie lad, 
 
 Ye'reno so kind's ye should hae been. 
 — Tannahill. 
 
 " But oh, my master dear," he cried, 
 " In a green wood, ye're gude your lane." 
 
 —Ballad of Gil Morrice. 
 I wander my lane like a night-troubled 
 ghaist. — Burns. 
 
 Lanrien (sometimes written land- 
 rien). Jamieson defines this 
 word as meaning " in a straight 
 course ; a direct, as opposed to 
 a circuitous course," and quotes 
 a phrase used in Selkirkshire — 
 "He cam rinnin' landrien,'" or 
 straight forward. It seems to 
 be a corruption of the Gaelic 
 Ian, full, <;omplete ; and rian, 
 order, method, arrangement, re- 
 gularity. 
 
 Laroch or lerroch, the site of a 
 building which has been de- 
 molished, but of which there 
 are remains to prove what it 
 once was. From the Gaelic lar, 
 
 the ground or earth ; and larach, 
 the ground on which an edifice 
 once stood. 
 
 Lave, the residue, the remainder, 
 that which is left, or, as the 
 Americans say in commercial 
 fashion, the "balance." 
 
 We'll get a blessing wi' the lave. 
 And never miss't. 
 
 — Burns : To a Mouse. 
 
 First when Maggie was my care. 
 Whistle o'er the lave o't. — Burns. 
 
 Laverock, the lark. This word, 
 so pleasant to the Scottish ear, 
 and so entirely obsolete in Eng- 
 lish speech and literature, was 
 used by Gower and Chaucer : — 
 
 She made many a wondrous soun', 
 Sometimes like unto the cock, 
 Sometimes like the laverock. 
 
 — Gower : Quoted in Halliwell's 
 Archaic Dictionary. 
 
 Why should I sit and sigh, 
 
 When the wild woods bloom sae briery, 
 The laverocks sing, the flowerets spring, 
 And a' but me are cheery. 
 — Buchan's Songs of the North of 
 Scotland. 
 
 Thou laverock that springs frae the dews 
 o' the lawn. — Burns. 
 
 Lark and the Teutonic lerche 
 are doubtless abbreviations of 
 the primitive word laverock, but 
 whence laverock ? Possibly from 
 the ancient Gaelic lahhra (lavra), 
 and labhraich, eloquent, loud — 
 two epithets that are highly ap- 
 propriate to the skylark. 
 
 Law. This word is often used 
 in Scotland to signify a hill or 
 rock, especially to one stand- 
 ing alone, as Berwick Law, so 
 
Lawin — Lee-lang. 
 
 "5 
 
 familiar by sight to the Mid- 
 Lothian people. It is derived 
 from the Gaelic leach, a stone ; 
 and Zmc7^acA, the bare summit 
 of a hill. It sometimes signi- 
 fies the stony or shingly ground 
 by the side of a river, as in the 
 Broomie-^w in Glasgow. Pos- 
 sibly in this case also the word 
 is of the same derivation as 
 leach, and means not only a high 
 stone, but a flat stone, a flag 
 stone, whence leachaig, to pave 
 or lay with flat stones. 
 
 Lawin. This eminently Scottish 
 word is from the Gaelic lachan, 
 the expense of an entertain- 
 ment ; the price of the drink 
 consumed at a tavern ; lachag, 
 a very small reckoning, " Ye're 
 lawin-free," i.e., you are not to 
 pay your share of the bill. The 
 root of the word seems to be 
 lagh, law, order, method — the 
 law of the tavern, that the 
 guests should pay before they 
 go. It was formerly written 
 lauch. 
 
 Aye as the gudewife brought in, 
 Ane scorit upon the wauch [wall], 
 
 Ane bade pay, anither said " Nay, 
 Bide while we reckon our lauch. " 
 —Peblis to the Play. 
 
 Then, gudewife, count the lawin. 
 
 The lawin ! the lawin ! 
 Then, gudewife, count the lawin, 
 
 And bring a cogie mair. 
 
 —Burns : Old Chorus. 
 
 Lawin, the reckoning at an inn. Isn't 
 reckoning a Scotticism? I doubt very 
 much if you would be understood if you 
 asked an English landlord for the reckon- 
 ing, meaning an account of what you have 
 had at his inn. I don't think reckoning 
 is specially associated with ao inn bill iu 
 
 this country. In Scotland reckoning has 
 almost entirely superseded the word lawin. 
 In Sweden the regular word for a hotel 
 bill is the "reckoning." — R. Drennan. 
 
 Leal, loyal, true, true-hearted. 
 " The land o' the leal," i.e.. 
 Heaven. 
 
 A leal heart never lied. — Scots Proverbs. 
 
 I'm wearin' awa', Jean, 
 
 Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean, 
 
 I'm wearin' awa' 
 
 To the Land o' the Leal. 
 
 — Lady Nairne. . 
 
 Robin of Rothesay, bend thy bow, 
 Thy arrows shoot so leal. 
 
 — Hardykn ute. 
 
 Lear or leer, learning; from the 
 German lehren. 
 
 When Sandie, Jock, and Jeanitie, 
 
 Are up and gotten lear, 
 They'll help to gar the boatie row 
 
 An' lighten a' our care. 
 
 — The Boatie Rows. 
 
 Lea-rig", a ridge in a corn or 
 other field, left fallow between 
 two ridges that are bearing 
 grain. 
 
 Will ye gang o'er the lea-rig, 
 My ain kind dearie O. 
 
 — Fergusson. 
 
 Corn rigs and barley rigs. 
 
 And corn rigs are bonnie ; 
 I'll ne'er forget that happy night, 
 
 Among the rigs wi' Annie.— Burns. 
 
 Leed, a song or incantation, 
 from the German lied, a lay or 
 song. 
 
 Thrice backward round about she tottered. 
 While to hersel the leed she muttered. 
 —George Beattie : John o' Arfiha\ 
 
 Lee-lang, as long as it is light, 
 as in the phrase "the lee-lang 
 
ii6 
 
 Leeshin — Leister. 
 
 day," which has hitherto been 
 supposed to mean the "life- 
 long day." It is more probably 
 from the Gaelic U, a colour, 
 and especially a bright colour, 
 the colour of daylight, and 
 from the allied word liath {lia), 
 pale grey, as distinguished from 
 dark or black. 
 
 The thresher's weary flingin' tree 
 The he-lang day had tired me. 
 
 Burns: The Vision. 
 
 Leeshin, lazily, in a dilatory 
 manner. From the Gaelic lem, 
 lazy. 
 
 And cam' leeshin up behind her. 
 —George Beattie : John d Arnha. 
 
 Leesome, agreeable, pleasant, 
 like the light. {See Lee-lang.) 
 
 Oh, gear will buy me rigs o' land, 
 And gear will buy me sheep and kye ; 
 
 But the tender heart o' leesome luve 
 The gowd and siller canna buy. 
 
 — Burns : The Countrie Lassie. 
 
 Fair and leesome blew the wind, 
 Ships did sail and boats did row. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 A fairy ballad in Buchan's 
 collection is entitled ' ' Leesome 
 Brand." Jamieson derives lee- 
 some from the German liehe, 
 love ; perhaps, however, the root 
 of the word is the Gaelic leus, 
 light ; li, colour ; and leusach, 
 bright, shining. 
 
 Leeze or leeze me on (a reflective 
 verb), to be satisfied with, to 
 be pleased or delighted with. 
 A Gaelic periphrase for " I 
 love." The Highlanders do not 
 say "I love you," but "love is 
 on me for you." Hence the 
 
 Scottish phrase — "loes (or lees) 
 me " or "love is on me." 
 Leeze me on my spinning-wheel. — Burns. 
 Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, 
 Thou king o' grain. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Leeze me on drink, it gies us mair, 
 Than school or college. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Leglin or leglan, a milking-pail. 
 
 At buchts, in the mornin', nae blithe lads 
 are scomin'. 
 The lasses are lanely, and dowie and 
 wae, 
 Nae daiBn', nae gabbin', but sighin' and 
 sabbin', — 
 Ilk ane lifts her leglin and hies her 
 
 away. 
 — Elliot : The Flowers of the Forest. 
 Donald Caird can lilt and sing, 
 Blithely dance the Highland fling, 
 Hoop a leglan, clout a pan, 
 Or crack a pow wi' ony man. 
 —Sir Walter Scott : Donald Caird. 
 
 Jamieson traces leglin to the 
 Teutonic leghel. This word 
 however, has no place in Ger 
 man, Dutch, or Flemish die 
 tionaries. The Gaelic has leig, 
 to milk a cow, which, with lion, 
 a receptacle (also a net), or lion 
 to fill, becomes Uglin in Lowland 
 Scotch. 
 
 Leister, a three-pronged instru- 
 ment, or trident, for killing fish 
 in the water ; commonly applied 
 to illegal salmon fishing in the 
 rivers of Scotland. 
 
 I there wi' something did forgather 
 
 That pat me in an eerie swither, 
 
 An awfu' scythe out owre ae shouther 
 
 Clear dangling hang, 
 A three-taed leister on the ither 
 
 Lay large and lang. 
 —Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
Lemanry — Levin. 
 
 117 
 
 Donald Caird can wire a maukin (a hare), 
 Leisters kipper, makes a shift 
 To shoot a moor-fowl i' the lift. 
 Water-bailiffs, rangers, keepers, 
 He can wake when they're sleepers ; 
 Not for bountitt or reward. 
 Dare they mell wi' Donald Caird. 
 
 —Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Jamieson traces the word to 
 the Swedish liustra, to strike fish 
 with a trident. But the deriva- 
 tion may be doubted. " To 
 leister" says the Gaelic Etymo- 
 logy of the Languages of Western 
 Europe, " is a mode of taking 
 salmon at night, by attracting 
 them towards the surface by 
 torches held near the water, 
 and then driving a spear, trident, 
 or large fork into them. The 
 word is derived from the light 
 that is employed to lure the fish, 
 rather than from the spear that 
 impales them, and is traceable 
 to the Gaelic leasdair, a light, 
 or a lustre." It seems probable 
 that the word is of home origin, 
 rather than of Swedish. Halli- 
 well and Wright claim it as a 
 common word in the North of 
 England. Burns evidently uses 
 it in the sense of a trident, 
 without any reference to the 
 illegal practice of fishing. 
 
 Lemanry ; from leman, a concu- 
 bine ; a poetical word for har- 
 lotry. 
 
 Oh, wed and marry, the knight did say, 
 
 For your credit and fame. 
 Lay not your love on lemanry. 
 
 Nor bring a good woman to shame. 
 
 —BvcHAu's Ana'ent Bal/ads : Hynd 
 Horn. 
 
 Let on, to let appear ; loot, ap- 
 peared; lutten, the past-parti- 
 ciple of let. 
 
 "Weel, Margaret," said a minister to 
 an auld wife, who expressed her dissatis- 
 faction with him for leaving the parish, 
 " ye ken I'm the Lord's servant. If He 
 have work for me in Stirling, ye'll admit 
 that it's my duty to perform it." "Hech !" 
 replied Margaret, " I've heard that Stirling 
 has a great muckle stipend, and I'm think- 
 ing if the Lord had gi'en ye a ca' to Auchter- 
 tool [a very poor parish], ye wad ne'er hae 
 lutten on that ye heard Him. " — Rogers : 
 Anecdotes of Scottish Wit aTid Humour. 
 
 Leure, a ray of light, a gleam ; 
 from the French Iv^eur, a shining 
 light ; and the anterior Gaelic 
 root lur, brightness, splendour, 
 treasure. The Gipsy slang has 
 lowre, money ; and gammy [or 
 crooked] lowre, bad money. 
 The ideas of brightness and 
 beauty go together in most 
 languages. Lurach, in Gaelic, 
 is a term of endearment for a 
 beautiful — that is, a bright — 
 young woman. 
 
 Levin, the lightning. This word, 
 that has long been obsolete in 
 English literature, is not yet 
 obsolete in the Scottish verna- 
 cular. It was employed with 
 fine effect, centuries ago, by 
 Dunbar, the Scottish, and by 
 Chaucer, the English poet. 
 Attempts have recently been 
 made to revive it, by Sir Walter 
 Scott and others, not altogether 
 ineffectually. Chaucer makes 
 splendid use of it when he 
 denounces one who habitually 
 speaks ill of women : 
 
ii8 
 
 Lewder — Liddisdale Drow. 
 
 With wild thunder-bolt and fiery levin 
 May his walked [wicked] neck be broke. 
 —Wife of Bath's Prologue. 
 
 To him as to the burning levin, 
 Short, resistless course was given. 
 — Scott : Martnion. 
 
 The clouds grew dark and the wind grew 
 loud, 
 And th^ levin filled her e'e. 
 And waesome wailed the snow-white sprites 
 Upon the gurly sea. 
 
 — Laidlaw : The Demon Lover. 
 
 The etymology is obscure, 
 There is no trace of it in the 
 Teutonic or Latin sources of 
 the language. Spencer, in the 
 "Faerie Queene," has — 
 
 His burning levin-hraxid in hand he took. 
 
 The etymology is probably to 
 be found in the Gaelic liath 
 (pronounced lia, lee-a) meaning 
 white or grey, and sometimes 
 vivid white, which may perhaps 
 account for the first syllable. 
 Buin, to shoot, to dart ; buinne, 
 or hkuinne {vuin), signifies a 
 rapid motion, which may ac- 
 count for the second — a deriva- 
 tion which is not insisted upon, 
 but which may lead philologists 
 to inquire further. 
 
 Lewder, lewdering", to flounder 
 through bog and mire, to plod 
 wearily and heavily on. 
 
 Thus lewdering on 
 Through scrubs and crags wi' mony a 
 heavy groan. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Jamieson derives the word 
 from the Teutonic leuteren, 
 morari, a word which is not to 
 be found in the Teutonic Dic- 
 
 tionaries. It is probable that 
 the root is the Gaelic laidir, 
 strong, heavy. The English 
 slang, "To give one a good 
 leathering," is to give him a 
 strong or heavy beating. 
 
 Lib, to castrate, geld, Lihhet, an 
 animal on which that operation 
 has been performed ; a eunuch. 
 This word still remains current 
 in the Northern Counties. In 
 Flemish luhhing signifies cas- 
 tration ; and lubber, he who 
 performs the operation. Burns 
 speaks contemptuously of Italian 
 singers as libbet :— 
 
 How cut-throat Prussian blades were 
 
 hinging, 
 How liddet Italy was singing. 
 
 Lichtly or lightly, to treat with 
 neglect or scorn, or speak lightly 
 of anybody. 
 
 I leaned my back unto an aik, 
 
 And thought it was a trusty tree, 
 
 But first it bowed, and syne it brak, 
 
 Sae my true love did lichtly me. 
 
 — Ballad of tJie Marchioness of Douglas. 
 
 Oh is my helmet a widow's cuid [cap], 
 
 Or my lance a wand of the willow tree, 
 Or my arm a lady's lily hand 
 That an English Lord should lichtly me. 
 — Kininont Willie. 
 Aye vow and protest that ye care na for me. 
 And whiles ye may lichtly my beauty a 
 
 wee; 
 But court na anither tho' daffin' ye be, 
 For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me. 
 —Burns : Whistle and I'll come to 
 you, my Lad. 
 
 Liddisdale drow, Liddisdale dew ; 
 the fine rain that is said not 
 to wet a Scotsman, but that 
 drenches an Englishman to the 
 skin. Jamieson defines drow to 
 
Lift — Link. 
 
 119 
 
 mean a cold mist heavy with 
 rain, also a squall or severe gust ; 
 and derives the word from 
 the Gaelic drog, the motion of 
 the sea, which, however, is not 
 to be found in Gaelic diction- 
 aries. Brow is from the Gaelic 
 druchd, with the elision of the 
 guttural, signifying dew, hence 
 the Liddisdale joke. 
 
 Lift, the sky ; from the Teutonic 
 luft. 
 
 When lightnings fire the stormy li/i. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Robert Graham. 
 
 Is yon the moon, I ken her horn, 
 She's glintin' i' the lift sae heigh. 
 
 She smiles sae sweet to wile us hame. 
 But by my troth she'll bide a wee. 
 — Burns. 
 
 Lil for lal, an ancient Scottish 
 synonym for the English tit for 
 tat, that appears in Wynton, who 
 wrote in the sixteenth century. 
 It is supposed by Jamieson to 
 be from the Anglo-Saxon " lael 
 with laele,'" or stripe for stripe, 
 though it may be of Gaelic 
 origin ; from li, light or colour ; 
 and Id, day, and lathail {la-ail) 
 daily ; or li-la, for day, or one 
 light for another. 
 
 Lilt, to sing cheerfully, or in a 
 lively manner. Also, according 
 to Jamieson, a large pull in 
 drinking frequently repeated. 
 
 Nae mair liltin' at the ewe-milkin', 
 The flowers of the forest are a' wede awa*. 
 — Lament for the Battle of Flodden. 
 
 Mak' haste an' turn King David owre. 
 An* //// wi' holy clangour. 
 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 The origin of this word seems 
 to be the Gaelic luailte, speed, 
 haste, rapid motion, and luail- 
 tich, to accelerate, to move 
 merrily and rapidly forward. 
 This derivation would explain 
 the most common acceptation 
 of the word, as applied to sing- 
 ing, as well as the secondary 
 meaning attributed to it by 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Limmer, a depreciatory epithet 
 for a woman ; from the Gaelic 
 leum, to leap — one who leaps 
 over the bounds of propriety or 
 moderation, or breaks through 
 the bounds of the seventh com- 
 mandment. 
 
 Linder, a short linen jacket or 
 vest worn next to the skin by 
 both sexes, though Jamieson 
 says only by old women and 
 children. 
 
 He'll sell his jerkin for a groat. 
 His linder for another o't, 
 
 And ere he want to pay his shot 
 His sark will pay the t'other o't. 
 
 — Alexander Ross : The Bridal o't. 
 
 Link, to trip, to leap, to skip, to 
 jump; linkin', tripping; from 
 the Gaelic leum, to leap, leuni- 
 nach, skipping, jumping, whence 
 leumanach, a frog, a creature 
 that jumps. The glossaries to 
 Burns render this word by 
 " trip." Jamieson says it means 
 to walk smartly, or to do any- 
 thing with cleverness and expe- 
 dition. 
 
 And coost her duddies to the wark, 
 And linkit at it in her sark. 
 
 —Burns : Tarn O'Shanter. 
 
120 
 
 Lin — Lippen. 
 
 And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin' 
 A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', 
 Some luckless hour will send him linkin' 
 
 To your black pit, 
 But faith ! he'll turn a corner jinkin' 
 [dodging]. 
 And cheat you yet. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Lin or lins. This termination to 
 many Scottish words supplies 
 a shade of meaning not to be 
 expressed in English but by a 
 periphrasis, as westlins, inclining 
 towards the west. Aiblins — 
 perhaps, for able-lins — inclining 
 towards being able, or about to 
 become possible (see Aiblins, 
 ante). BacUins, inclining to- 
 wards a retrograde movement. 
 
 The westlin winds blaw loud and shrill. 
 
 — Burns : My Nannie, O. 
 Now frae the east neuk o' Fife the dawn 
 Speel'd westlins up the lift. 
 — Allan Ramsay : Christ's Kirk on 
 the Green. 
 And if awakened tiercelins, aff night flee. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 This termination properly is lings, and 
 is a very common termination in several 
 Teutonic dialects, such as the Dutch, and 
 still more, the German, though not com- 
 mon in English. See Grimm's Grammar. 
 — Lord Neaves. 
 
 Lins corresponds nearly to the English 
 affix ly, though not exactly. In Pitscottie's 
 account of the apparition that appeared 
 to James IV. in St. Catherine's Aisle of the 
 Church at Linlithgow, the word Grofflins 
 occurs. This has been interpreted to mean 
 grufily. " He leaned down grofflins on 
 the desk before him (the king) and said," 
 &c. Grufe or groff is a common Scotch 
 word, meaning the belly, or rather the 
 front of the body, as distinguished from 
 the back ; and Pitscottie's expression means 
 nothing more than that the apparition 
 leaned the fore part of his body, say his 
 breast, upon the back of the desk at which 
 the king was kneeling. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Linn, a waterfall; Cora Linn, the 
 
 falls of the Clyde ; properly, the 
 pool at the bottom of a cataract, 
 worn deep by the falling water ; 
 from the Gaelic linne, a pool. 
 
 Grat his e'en baith bleer't and blin', 
 Spak o' lowpin' o'er a linn. 
 
 — Burns : Duncan Gray. 
 
 Ye bumies, wimplin' down your glens, 
 Or foaming Strang frae linn to linn. 
 — Burns : Elegy on Captain Matthew 
 Henderson. 
 
 Whiles owre a linn the bumie plays. 
 —Burns: Halloween. 
 
 Lintie, a linnet. 
 
 Nae Unties lilt on hedge or bush, 
 
 Poor things, they suffer sairly. 
 Up in the mornin's no for me, 
 
 Up in the mornin' early ; 
 When a' the hills are covered wi' snaw, 
 
 I'm sure it's winter fairly. 
 
 — Old Song, tnodemisedby John 
 Hamilton. 
 
 Dr. Norman Macleod mentioned a con- 
 versation he had with a Scottish emigrant 
 in Canada, who in general terms spoke 
 favourably of his position in his adopted 
 country. " But oh ! sir," he said, "there 
 are no Unties in the woods, and no braes 
 like Yarrow." The word Untie conveys to 
 my mind more of tenderness and endear- 
 ment towards the little bird than linnet. — 
 Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Lippen, to incline towards, to be 
 favourable to any one, to rely 
 upon, to trust. Apparently 
 from the Flemish liefde^ and the 
 German lichen, love. 
 
 Lippen to me, but look to yoursell. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 An ancient lady, when told by the 
 minister that he had a call from his Lord 
 and Master to go to another parish, re- 
 plied, "Deed, sir, the Lord might ha' ca'd 
 and ca'd to you lang eneuch, and ye'd 
 
Lippin* fu — Loe-some. 
 
 121 
 
 ne'er hae lippened till Him if the steepen 
 [stipend] had na been better." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Lippin* fu', full up to the lip or 
 
 brim of a glass or goblet, brim- 
 ful ; owrelvpfin ylvXS. to overflow. 
 
 A' the laughin' valleys round 
 Are nursed and fed by me, 
 And I'm aye lippin fu\ 
 — James Ballantine : Song of the 
 Four Elements— the Water. 
 See ye, wha hae aught in your bicker to 
 
 spare, 
 And gie your poor neighbours your owre- 
 ■lippin share. 
 
 —James Ballantine : Winter 
 Promptings. 
 
 Lire, sometimes written lyre, the 
 complexion. Jamieson defines 
 lire as "the part of the skin 
 which is colourless," and " as 
 the flesh or muscles as distin- 
 guished from the bones " — " the 
 lean part of butchers' meat." 
 He derives the word from the 
 Anglo-Saxon lire, the fleshy 
 part of the body. The word 
 is traceable to the Gaelic Hath 
 (pronounced lia), pale grey, and 
 liathaich {lia-aich), to become 
 grey. 
 
 As ony rose her rude was red, 
 Her fyre was like the lilies. 
 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Lirk, a crease, a plait, a fold, a 
 hollow in a hill ; from the Gaelic 
 laraich (see lar, ante, p. 114). 
 
 The hills were high on ilka side, 
 An' the bricht i' the lirk. 
 — Border Minstrelsy — The Broom o' the 
 Covtdenknowes. 
 
 Lith, a joint, a hinge; and me- 
 taphorically, the point of an 
 
 argument on which the whole 
 question turns. To lith, to sepa- 
 rate the joints ; from the Gaelic 
 luth, a joint ; luthach, well- 
 jointed, or having large joints. 
 
 ' * Fye, thief, for shame ! " cries little Sym, 
 " Wilt thou not fecht wi' me ; 
 Thou art mair large of lith and limb 
 
 Nor I am " 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Evergreen : Question- 
 ing and Debate betwixt Adamson 
 and Sym. 
 
 And to the road again wi' a' her pith. 
 
 And souple was she ilka limb and lith. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Dr. Johnson and Lord Auchinleck were 
 quarrelling over the character of the great 
 Protector, and the sturdy old English Tory 
 pressed the no less sturdy old Scottish 
 Whig to say what good Cromwell had ever 
 done to his country. His lordship replied, 
 " He gart kings ken that they had a lith 
 in their necks." — Boswell. 
 
 Ye'll tak a lith o my little fingerbane. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads — The 
 Bonnie Bows 0' London. 
 
 Littit, coloured ; from the Gaelic 
 liath, grey. 
 
 Weel dyed and littit through and through. 
 — George Beattie : John 0' Amhd. 
 
 Loaning^, a meadow, a pasture ; a 
 green lane. 
 
 I've heard them lilting at the ewe-milking — 
 
 Lasses a' lilting before dawn of day ; 
 But now they are moaning in ilka green 
 loaning. 
 The flowers o' the forest are a' wede 
 away. 
 
 — The Flowers the Forest. 
 
 Joy gaed down the loaning wi' her, 
 Joy gaed down the loaning wi' her, 
 She wadnahae me — but has ta'en another — 
 And a' men's joy but mine ga'ed wi her ! 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 Loe-some, or love-some, pleasant 
 and amiable, is sometimes 
 
122 
 
 Loof- — Loup- hunting. 
 
 wrongly written leesome, as in 
 Burns's song of "The Countrie 
 Lassie " : — 
 
 The tender heart o' leesome luve 
 Gowd and siller canna buy. 
 
 Loof, the palm of the hand ; from 
 the Gaelic lamh {lav), the hand. 
 
 Gie's yer loo/, I'll ne'er beguile you. 
 — Scots Proverbs. 
 Wi' arm reposed on her chair back, 
 
 He sweetly does compose him. 
 Which by degrees slips round her neck, 
 An's ^^upon her bosom, 
 
 Unkenned that day. 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 Lofa is used by Ulphilas for the open 
 hand ; slaps lofa, a. slap of the hand. 
 The Gaelic lam, when the m gets aspir- 
 ate, becomes lamA — lav or la/". — Lord 
 
 N EAVES, 
 
 Losh, a ludicrous objurgation 
 that does duty as a paltry oath ; 
 generally supposed to be a cor- 
 ruption of "Lordl" 
 
 LosA me ! hae mercy wi' your natch. 
 Your bodkin's bauld. 
 
 — Burns : Epistle to a Tailor. 
 
 Losh me ! that's beautiful. — Noctes A in- 
 brosiaiue. 
 
 The English corruptions of 
 " Lord ! " becomes O Lor' ! 
 Lawks ! and La' ! The name 
 of the Supreme Being, in like 
 manner, is vulgarised into Go&h, 
 as "By Gosh!" "Gosh guide 
 us ! " is a common expression 
 in Scotland, with the object 
 apparently of avoiding the 
 breach of the Third Command- 
 ment in the letter, though not 
 in the spirit. 
 
 Loup, to leap; to *'loup the 
 dyke," a proverbial expression, 
 
 to leap over the dyke (of re- 
 straint), applied to unchaste 
 unmarried women ; land-louper, 
 a vagrant. 
 
 Spak o' loupiri o'er a linn. 
 
 — Burns : Duncan Gray. 
 
 He's loupen on the bonnie black. 
 
 He steer'd him wi' the spur right sairly ; 
 But ere he won to Gatehope slack 
 I think the steed was wae and weary. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border^ 
 Annan Water. 
 
 I bade him loup, I bade him come, 
 
 I bade him loup to me, 
 An' I'd catch him in my armis twa. 
 — The Fire o Frendraught. 
 
 Loup-huntingf. "The odd 
 phrase, 'Hae ye been a lowp- 
 hunting V is a query," says 
 Jamieson, "addressed to one 
 who has been very early abroad, 
 and is an evident allusion to the 
 hunting of the wolf (the French 
 lowp in former days)." The 
 allusion is not so evident as 
 Jamieson imagined. A wolf was 
 not called loup either in the 
 Highlands or in the Lowlands. 
 In the Highlands the animal 
 was either called/aoZ, or {madadh 
 alluidh), a wild dog ; and in 
 the Lowlands by its English, 
 Flemish, and German name, 
 "wolf." It is far more likely 
 that "loup" in the phrase is 
 derived from the Gaelic lobhar, 
 the Irish Gaelic luhhar, a day's 
 work; a hunt more imperative 
 than that after an animal which 
 has not been known in Scotland 
 since 1680, when the last of the 
 race, according to tradition, 
 was killed by Sir Ewen Cameron 
 of Lochiel. Another tradition. 
 
Lout — Luckie. 
 
 123 
 
 recorded in the third volume of 
 Chambers's "Annals of Scot- 
 land," fixes in 1743 the date of 
 the last wolf slain, and records 
 the name of the slayer as Mac- 
 queen, a noted deer-stalker in 
 the forest of Moray. Luh is an 
 obsolete Gaelic word for a youth 
 of either sex. It is therefore 
 possible that loup-hunting may 
 have had a still more familiar 
 meaning. 
 
 Lout or loute, to jump, or leap. 
 
 He has louted him o'er the dizzy crag 
 And gien the monster kisses ane. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 Low, to stand still, to stop, to 
 rest ; lowden, to calm ; applied 
 to the cessation of a stormy 
 wind ; also, to silence, or cause 
 to be silent. 
 
 Lowan drouth, burning thirst. 
 
 With the cauld stream she quench'd her 
 lowan drouth. — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Lowe, a flame ; lowin\ burning, 
 to burn, to blaze. Ld is the 
 ancient Gaelic word for day, or 
 daylight ; superseded partially 
 by the modern Id, or Idtka, with 
 the same meaning. The syllable 
 Id appears in the compound word 
 lo-inn, joy, gladness, beauty — 
 derived from the idea of light — 
 that which shines, as in the 
 Teutonic sehon or schoen, the old 
 English sheen, beautiful. 
 
 A vast unbottomed boundless pit, 
 Filled fou o' loivz'n' brunstane. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 The sacred lowe o' weel -placed love 
 Luxuriantly indulge it. 
 
 — Burns : Epistle to a Young 
 Friend. 
 
 The bonnie, bonnie bairn sits poking in 
 
 the ase, 
 Glowerin' in the fire wi' his wee round 
 
 face, 
 Laughin' at the fuffin' lowe — what sees 
 
 he there ? 
 Ha ! the young dreamer's biggin' castles 
 
 in the air. 
 
 —James Ballantine. 
 
 Lown, quiet, calm, sheltered from 
 the wind. The lown o' the dyke, 
 the sheltered side of the wall. 
 
 "Unbuckle your belt, Sir Roland," she 
 said, 
 " And sit you safely down." 
 " Oh, your bower is very dark, fair maid, 
 An' the nicht is wondrous lown." 
 
 — Ballad of Sir Roland. 
 
 Lown is used in relation to concealment, 
 as when any ill report is to be hushed up. 
 "Keep it lown" i.e., say nothing about it. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Blaw the wind ne'er sae fast. 
 
 It will loTim at the last. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Prozierhs. 
 
 Come wi' the young bloom o' morn on thy 
 
 brow. 
 Come wi' the lown star o' love in thine e'e. 
 — James Ballantine : Wifie, Come 
 Hame. 
 
 Lounder, to strike heavily right 
 and left. 
 
 I brak a branch off an ash, and ran in 
 among them lounderin awa' right and left. 
 — Noctes A tnbrosiance. 
 
 Luckie, a term of familiarity 
 applied to elderly women in 
 the lower and middle ranks of 
 society : — 
 
 Oh, hand your tongue, now, Luckie 
 Laing, 
 Oh, baud your tongue and jaumer ; 
 
124 
 
 Lug. 
 
 I held the gate till you I met, 
 Syne I began to wander. 
 — Burns : The Lass of Ecclefechan. 
 
 Hear me, ye hills, and every glen, 
 And echo shrill, that a' may ken 
 
 The waefu' thud 
 O' reckless death wha came unseen 
 
 To Luckie Wood. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Mrs. Helen Carnegie of Montrose died 
 in 1818, at the advanced age of ninety-one. 
 She was a Jacobite, and very aristocratic, 
 but on social terms with many of the 
 burghers of the city. She preserved a very 
 nice distinction in her mode of addressing 
 people according to their rank and station. 
 She was fond of a game of quadrille (whist), 
 and sent out her servant every morning to 
 invite the ladies required to make up the 
 game. " Nelly, ye'U gang to Lady Car- 
 negie's, and mak' my compliments, and 
 ask the honour of her ladyship's company, 
 and that of the Miss Carnegies, to tea this 
 evening. If they canna come, ye'll gang 
 to the Miss Mudies, and ask the pleasure 
 of their company. If they canna come, ye 
 maun gang to Miss Hunter, and ask the 
 favour of her company. If she canna 
 come, ye maun gang to Luckie Spark, 
 and bid her come I " — Dean Ramsay's 
 Reminiscences. 
 
 It is probable that this word, 
 as a term of respect as well as 
 of familiarity, to a middle-aged 
 or elderly matron, is a corrup- 
 tion of the Gaelic laoch, brave. 
 The French say, " une hrave 
 femme," meaning a good wo- 
 man ; and the Lowland Scotch 
 use the adjective honest in the 
 same sense, as in the anecdote 
 recorded in Dean Ramsay's 
 " Reminiscences " of Lord Her- 
 mand, who, about to pass sen- 
 tence on a woman, began re- 
 . monstratively, " Honest woman, 
 what garred ye steal your neigh- 
 bour's tub ? " 
 
 Lug, the ear, a handle ; also to 
 pull, to drag or haul. Luggie, 
 a small wooden dish with 
 handles. Luggie, the horned 
 owl, so called from the length 
 of its ears. 
 
 His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs, 
 Showed he was nane o' Scotland's dogs. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Up they got and shook their lugs. 
 Rejoiced they were na men but dogs. 
 — Idem. 
 How would his Highland lug been nobler 
 
 fired, 
 — His matchless hand with finer touch 
 inspired. 
 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 Lug, to pull by the ear, or 
 otherwise to haul a load, is still 
 current in English ; but lug, the 
 ear, is obsolete, except in the 
 Northern Counties, though com- 
 mon in English literature in the 
 Elizabethan era. Two deriva- 
 tions have been suggested for 
 the word in its two divergences. 
 The Gaelic lag, genitive luig, 
 signifies a cavity, whence it is 
 supposed that lug signifies the 
 cavity of the ear. Coles, how- 
 ever, renders lug by the Latin, 
 " auris lobus, auricula infinia," 
 not the interior cavity, but the 
 exterior substance of the ear. 
 The derivation of lug, to pull, 
 to drag a load, seems to be from 
 another source altogether ; from 
 the Gaelic luchd — the English 
 for a load, a burden, or a ship's 
 cargo, and for lugger, a kind of 
 barge used for the transference 
 of the cargo from the hold of a 
 larger vessel. In this case the 
 meaning is transferred from the 
 
Lum — Machless, 
 
 125 
 
 load itself to the action of mov- 
 ing it. 
 
 Lum, the chimney, the vent by 
 which the smoke escapes from 
 the fireplace. The word is used 
 in the north of England as well 
 as in Scotland. The etymology 
 is uncertain. The Kymric has 
 Uumon, a beacon, a chimney ; 
 the Irish Gaelic has luaimh, 
 swift; and the Scottish Gaelic 
 luath {lua), swift ; and ceum, 
 aspirated into cheum or heum, a 
 way, a passage, whence lua-heum, 
 the swift passage by which the 
 smoke is carried off. 
 
 The most probable derivation 
 is from the Gaelic laom, a 
 blaze ; whence, by extension of 
 meaning, the place of the blaze 
 or fire. 
 
 Lunt, the smoke of tobacco, to 
 emit smoke ; from the Flemish 
 lord, a lighted wick. 
 
 The luntin pipe. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Lurder, an awkward, lazy, or 
 worthless person ; from the 
 French lourd, heavy ; lourdaud, 
 a heavy and stupid man. 
 
 Let alane males many a lurder (neglect 
 makes many a one worthless). — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Lyart, grey ; from the Gaelic liaih 
 (Ha), which has the same mean- 
 ing. 
 
 His fyari haffets [locks of thin grey hair]. 
 — Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Twa had manteels o' doleful black, 
 But ane in lyari hung. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Lume, a tool, a spinning-machine, 
 a loom. 
 
 Lunch, a piece, a slice, whence 
 the modern English lunch, a 
 slight meal in the middle of the 
 day. 
 
 Cheese and bread frae women's laps 
 Was dealt about in lunches 
 And dawds that day. 
 
 —Burns: The Holy Fair. 
 
 Lyke-wake, the ceremonial of 
 the watching over a dead body. 
 Lyke is from the German leichc, 
 the Dutch and Flemish UjTc, a 
 corpse. 
 
 She has cut off her yellow locks 
 
 A little aboon her e'e. 
 And she's awa' to Willie's lyke. 
 As fast as gang could she. 
 
 — 'Q\:cHX^'s Ballads : Willies 
 Lyke- Wake. 
 
 M 
 
 Machless, lazy, sluggish, indolent. 
 Jamieson derives this word from 
 the Teutonic macht, power, 
 strength, might ; whence macht- 
 los, without might or strength ; 
 but the Scottish word is with- 
 
 out the t, which somewhat de- 
 tracts from the probability of 
 the etymology. The Gaelic has 
 macleisg, a lazy, indolent person, 
 literally a "son of laziness," 
 which is a nearer, approach to 
 
126 
 
 Mad as a Hatter — Matgs. 
 
 machless than machtlos. Machle 
 is defined by Jamieson as signi- 
 fying to busy one's self about 
 nothing, which would seem to 
 be an abbreviation of madeisg. 
 He says that machless is gener- 
 ally used in an unfavourable 
 sense, as in the phrase, " get up, 
 ye machless brute." This sup- 
 ports the Gaelic etymology. 
 
 Mad as a hatter. This is English 
 as well as Scottish slang, to 
 signify that a person is more or 
 less deranged in his intellect. 
 Why a hatter should be madder 
 than a shoemaker, a tailor, or 
 any other handicraftsman, has 
 never been explained. The phrase 
 most probably arises from a cor- 
 ruption and misconception of the 
 Gaelic word atadh, a swelling, 
 aitearachd, swelling, blustering, 
 foaming like a cataract in 
 motion, or the assembling of 
 a noisy crowd. Jamieson, un- 
 aware of the Gaelic origin, de- 
 fined the Scottish hatter as a 
 numerous and irregular assem- 
 blage of any kind, a hatter of 
 stanes, or a confused heap of 
 stones ; and hattering, as col- 
 lecting in crowds. So that mad 
 as a hatter merely signifies mad 
 as a cataract or a crowd. In 
 the old Langue Romane — the 
 precursor of modern French — 
 hativeau meant un fou, vn 
 etourdi, a madman. 
 
 Maggie-rab or Maggie-rob, an 
 ancient popular term for a vio- 
 lent, quarrelsome, and disagree- 
 able woman. 
 
 He's a very guid man, but I trow he's 
 gotten a Maggie-rob d a wife. — ^Jamieson. 
 
 This strange phrase, though 
 now so apparently inexplicable, 
 must originally have had a 
 meaning, or it would never have 
 acquired the currency of a pro- 
 verb. If the word Maggie for 
 Margaret be accepted as the 
 generic name for a woman, like 
 Jill in the nursery rhyme of 
 "Jack and Jill went up the 
 hill ; " or like Jenny in the old 
 song of "Jock and Jenny;" 
 and Roh or Rah be held to 
 signify a man, the phrase may 
 mean a virago, a woman with 
 the behaviour and masculine 
 manners of the other sex. 
 
 The rah or roh in the phrase 
 is susceptible of another inter- 
 pretation. The Gaelic rah, or 
 raba^h, means quarrelsome, liti- 
 gious, violent, exasperating — 
 while in the same language 
 roh means dirty and slovenly. 
 Either of these epithets would 
 very aptly describe the kind of 
 woman referred to in the ex- 
 tract from Jamieson. 
 
 But these are suggestions only 
 for students of language, and 
 are not offered as true deriva- 
 tions for the guidance of the 
 unlearned. Rahagas was the 
 name recently given by a popu- 
 lar French playwright to a very 
 quarrelsome and litigious char- 
 acter. 
 
 Maigs or mags, a ludicrous term 
 for the hands, from the Gaelic 
 mag or mog, a paw. 
 
 Haud aff yer maigs, man ! — Jamieson. 
 
Mailin — Mare's Nest 
 
 127 
 
 Mailin*, a farm-yard and farm- 
 buildings ; a farm for which 
 rent is paid — from tna^l, a tax. 
 Gaelic mal, tax, tribute. 
 
 A weel-stockit mailin , himself o't the laird, 
 And marriage ofF-hand, were his proflFers. 
 — Burns : Last May a Braw Wooer. 
 
 Quoth she, my grandsire left me gowd, 
 A mailin plenished fairly. 
 
 —Burns : The Soldiers Return. 
 
 M airly, rather more. 
 
 Argyle has raised a hundred men, 
 A hundred men and mairly, 
 
 And he's awa by the back o' Dunkeld, 
 To plunder the house o' Airly. 
 
 The lady look't o'er her window sae hie. 
 She lookit lang and sairly, 
 
 Till she espied the great Argyle 
 Cam' to plunder the house o' Airly. 
 — The House of A irly. 
 
 Maks na, or it maks na, it does 
 not signify, it does not matter. 
 
 Away his wretched spirit flew, 
 It maks na where. 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Last Speech of a 
 Wretched Miser. 
 
 Tho' daft or wise, I'll ne'er demand, 
 Or black or fair, it maks na whether. 
 — Allan Ramsay : Gie me a Lass ivi a 
 Lump d Land. 
 
 Malison, a curse. The twin word, 
 benison, a blessing, has been 
 admitted into English dic- 
 tionaries, but malison is still 
 excluded ; although it was a 
 correct and recognised English 
 word in the time of Langland, 
 the author of Piers Ploughman, 
 and Chaucer. 
 
 Thus they serve Sathanas, 
 Marchands of malisons. 
 — Langland : Piers Ploughman. 
 
 And all-Hallowes, have ye. Sir Chanone, 
 Said this priest, and I her malison. 
 
 —Chaucer : The Chanones 
 Vemanne's Tale. 
 I've won my mother's malison, 
 Coming this night to thee. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 That is a cuckold's malison, 
 John Anderson, my joe. 
 
 — John Anderson, old version. 
 
 Mansweir, to commit perjury. 
 This word is almost peculiar to 
 Scotland, though Halliwell has 
 mainsworn, perjured, long obso- 
 lete, but once used in England. 
 The first syllable can have no 
 relation to man, homo. The 
 Flemish meineed, and the Ger- 
 man meineid, signify perjury, 
 and one who perjures himself 
 is a meineidiger. The Scottish 
 word seems to be derived from 
 the Gaelic mionn, an oath, and 
 suarach, worthless, valueless, 
 mean, of no account — whence 
 mionn suarach, corrupted into 
 man sweir, signifying a valueless 
 or false oath. Jamieson thinks 
 it comes from the Anglo-Saxon 
 man, perverse, mischievous, and 
 swerian, to swear ; a derivation 
 which, as regards the syllable 
 man, he would have scarcely 
 hazarded if he had been aware 
 of the Gaelic mionn, or of the 
 German meineid. 
 
 Mare's Nest. This originally 
 Scottish phrase is no longer 
 peculiar to Scotland, but has 
 become part of the copious 
 vocabulary of English slang. 
 Hotten's Slang Dictionary de- 
 fines it to mean "a supposed 
 
128 
 
 Mark and Burn — Marrow. 
 
 discovery of marvels, which 
 turn out to be no marvels at 
 all." The compiler accounts 
 for the expression by an anec- 
 dote of " three cockneys, who, 
 out ruralising, determined to 
 find out something about nests. 
 Ultimately, when they came 
 upon a dung-heap, they judged 
 by the signs that it must be a 
 mare's nest, especially as they 
 could see the mare close by." 
 This ridiculous story has hitherto 
 passed muster. The words are 
 a corruption of the Gaelic mear- 
 achd, an error, and nathaist (th 
 silent), a fool, whence a fool's 
 error, i.e., mare's nest. Some 
 Gaelic scholars are of opinion 
 that the word is compounded 
 of mearachd, an error, and sna- 
 saichte, or snasta, reduced into 
 order or system, i.e., systematic 
 error. 
 
 Mark and burn. To say of a 
 
 thing that it is lost, mark and 
 hum signifies that it is totally 
 lost, beyond trace and recogni- 
 tion; not that it is marked or 
 burned in the sense of the 
 English words, but in the sense 
 of the Gaelic marc, a horse — 
 from whence march, a boundary 
 traced by the perambulations 
 at stated periods of men on 
 horseback — and burn, a stream 
 of running water, the natural, 
 and often the common boundary, 
 between contiguous estates and 
 territories. March balk signifies 
 the narrow ridge which some- 
 times serves as the boundary 
 between lands of different pro- 
 
 prietors. Marche dyke, a wall 
 separating one farm or estate 
 from another. 
 
 When one loses anything and finds it 
 not again, he is said never to see mark nor 
 burn of it. — Jamieson. 
 
 Marmor, an ancient title of 
 nobility equivalent to an earl ; 
 from the Gaelic maor, an officer, 
 chieftain, and mor, great. 
 
 Lords of the Isles, and Thanes, and Jarls, 
 
 Barons and Manners grim. 
 With helm on head and glaive in hand, 
 
 In rusty armour dim. 
 Responsive to some powerful call. 
 
 Gathered obedient one and all. 
 
 — Legends of the Isles. 
 
 Marrow, one of a pair, a mate, a 
 companion, an equal, a sweet- 
 heart — from the Gaelic mar, 
 like, similar. This word is 
 beautifully applied to a lover 
 or wedded partner, as one whose 
 mind is the exact counterpart 
 of that of the object of his 
 affection. It appears in early 
 English literature, but now sur- 
 vives only in the poetry and 
 daily speech of the Scottish and 
 northern English people. 
 
 One glove or shoe is marrow to an- 
 other. — Lansdowne MS., quoted in Hal- 
 liwell's Archaic Dictionary. 
 
 And when we came to Clovenford, 
 Then said my winsome marrow, 
 Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside. 
 
 And see the braes o' Yarrow. 
 —Wordsworth : Yarrow Unvisited. 
 Thou took our sister to be thy wife, 
 But ne'er thought her thy marrow. 
 — The Dowie Dens d Yarrow. 
 Mons Meg and her marrow three vol- 
 leys let flee. 
 For love of the bonnets of bonnie 
 Dundee.— Sir Walter Scott. 
 
Marschal — Maun, 
 
 129 
 
 Meddle with your marrow (i.e., with 
 your equa\).—ScoUzsk Proverb. 
 
 Your e'en are no marrows (i.e., you 
 squint).— Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Marschal, a steward, an upper 
 servant ; from the Gaelic maor, 
 an officer, a superintendent, and 
 sgctlag, a farm-servant, a serf, a 
 hired labourer. 
 
 Mart or mairt, cow-beef salted 
 for winter provision. So called, 
 says Jamieson, **from Martin- 
 mas, the term at which beeves 
 are usually killed for winter 
 store." Perhaps the future edi- 
 tors of Jamieson will take note 
 that mart in Gaelic signifies a 
 cow ; mart bainne, a milch cow ; 
 and m^rt fheoU, beef ; and that 
 consequently the word has no 
 relation to the Martinmas fes- 
 tival. In a note to '* Noctes 
 Ambrosianse," Professor Ferrier 
 says m^irt is an ox killed at 
 Martinmas. Mart originally sig- 
 nified a market, where kine and 
 horned cattle were sold, as dis- 
 tinguished from market, a horse 
 fair ; from mare, a horse. 
 
 Mashlum, mixed corn, or rye and 
 oats with the bran. 
 
 Twa mashlum bannocks (cakes). 
 
 — Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Mask, to infuse ; usually employed 
 in connection with the tea-table. 
 To mask the tea is, in Scottish 
 phrase, to make the tea, by 
 pouring the boiling water upon 
 it. The word is from the Gaelic 
 masg, to mix, to infuse. Jamie- 
 
 son erroneously derives it from 
 the Swedish mask^ a mash. 
 
 Maughts, power. 
 
 They had nae maughts for sic a toilsome 
 
 task, 
 The barefaced robbers had put off the 
 
 mask — 
 Among the herds that played a maughty 
 part. 
 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 She starts to foot, but has nae maughts 
 to stand. — Idem. 
 
 Th/^ word is from the Teutonic 
 macfitl power, might, ability. 
 The root seems to be the Gaelic 
 maiih, powerful, able, strong, 
 and maithich or maithaich, to 
 make strong. 
 
 Maukin, a hare ; from the Gaelic 
 maigheach, and maoidheach, with 
 the same meaning. 
 
 God help the day when royal heads 
 Are hunted like a maukin. 
 — Burns : Our Thistles flourished 
 Fresh and Fair. 
 
 Mauks, maggots. 
 
 I saw the cook carefully wi' the knife 
 scrapin' out the mauks.— Noctes Am- 
 brosiana. 
 
 Maun, must. This Scottish verb, 
 like its English synonym, has 
 no inflections, no past or future 
 tense, and no infinitive. The pe- 
 culiarity of the Scottish word is 
 that it sometimes signifies rmy, 
 and sometimes must, as in the 
 line of D'Urfey's clumsy imita- 
 tion of a Scottish song, " Within 
 a Mile of Edinburgh Town " — 
 
 I canna, maunna, winna buckle to (I 
 cannot, may not [or must not], will 
 not, be married). 
 
130 
 
 Mavis — Mellder. 
 
 Perhaps the use of may as 
 rwust, and vice versa, "was intro- 
 duced into the Lowland Scotch 
 by the Gaelic-speaking High- 
 landers. Feud in Gaelic signi- 
 fies may or can, and fheudar 
 domh, " obligation or necessity 
 is to me, or upon me," i.e., I 
 must. 
 
 Mavis, the singing thrush. This 
 word, once common in English 
 poetry, is now seldom employed. 
 Spenser, in the following pas- 
 sage from his " Epithalamium," 
 seems to have considered the 
 mavis and the thrush to be diffe- 
 rent birds : — 
 
 The thrush replies ; the mavis descant 
 plays. 
 
 In Scottish poetry the word 
 is of constant occurrence. 
 
 In vain to me in glen or shaw 
 The mavis and the lintwhite sing. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Oh, tell sweet Willie to come doun, 
 And hear the mavis singing ; 
 
 And see the birds on ilka bush, 
 And green leaves round them hinging. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads, 
 
 An eccentric divine discours- 
 ing on a class of persons who 
 were obnoxious to him, con- 
 cluded with this singular perora- 
 tion, " Ma freens, it is as impos- 
 sible for a moderate to enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven as for a 
 soo (sow) to sit on the tap o' a 
 thistle, and sing like a. mavis." — 
 Rogers's Illustrations of Scottish 
 Life. 
 
 Mawmet, an idol. This word is 
 usually derived from Mahomet, 
 
 but as Mahomet was not an idol, 
 but asserted himself to be the 
 prophet of the true God, it is 
 possible that the philologists 
 of an earlier day accepted the 
 plausible etymology, without 
 caring to inquire further. It 
 is, nevertheless, worthy of con- 
 sideration whether the word 
 does not come from the Gaelic 
 maoim, horror, terror, fright ; 
 and maoimeadh, a state of terror 
 or awe, such as devotees feel 
 before an idol. 
 
 Mawsie, a large, dirty, slovenly, 
 unshapely woman ; a corruption 
 and abbreviation of the Gaelic 
 maosganach, a lump, a lumpish 
 person. 
 
 May, a lass, a maid, a young 
 girl. 
 
 There was a May an' a weel-fared May 
 Lived high up in yon glen. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Katharine 
 Ganfarie. 
 
 Meggy Monyfeet, the popular 
 name for the centipede. 
 
 Mell, to be intimate with, to 
 mingle or associate ; from the 
 French meter, to mix. MeU also 
 signifies a company, and melting 
 an intermeddling. 
 
 Mellder, the quantity of grain 
 sent at one time to the miller 
 to be ground. 
 
 Ae market -day thou wast na sober ; 
 That ilka mellder, wi' the miller, 
 Thou sat as lang as thou hadst siller ; 
 That every naig was ca'd a shoe on 
 The smith and thee gat roarin' fou' on. 
 —Burns : Tarn dShanter. 
 
Melvie — Merle. 
 
 i3r 
 
 Melvie, to soil with meal, as the 
 miller's clothes and hair are 
 soiled from the flying dust of 
 the mill. Erroneously explained 
 in the glossaries to Burns as "to 
 soil with mud" It is probably 
 a corruption of mealy. 
 
 Mealie was his sark, 
 
 Mealie was his siller, 
 Mealie was the kiss 
 
 That I gat frae the miller. 
 
 — Old Song. 
 
 To tnelvie his braw claithing. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Mense, mind, good manners, dig- 
 nity, decorum ; menseful, digni- 
 fied ; mensefully, in a proper and 
 respectable manner. From the 
 Latin mens, whence mental. 
 
 Auld Vandal, ye but show your little 
 
 mense, 
 Just much about it wi' your scanty sense. 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 I wat she was a sheep of sense, 
 And could behave herself wi' mense ; 
 I'll say't, she never brak a fence 
 
 Thro' thievish greed. 
 Our Bardie lanely keeps the spence 
 Since Mailie's dead. 
 —Burns : Poor Mailie's Elegy. 
 
 To mense a board, is to do the 
 honoui's of the table. 
 
 She has a' the mense o the family. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Mensk, manly dignity ; menskful, 
 manly, becoming, dignified ; 
 mensJcly, worthily. Jamieson 
 traces the word to the Icelandic 
 menska, humanitas. 
 
 Merg or mergh, marrow pith; 
 from the Flemish. 
 
 There was merg in his fingers and fire in 
 his &y&.—Jock o' Amha'. 
 
 And the mergh o' his shin-bane, 
 Has run down on his spur leather whang. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Fray 
 ofSuport. 
 
 Merle, the blackbird. The Scot- 
 tish, which is also the French, 
 name for this delightful songster 
 is far more poetical and distinc- 
 tive than the prosaic " black- 
 bird" of modern English — a 
 name which might with as much 
 propriety be applied to the rook, 
 the crow, the raven, and the 
 jackdaw. The merle is as much 
 noted for his clear, beautiful 
 notes, as for the tribute he 
 levies upon the fruits of the 
 summer and autumn — a tribute 
 which he well deserves to obtain, 
 and amply pays for by his music. 
 The name of merle, in Gaelic 
 meirle, signifies theft ; and meir- 
 leach, a thief. In the same 
 language meirneil, the English 
 merlin, signifies a hawk or other 
 predatory bird. As regards the 
 merle, it must be confessed that 
 he is, in the matter of currants 
 and strawberries, deserving of 
 his name. The depredations of 
 the merie have created several 
 proverbial phrases in the French 
 language, such as — C'est un fin 
 merle, applied to a clever and 
 unscrupulous man ; un beau 
 merle, a specious false pretender. 
 The French call the hen-black- 
 bird a merlette. The word merle 
 was good English in the days 
 of Chaucer, and considerably 
 later. 
 
 Where the sweet tnerle and warbling mavis 
 be.— Drayton. 
 
132 
 
 Merry Scotland — Midden. 
 
 Merry Scotland. The epithet 
 "merry" was applied to Eng- 
 land as well as to Scotland, and 
 was a common mode of address 
 to a company or multitude of 
 soldiers, hunters, or boon com- 
 panions. 
 
 Old King Cole was a merry old soul, 
 
 And a -merry old soul was he, 
 And he called for his pipe, and he called 
 for his bowl, 
 
 And he called for his fiddlers three. 
 
 Of all the girls in merry Scotland, 
 There's none to compare to Marjorie. 
 —Old King Cole. 
 
 Few words have puzzled 
 philologists more completely 
 than mirth and merry. Johnson 
 suggested no etymology ; Skin- 
 ner derived merry from the 
 German mehren, to magnify ; 
 and Junius from the Greek 
 fjLvpi^Tjiv, to anoint, because the 
 Greeks anointed themselves 
 with oil when they made merry 
 in their public games ! The 
 word has no root in any of the 
 Teutonic languages, German, 
 Dutch, Flemish, Danish, or 
 Swedish; and cannot be traced to 
 either French, Latin, Italian, or 
 Spanish. The Gaelic yields mir, 
 sport ; mireach, festive, sportive ; 
 mear, cheerful, joyous. It thus 
 appears on the evidence of 
 etymology that the pleasant 
 epithet for these islands was 
 given by the Celtic inhabitants, 
 and not by the Saxon and other 
 Teutonic invaders, though it was 
 afterwards adopted by them. 
 
 Messan, or messin, a cur, a lap- 
 dog, a pet dog. 
 
 But tho' he was o' high degree. 
 The fient o' pride, nae pride had he, 
 But wad hae spent an hour caressin' 
 E'en wi' a tinker gipsy's messan. 
 
 — Burns : Tke Twa Dogs. 
 
 The glossaries to Burns, judg- 
 ing from the context, and the 
 gipsy, imagine messin to mean 
 a mongrel, a dog of mixed 
 breeds. Jamieson says it is a 
 small dog, a country cur, so 
 called from Messina, in Sicily, 
 whence this species was brought ; 
 or from the French maison, a 
 house, because such dogs were 
 kept in the house ! The word, 
 however, is the Gaelic measan, 
 a pet dog, a lap-dog; from 
 meas, fancy, kindness, regard. 
 
 We hounds slew the hare, quoth the 
 blind messan. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Mess John, the old epithet in 
 Scottish ballad poetry for a 
 priest, derived from the celebra- 
 tion of the mass, so that Mess 
 John signified in irreverent 
 phrase, John, who celebrated 
 the mass. The English has the 
 kindred phrase, Jack Priest. 
 
 The auld folk soon gied their consent. 
 Syne for Mess John they quickly sent, 
 
 Wha ty'd them to their heart's content, 
 And now she's Lady Gowrie. 
 
 — The Lass o' Gowrie. 
 
 Midden or midden hole, the dung- 
 hill or dungpit, a receptacle for 
 the refuse, filth, and manure of 
 a farm, situated in the centre 
 of the farmyard, an arrange- 
 ment not yet wholly super- 
 seded : — 
 
Mint — Mint. 
 
 133 
 
 Ye glowered at the moon, and fell in the 
 tnidden. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The tither's something dour o' treadin', 
 
 But better stuff ne'er claw'd a midden. 
 
 —Burns : Elegy on the Year 1788. 
 
 The word is still used in the 
 Northern counties of England, 
 and was derived by Ray from 
 mud. The true derivation is 
 from the Gaelic meadhon, the 
 centre, the middle, or midst. 
 
 Therein lay three and thirty sows, 
 Trundlin' in a midden 
 Of draff. 
 —Peblis to the Play. 
 
 Mlm, meek, modest, prudish, 
 prim, reticent, affected and 
 shy of speech; applied only to 
 young women, or contemptu- 
 ously to effeminate young men. 
 This word is usually derived 
 from the English mum, which 
 means silent or speechless. The 
 Scottish mim means mealy 
 mouthed, only speaking when 
 spoken to, over-discreet^in con- 
 versation, assertion, or reply : — 
 
 See ! up he's got the Word o' God, 
 And meek and mim he's view'd it. 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Maidens should be mim. till they're 
 married. — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Some w/w-mou'd pouther'd priestie, 
 Fu' lifted up wi' Hebrew lore, 
 And hands upon his breastie. 
 
 —Burns : To Willie Chalmers. 
 
 Mim, as distinguished from 
 mum, is an evident rendering of 
 the Gaelic min, soft, delicate, 
 smooth, mild, meek ; min hheUl- 
 ach is from min and bevX, a 
 mouth, the same as the Scottish 
 
 mim-mouthed, used by Burns ; 
 min-hhriathar, a soft word or 
 expression, from min and h-ia- 
 thar, a word. Mim is provincial 
 and colloquial in England. 
 
 First go the ladies, mim, mim, mim. 
 Next come the gentlemen, prim, prim, 
 prim; 
 Then comes the country clown. 
 Gallop a-trot, trot, trot. 
 — Nursery Rhymes 0/ England. 
 
 Minikin, very small, applied in 
 derision to a little affected per- 
 son of either sex ; derived pos- 
 sibly from the Gaelic min, small ; 
 or from the Flemish mannikin, a 
 little man. 
 
 Minnie, a term of endearment for 
 a mother. 
 
 My daddie looks glum, and my minnie 
 
 looks sour, 
 They flyte me wi' Jamie because he is 
 
 poor. — Logie d Buchan. 
 
 From the Flemish min, love, 
 and the Gaelic min, sweet, soft, 
 pleasant, kind, musical ; also 
 little, used as a term of endear- 
 ment. 
 
 Mint, to attempt, to try, to essay, 
 to aim at. The resemblance in 
 the idea of the Scottish mint, 
 to attest, to try, to essay, and 
 the Mint, where the precious 
 metals are essayed, or tried as 
 to their purity before they are 
 coined into money, is curious, 
 especially when it is remembered 
 that the Mint was formerly and 
 is still sometimes called the 
 Assay Office. The English word 
 Mint, for the Assay Office, is 
 
.134 
 
 Mird — Missie, 
 
 usually traced to the German 
 miinze, the Dutch munte, the 
 Latin moneta, money. The ety- 
 mology of the Scottish mint, 
 to essay, or try, is unknown ; 
 though it is possibly to be 
 found in the Allemanische or 
 German patois meinta, to intend, 
 to mean to do a thing. 
 
 Mintin's nae makin'.— Allan Ramsay's 
 Scois Proverbs. 
 
 A man may mint and no' hit the mark. 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Mird, to ogle, to leer, to make 
 amorous signs and advances to 
 a woman. 
 
 Donald was smerkit wi' mirds and 
 jnockery. — James Hogg: Donald Mac- 
 Gillvray. 
 
 Mird wi' your makes (equals). — Jamie- 
 son. 
 
 Mirk, dark. Of uncertain ety- 
 mology, but probably derivable 
 from the Gaelic murcach, sad, 
 sorrowful, gloomy. 
 
 A man's mind is s^mirk mirror. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Oh mirk ! tnirk ! is the midnight hour. 
 And loud the tempest's roar. 
 
 — Burns : Lord Gregory. 
 
 'Twixt the gloaming and the mirk, 
 When the kye come hame. 
 
 — James Hogg. 
 
 Mirklins, the gloaming, inclining 
 to be mirk or dark. 
 
 Mischant, a worthless person; 
 fromthe French mecAaw^, wicked. 
 
 Mischanter, a euphonistic name 
 
 for the devil, synonymous with 
 
 • the English " old mischief," 
 
 sometimes applied to the same 
 personage. It is probable that 
 miscTiantcr, as applied to the 
 devil, means the mischief -maker, 
 or doer of mischief or wicked- 
 ness. 
 
 Mishanter, misfortune, which is 
 not of the same etymology as 
 mischanter, is probably a cor- 
 rupt abbreviation of misadven- 
 ture. 
 
 Gin Rab Roy hae heard o' this lady's 
 mishanter, he wadna be lang o' clearin' 
 the house — Lord Lovat an' a', and letting 
 her gang hame.— Macleay's Memoirs of 
 the Clan MacGregor. 
 
 Misleard, unmannerly, rude, mis- 
 chievous, ill-conditioned. 
 
 Lord Lovat's sae misleard a chap that 
 gin he ken't we were kind to her, he wad 
 mak' whangs o' our hides to mend his 
 Highland brogues wi'. — Macleay's Me- 
 ntoirs of the Clan MacGregor. 
 
 Missie, a fondling term for a very 
 young girl. The English word 
 miss, of which, at first sight, 
 wiWe would seem to be an affec- 
 tionate diminutive, is of very 
 uncertain derivation. It is com- 
 monly supposed to be the first 
 syllable of mistress, the French 
 maitresse (the feminine of maitre). 
 Miss and Missie are peculiar to 
 Scotch and English, and are un- 
 known in any of the Teutonic 
 and Komance languages. The 
 Teutonic languages use the word 
 jungfrau, and fraiilein ; the 
 French use demoiselle, or made- 
 moiselle ; the Italians signorina ; 
 and the Spanish senorita. Per- 
 haps the graceful miss and missie 
 
Mister — Moop and MelL 
 
 135 
 
 in Scotch and English are from 
 the Gaelic maise, beauty, grace, 
 comeliness, or maiseach, pretty, 
 beautiful, elegant. These are 
 more appropriate as the desig- 
 nation of a young unmarried 
 lady than mistress would be, 
 implying, as that word does, a 
 sense of command and mastery. 
 
 Mister, want, need, great poverty ; 
 misterful, necessitous. 
 
 Unken'd and misterful in the deserts of 
 Libya. 
 — Gawin Douglas : Translation 
 of the /Rneid. 
 
 Misterfu folk should nae be mensfu'. 
 (Needy people should not be too parti- 
 cular). — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The original phrase of misterfu' 
 beggars, or needy beggars, was 
 afterwards corrupted into mas- 
 terful beggars, i.e., arrogant or 
 sturdy beggars, as they are 
 called in an edict of James VI., 
 '* the whole class of maisterfull 
 andydiUbeggaris, sornaris (sor- 
 ners), fulis (fools), and bardis 
 (wandering minstrels or ballad- 
 singers)." It is diflScult to ac- 
 count for mister and misterful, 
 rmless they be derived from the 
 Scottish Gaelic misde, the Irish 
 Gaelic miste, the comparative of 
 olc, bad or evil. Mistear and 
 mistire signify a sly, cunning, 
 and mean person, as well as a 
 needy beggar. The corruption 
 to masterful in the sense of arro- 
 gant is easily accounted for. 
 
 Mool, to have carnal intercourse ; 
 sometimes corrupted into moio 
 or mowe. 
 
 An' there'll be Alaster Sibbie 
 That in wi' black Bessie did mool, 
 Wi' snivellin' Lillie an' Tibbie 
 The lass that sits aft on the stool, 
 (the cutty stool, q. v.) 
 — The Blythesome Bridal. 
 
 Jamieson's Dictionary con- 
 tains neither m/)ol nor mowe, in 
 the sense in which they are used 
 in the too libidinous vernacular ; 
 but has mool, to crumble, and 
 mowe or m/}w, dust or mould. 
 
 Moolins, refuse, grains of corn, 
 husks, or chaff ; sometimes 
 crumbs of bread ; from the 
 Gaelic muiUean, a husk or par- 
 ticle of chaff or grain ; the waste 
 of the meal at the miller's. 
 
 The pawky wee sparrow will peck aff your 
 
 floor, 
 The bauld little Robin hops in at your 
 
 door; 
 But the heaven-soaring lark 'mang the 
 
 cauld drift will dee, 
 Afore he'll come cowerin' your moolins to 
 
 pree. 
 
 —James Ballantine : Winter 
 Promptings. 
 
 Mools, from mould — earth, the 
 grave. 
 
 And Jeanie died. She had not lain i' the 
 
 mools 
 Three days ere Donald laid aside his tools, 
 And closed his forge, and took his passage 
 
 home. 
 
 But long ere forty days had run their 
 
 round, 
 Donald was back upon Canadian ground — 
 Donald the tender heart, the rough, the 
 
 brave, 
 With earth and gowans for his true love's 
 
 grave. — All the Year Round. 
 
 Moop and mell, to feed together ; 
 meil, to associate with; from 
 
136 
 
 Morn — Mowes. 
 
 the French meler, to mingle. 
 Halliwell's Archaic Dictionary- 
 contains mouch — said to be a 
 Lincolnshire word, signifying to 
 eat greedily. 
 
 The auld West Bow sae steep and crookit, 
 Where bawbee pies wee callants vtoopit. 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 But aye keep mind to inoop and mell 
 Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel. 
 
 — Burns : Poor Mailie. 
 
 Guid ale bauds me bare and busy, 
 Gars me inoop wi' the servant hizzie ; 
 Stand i' the stool when I hae done ; 
 Guid ale keeps my heart abune. 
 
 — Burns : Good Ale Comes. 
 
 Moop does not mean to keep company 
 with (mell does, meddle with, have to do 
 with), inoop really means to eat, or rather 
 to nibble, and, if I mistake not, is an old 
 English word, — the present form of the 
 word is mump. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Mom. The Scotch make a dis- 
 tinction between the morn, which 
 means to-morrow, and morn 
 (without the article), which 
 means morning — thus, *' the 
 morn's morn" is to-morrow 
 morning. 
 
 Mother-naked, stark-naked , 
 utterly naked ; as naked as the 
 new-born babe at the moment 
 of birth. This word, though a 
 compound of two English ones, 
 has never been admitted into 
 modern English dictionaries, 
 and does not even appear in 
 Nares, Halliwell, or Wright. If 
 it were ever English, there re- 
 main no traces of it either in 
 literature or in the common 
 speech of the people. It is still 
 current in the Scottish vernacu- 
 lar, and in poetical composition. 
 
 They'll shape me in your arms, Janet, 
 
 A dove, but and a swan, 
 At last they'll shape me in your arms 
 
 A mother-naked man. 
 Cast your green mantle over me, 
 
 I'll be myself again. 
 
 — Ballad of the Young Tamlane, 
 
 Readers of the "Arabian 
 Nights' Entertainments " will 
 remember the counterpart of 
 the story of Young Tamlane, in 
 that marvellous compilation of 
 Eastern romance. 
 
 Mouter, fee paid to the miller for 
 grinding corn ; old English, tnul- 
 ture ; French, movdre, to grind. 
 
 It's good to be merry and wise, 
 Said the miller when he moutered iy>'\ct. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Prot>erbs. 
 
 The quaker's wife sat down to bake 
 Wi' a' her bairns about her, 
 
 Ilk ane gat a quarter cake 
 And the miller gat his mouter. 
 
 — Chambers's Old Song. 
 
 Mowes, jesting, mockery, grim- 
 aces ; to make mowes, to make 
 faces. 
 
 Affront your friend in mowes and tine 
 him in earnest. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 It has been supposed that 
 mowes, which in this sense 
 is only used in the plural, is 
 derived from mmC, a Scottish 
 abbreviation of mouth. It 
 would seem so at first blush ; 
 but as the French have *' faire 
 la moue," "grimace faite par 
 mecontentement, en allongeant 
 les levres," and as moue in that 
 language does not signify a 
 mouth, it is probable that the 
 source of mowes is to be sought 
 
Muckle — Muslin-kail. 
 
 137 
 
 in the French and not in the 
 Teutonic. Possibly both the 
 Scottish mowe and the French 
 moue have a common origin in 
 the Celtic and Gaelic muig, a 
 discontented look, an ill-natured 
 frown. In English slang, mug 
 signifies the face; and "ugly 
 itiug'''^ is a common expression 
 for an ugly face. 
 
 Muckle, mickle, meikle, great, 
 large, big ; muclde-mou' d, big- 
 mouthed, wide-mouthed, clam- 
 orous, vociferous ; Muchle-mou'd 
 Meg, a name given to a cannon 
 of large calibre. This word is 
 akin to the English much, the 
 Spanish mucho, the Greek mega 
 and megala, and the Latin mag- 
 nus — all implying the sense of 
 greatness. The Gaelic has meud, 
 [in which the final d is often 
 pronounced ch], bulk, great size ; 
 and meudaich, to magnify. 
 
 Every little helps to mak a Tnuckle. 
 — Scots Proverb. 
 
 Far hae I travelled, 
 And muckle hae I seen. 
 
 But buttons upon blankets 
 Saw I never nane. 
 — Onr Gudetnan cam Haine at E'en. 
 
 Mull, a snuff or tobacco-box, as 
 used in the Highlands. The 
 Lowland Scotch sometimes call 
 a snuff-box "a sneeshin mill,'' 
 mill being a corruption of mull ; 
 from the Gaelic mala, a bag, 
 the French malle, a trunk or 
 box. 
 
 The luntin' pipe and sneeshin mill 
 Are handed round wi' right guidwill. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Jamieson says, with a non- 
 comprehension of the origin of 
 the word mill and its connection 
 with mull, that the snuff-box 
 was formerly used in the country 
 as a mill for grinding the dried 
 tobacco leaves 1 If so, the box 
 must have contained some ma- 
 chinery for the purpose. But 
 neither Jamieson, nor anybody 
 else, ever saw a contrivance of 
 that kind in a snuff-box. 
 
 MurguUie, to spoil, to mangle, to 
 lacerate, to deform. Sometimes 
 written margulye. 
 
 He wadna murgullie the howlet on the 
 moudiewort either. — Macleav's Metnoirs 
 of the Clan MacGregor. 
 
 Muslin-kail, an epithet applied 
 by Burns to a purely vegetable 
 soup, without animal ingredients 
 of any kind, and compounded 
 of barley, greens, onions, &c. 
 
 I'll sit down o'er my scanty meal, 
 Be 't water-brose or muslin-kail, 
 
 Wi' cheerfu' face. 
 As lang's the Muses dinna fail 
 
 To say the grace. 
 
 — Epistle to James Smith. 
 
 It has been supposed that the 
 word muslin was applied to it 
 on account of its thinness. The 
 French call it soupe maigre ; but 
 as muslin was only introduced 
 -to Europe from Mosul in India 
 in 1670, and vegetable broth 
 was known for countless ages 
 before that time in every part 
 of the world, it is possible that 
 muslin is an erroneous phonetic 
 rendering of meslin, or mashlum. 
 Both meslin and mashlum ap- 
 
138 
 
 Mutch — Mutchkin . 
 
 pear in Jamieson, who translates 
 the former as " mixed corn," 
 and the latter as " a mixture of 
 edibles," but gives no etymology 
 for either. Me&s is a word that, 
 with slight variations, appears 
 in almost every language of 
 Europe, and which, in its Eng- 
 lish form, is derived by nearly all 
 philologists from mensa, a table. 
 But that this is an error will 
 appear on a little examination, 
 for mess originally signified, in 
 nearly every instance in which 
 it was used, a dish of vegetables. 
 The old translation of the Bible 
 speaks of a mess of pottage, a 
 purely vegetable compound. 
 Milton speaks of 
 
 Herbs and other country messes, 
 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses. 
 
 The Dutch and Flemish moes 
 signifies a dish of herbs, or 
 herbs reduced to what the 
 French call a pur6e ; the Ameri- 
 cans call oatmeal porridge, or 
 any compound of mashed grain, 
 a mush. The Gaelic 7neas signi- 
 fies fruit or vegetables, and this, 
 combined with the word Ian, 
 full, is doubtless the true root 
 of meslin or masldum, rendered 
 muslin by Burns's printers. It 
 may be observed that mash, to 
 render into a pulp or puree, is 
 exclusively used for vegetables, 
 as mashed potatoes, mashed tur- 
 nips, &c. , and that hash or mince 
 is the word employed by cooks 
 
 for the reduction of beef, mut- 
 ton, and other flesh of animals 
 into smaller portions or particles. 
 Muslin-kail seems to be peculiar 
 to Burns. 
 
 Mutch, a woman's cap or bonnet ; 
 from the Flemish muts, the 
 German miitzen, which have 
 the same meaning. 
 
 Their toys and mutches were sae clean, 
 They glancit in our ladies' e'en. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 A' dressed out in aprons clean. 
 
 And braw white Sunday mutches. 
 — Sir Alexander Boswell : Jenny 
 Dang the Weaver. 
 
 Mutchkin, a pint ; from the 
 Flemish mudde, a hectolitre, a 
 large quart ; or muid, a quart. 
 An English traveller, who prided 
 himself on his knowledge of the 
 Scotch language, called at an 
 inn in Glasgow for a mutchkin 
 of whisky, under the idea that 
 mutchkin signified a gill, or a 
 small glass. "Mutchkin?" in- 
 quired the waiter, "and a' to 
 yoursel' ? " '* Yes, a mutchkin / " 
 said the Englishman. " I trow 
 ye'll be gey an' fou," said the 
 waiter, "an' ye drink it." "Never 
 you mind," said the English- 
 man, "bring it." And it was 
 brought. Great thereanent was 
 the Englishman's surprise. He 
 drank no more than a gill of it ; 
 but he added meanwhile a new 
 Scottish word to his vocabu- 
 lary. 
 
Nae-thing — Neb. 
 
 139 
 
 N 
 
 Nae-thing. The English language, 
 or at least the rhymers who 
 write English, have lost many- 
 rhymes by not being able to 
 make nothing do duty for no- 
 thing ; whence they might have 
 claimed it as a rhyme for slow- 
 thing, low-thing, and many others 
 too obvious to be specified. The 
 Scottish language, in preserving 
 nae-thing, has emphasised the 
 etymology of the word. It is 
 impossible to find a rhyme for 
 the English nothing, but for the 
 Scottish nae - thing Burns has 
 found that there are many ; 
 among others, ae-thing, claithing, 
 graiihing, gaything, plaything, &c. 
 
 Napery, table-linen ; from the 
 French nappe, a tablecloth, or the 
 English napkin, a little cloth. 
 
 I thought a beetle or bittle had been the 
 thing that the women have when they are 
 washing towels and napery — things for 
 dadding them with. — Dean Ramsay : The 
 Diamond Beetle Case. 
 
 Nappy. This word was used by 
 a few English writers in the 
 eighteenth century, but was 
 never so common in England as 
 it was in Scotland. It always 
 signified strong drink, parti- 
 cularly ale or beer, and not wine 
 or spirits. 
 
 Two bottles of as nappy liquor 
 As ever reamed in horn or bicker. 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Care, mad to see a man sae happy, ' 
 E'en drowned himsel' among the nappy. 
 Burns : Tarn 0' Shanter. 
 With nappy beer, I to the barn repaired. 
 — Gay's Fables. 
 
 The word is rendered in 
 French by " capiteux, qui monte 
 h, la tete " — that is to say, heady. 
 It seems derivable from the 
 English slang nob, the head, as 
 in the pugilistic phrase, "One 
 for his W06," "One (blow) for 
 his head;" whence also the 
 familiar nopper, the head. The 
 original word was the German 
 Jcnob, a round lump, or ball, in 
 allusion to the shape ; whence 
 knobby, rounded or lumpy. Nap- 
 pie, in the sense of strong drink 
 that mounts to the head, be- 
 comes, by extension of meaning, 
 strong and vigorous ; " a nappie 
 callant" is a strong, vigorous 
 youth, with a good head on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Nappy. — Bailey's definition of this word 
 in his English Dictionary is " Nappy-ale, 
 such as will cause persons to take or knap 
 pleasant and strong ale."— R. Drennan. 
 
 Neb, the nose. Flemish sneb 
 (with the elision of the s), the 
 nose, the beak ; a point, as the 
 neb or nib of a pen. 
 
 She holds up the neb to him, 
 And arms her with the boldness of a wife. 
 — Shakspeare : Winters Tale. 
 Turn your neb northwards, and settle for 
 awhile at St. Andrews. 
 
 —Scott : Fortunes of Nigel, 
 
I40 
 
 Neep — Nicky Auld Nicky Nickie-Ben. 
 
 Neep, a turnip ; from the French 
 navel, 
 
 A late Lord Justice-Clerk of the Court 
 of Session, who was fond of sport, was 
 shooting pheasants in a field of turnips, 
 when the farmer, whose consent had not 
 been asked, and who looked upon the 
 sportsman as an illegal trespasser, rushed 
 out of his house in a towering passion, 
 and called out in a loud voice, "Come 
 oot o' that you, sir! come oot o' that im- 
 mediately." The Lord Justice-Clerk, un- 
 accustomed to this style of address, con- 
 fronted the angry man, and asked him if 
 he knew to whom he was speaking? " I 
 dinna ken, and I dinna care ; ye'se come 
 oot o' that, or I'll mak it the waur for 
 ye." " I'm the Lord Justice-Clerk," said 
 the legal dignitary, thinking to over- 
 awe the irate agriculturist. " I dinna 
 care whose clerk ye are, but ye'se come 
 oot o' my neej>s." How the altercation 
 ended is not on record, though it is believed 
 that his lordship left the field quietly, 
 after enlightening the farmer as to his 
 high status and position, and cooling his 
 wrath by submission to an authority not to 
 be successfully contested, without greater 
 trouble than the contest was worth. — Scot- 
 tish Wit and Humour. 
 
 Neuk, a corner ; English a nook, 
 a small corner. Both words are 
 derived from the Gaelic uig, a 
 corner, which, with the in- 
 definite article an before it, was 
 corrupted from an ook, or an 
 uig, into a neuTc, or a nook. The 
 Flemish uig and hoek, and the 
 German eck, a corner, are trace- 
 able to the same Celtic root. 
 
 The deil sits girnin' in the neuk, 
 Rivin' sticks to roast the Deuk. 
 — Jacobite Ballad on the Victory of the 
 Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. 
 
 Nevermas, the time that never 
 comes. This word, equivalent 
 to the "Greek kalends," is 
 
 formed after the model of Mar- 
 tinmas, Michaelmas, and Christ- 
 mas. It does not occur in 
 Jamieson. It is found in Arm- 
 strong's Gaelic Dictionary as 
 the translation of lA buain na 
 lin, the "day of the cutting of 
 the flax," which has in the 
 Highlands the meaning of 
 "never," or "at no time," or 
 "at a very uncertain time." 
 
 Nicher, to neigh, to snort ; French, 
 nennir, sometimes written hen- 
 nir; Flemish, nenniker, or nin- 
 niker. 
 
 Little may an auld nag do that maunna 
 nicher. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Nick, Auld Nick, Nickie-Ben. 
 
 All these names are used in 
 Scotland to signify the devil ; 
 the third is peculiar to Scotland, 
 and finds no place in English 
 parlance. 
 
 But fare-you-weel, auld Nickie-Ben! 
 Oh, wad ye tak a thought an' men', 
 Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, 
 
 Still hae a stake ! 
 I'm wae to think upon yon den, 
 
 Even for your sake ! 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Why Nick came to signify 
 Satan in the British Isles has 
 never been satisfactorily ex- 
 plained. Butler in Hudihras 
 supposes that he was so called 
 after Nicholas Macchiavelli. 
 
 Nick Macchiavel had no such trick. 
 Though he gave name to our Old Nick. 
 
 But the name was in use many 
 ages before Macchiavelli was 
 born ; and the passage must. 
 
Nidder^ Nither — Nieve. 
 
 141 
 
 therefore, be considered as a 
 joke, rather than as a philolo- 
 gical assertion. It is remark- 
 able, too, that Nick and Old 
 NicJc, whatever be the deriva- 
 tion, is a phrase unknown to 
 any nation of Europe except 
 our own. The derivation from 
 Nicholas is clearly untenable; 
 that from Nikkr, a water- sprite 
 or goblin, in the Scandinavian 
 mythology, is equally so ; for 
 the Old Nick of British super- 
 stition is reputed to have more 
 to do with fire than water, and 
 has no attributes in common 
 with Satan, the prince of the 
 powers of evil. To derive the 
 word from niger, or nigger, black, 
 because the devil is reputed to 
 be black, is but perverted ingenu- 
 ity. All the epithets showered 
 upon the devil by Burns, 
 
 Oh thou, whatever title suit thee, 
 Auld Satan, Hornie, Nick, or Clootie, 
 
 are, with the exception of Satan, 
 titles of irreverence, familiarity, 
 and jocosity ; Hornie, from the 
 horns he is supposed to wear on 
 his forehead, and Clootie, from 
 his cloven hoofs, like those 
 of a goat. It is probable that 
 Nick and Old Nick are words 
 of a similarly derisive char- 
 acter, and that nick, which 
 appears in the glossaries to 
 Allan Ramsay and to Burns, as 
 cheat or to cheat, is the true origin, 
 and that Old Nick simply sig- 
 nifies the Old Cheat. It may be 
 mentioned, in connection with 
 the idea of cheat or nick, that 
 old gentleman is a name often 
 
 given to Satan by people who 
 object to the word devil, and 
 that the same name is descrip- 
 ' tive, according to the Slang 
 Dictionary, of a card almost 
 imperceptibly longer than the 
 other cards of the pack, used 
 by card-sharpers for the purpose 
 of cheating. To be out on the 
 nick is, on the same authority, 
 to be out thieving. The etymo- 
 logy of nick in this sense is 
 doubtful. Dr. Adolphus Wagner, 
 the learned editor of the German 
 edition of Burns, derives it from 
 the Greek Ne/cw, and translates 
 it " to bite or to cheat." In 
 Wright's Dictionary of Obsolete 
 and Provincial English, nick is 
 ** to deceive, to cheat, to deny'; 
 also, to win at dice unfairly." 
 
 Nidder, Nither, to lower, to de- 
 press ; niddered, pinched with 
 cold or hunger, with the vital 
 energies depressed; also, stunted 
 or lowered in growth. From 
 the German nieder, low, or 
 down ; the Flemish neder, Eng- 
 lish nether, as in the Biblical 
 phrase, "the upper and the 
 nether millstone." Netherlands, 
 the low countries; the French 
 Pays Bas, 
 
 Nithered by the norlan' breeze. 
 The sweet wee flower aft dwines and 
 dees. 
 
 — ^James Ballantine. 
 
 Nieve, the fist, the closed hand ; 
 nevel, to strike with the fist, a 
 blow with the fist. From the 
 Teutonic knuffen, to beat with 
 the fist, to cuff, to fisticuff. 
 
142 
 
 Nieve — Noyt, 
 
 Though here they scrape, and squeeze, 
 
 and growl, 
 Their worthless niex>e-fu o' a soul 
 May in some future carcass howl 
 The forest's fright. 
 — Burns : Ejnstle to John Lapraik. 
 Sir Alexander Ramsay of Fasque, show- 
 ing a fine stot to a butcher, said, " I was 
 offered twenty guineas for that beast." 
 " Indeed, Fasque ! " said the butcher, " ye 
 should hae steekit your nieve upon that." 
 — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 They partit manly with a nevel; 
 God wat gif hair was ruggit 
 Betwixt thame. 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 He hasna as muckle sense as a cow could 
 had in her nieve. — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Mark the rustic, haggis-fed. 
 
 The trembling earth resounds his tread, 
 
 Clap in his walie nieve a blade, 
 
 He'll mak' it whissle ; 
 And legs and arms and heads will sned 
 
 Like taps o' thrissle. 
 
 —Burns : To a Haggis. 
 
 Niflfer, to barter, to exchange. 
 Probably, according to Jamie- 
 son, from nieve, the fist or closed 
 hand — to exchange an article 
 that is in one hand for that 
 which is in the other. This ety- 
 mology is doubtful, although no 
 better one has been suggested. 
 
 Ye'll no be niffered but for a waur, and 
 that's no possible. — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Ye see your state wi' theirs compared, 
 
 And shudder at the niffer; 
 But, cast a moment's fair regard. 
 
 What maks the mighty differ ? 
 
 —Burns : To the Unco Guid. 
 
 Nippit, miserly, mean, parsimoni- 
 ous, near ; from ni'p, to pinch. 
 The English 'pinch is often ap- 
 plied in the same sense. 
 
 Noo or the noo, at the present 
 time, now. 
 
 On one occasion a neighbour waited on 
 a small laird in Lanarkshire, named Ham- 
 ilton, and requested his signature to an 
 accommodation bill for twenty pounds at 
 three months' date, which led to the fol- 
 lowing characteristic colloquy : — 
 
 " Na ! na ! " said the laird, " I canna 
 do that." 
 
 " What for no, laird ? Ye hae done the 
 same thing for others." 
 
 " Aye, aye, Tammas ! but there's wheels 
 within wheels that ye ken naething about. 
 I canna do't." 
 
 " It's a sma' thing to refuse me, laird." 
 
 '' Weel, ye see, Tammas, if I was to pit 
 my name till't, ye wad get the siller frae 
 the bank, and when the time cam round,- 
 ye wadna be ready, an' I wad hae to pay't. 
 An' then me an' you wad quarrel. So we 
 may just as weel quarrel the noo, an' I' 11 
 keep the siller in my pouch."— Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 Nowte, homed cattle ; corrupted 
 in English into neat. 
 
 Mischief begins wi' needles and prins. 
 And ends wi' horned nowte. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Or by Madrid he takes the route, 
 To thrum guitars and fecht wi' no^vte. 
 —Burns: The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Lord Seafield, who was ac- 
 cused by his brother of accept- 
 ing a bribe to vote for the union 
 betwixt England and Scotland, 
 endeavoured to retort upon him 
 by calling him a cattle-dealer. 
 " Ay, weel," replied his brother, 
 •' better sell nmiote than nations." 
 
 Noyt, noit, or nowt, to injure, to 
 hurt, to beat, to strike ; from 
 the French nuire, to injure. 
 
 The miller was of manly mak, 
 To meet him was na mowis, 
 
Nugget — Olyte. 
 
 143 
 
 They durst not ten come him to tak, 
 Sae noytit he their powis. 
 
 —Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Nugget, a word scarcely known 
 to the English until the dis- 
 covery of gold in California and 
 Australia, when it was intro- 
 duced by the miners to sig- 
 nify a large piece of the metal 
 as distinguished from grains of 
 gold dust. Many attempts have 
 been made to trace its etymo- 
 logy, only one of which has 
 found a qualified acceptance — 
 that which affirms it to be a 
 corruption of ingot. This is 
 plausible, but not entirely satis- 
 factory. In some parts of Scot- 
 land, the word for a luncheon, 
 or a hasty repast taken at noon, 
 is noggit — sometimes written 
 Tcnockit — ^which means a piece. 
 In other parts of Scotland the 
 word used is piece, as, " Gie the 
 
 bairn its piece," and the word 
 lunch itself, from the Gaelic 
 lonach, hungry, signifies the 
 piece which is cut off a loaf or a 
 cheese to satisfy the appetite 
 during the interval that elapses 
 . before the regular meal. 
 
 When hungry thou stoodest, staring like 
 
 an oaf, 
 I sliced the luncheon from the barley loaf. 
 —Gay. 
 
 All these examples tend to 
 show that nugget simply means 
 a lump or piece. In Kent, ac- 
 cording to Wright's Archaic 
 Dictionary, a lump of food is 
 called a nuncheon. 
 
 Nyse, to beat, to pommel, a word 
 in use among the boys of the 
 High School of Edinburgh ; 
 from the Ga,elic naitheas{t silent), 
 a mischief. *'I'll nyse you," 
 " I'll do you a mischief." 
 
 O 
 
 Ock, a diminutive particle ap- 
 pended to Scottish words, and 
 implying littleness combined 
 with the idea of tenderness and 
 affection, as in lass, lassoclc, 
 wife, wifoch This termination 
 is sometimes combined with ie, 
 thus making a double diminu- 
 tive, as lassockie, often spelled 
 lassieJcie, and wifockie, toijiekie. 
 Ock is probably derived from 
 the Gaelic og, young. 
 
 Olyte, diligent, industrious, active. 
 According to Mr. Halliwell, this 
 
 word appears in the Harleian 
 MS., and is still used in some 
 parts of England. Jamieson 
 spells it olight and olite, and de- 
 rives it from the Swedish offlaet^ 
 "too light, fleet," but no such 
 word is to be found in the 
 Swedish dictionaries, nor in 
 those of the other Teutonic lan- 
 guages. Possibly the true origin 
 of the word is the Gaelic oil, to 
 rear, educate, instruct, and oilte, 
 instructed, oilcan, instruction, 
 good-breeding ; whence an olyte 
 mother, in the proverb quoted 
 
144 
 
 Oo aye ! — Outlers. 
 
 below, may signify a woman in- 
 structed in the due performance 
 of all her household duties, and 
 performing them so zealously as 
 to leave nothing for her daughter 
 to do. Oileanta, more commonly 
 written ealanta, signifies quick, 
 nimble, active. 
 
 An olyte mother makes a sweer daughter. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Oo aye ! An emphatic assertion 
 of assent. The French out. 
 
 Orra, all sorts of odds and ends, 
 ' occasional. 
 
 Where Donald Caird fand orra things. 
 — Scott. 
 
 She's a weel-educate woman, and if she 
 win to her English as I hae heard her do 
 at orra times, she may come to fickle us a'. 
 — Scott: The Antiquary. 
 
 Orra, — now and then, unusual, not fre- 
 quently met with, almost always associated 
 with time. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Orra man. A man employed to 
 do odd jobs on a farm, that are 
 not in the regular routine of 
 the work of the other farm 
 servants. 
 
 Oughtlins, pertaining to duty, 
 or to that which ought to be 
 done ; a word composed of 
 ought, a debt owing to duty, 
 honour and propriety, and lins 
 (see AiBLiNS, Westlins, &c.), in- 
 clining towards. 
 
 If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales, 
 
 Was grown oughtlins douser. 
 — Burns : On Receiving a Newspaper, 
 
 Ourie or oorie, cold, shivering. 
 This word, peculiar to Scotland, 
 
 is derived from the Gaelic fuar, 
 cold, which, with the aspirate, 
 becomes fhuar, and is pro- 
 nounced uar. 
 
 I thought me on the ourie cattle. 
 
 —Burns : A Winter Night. 
 
 The English hoar-frost, and 
 the hoary (white, snowy) hair 
 of old age, are traceable to the 
 same etymological root. Jamie- 
 son, however, derives oorie from 
 the Icelandic wr, rain, and the 
 Swedish ur, stormy weather, 
 though the origin of both is to 
 be found in the Gaelic uaire, 
 bad weather or storm. 
 
 Outthrough, entirely or com- 
 pletely through. 
 
 They dived in through the one burn bank, 
 Sae did they outthrough the other. 
 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Out-cast, a quarrel, to "cast-out," 
 to quarrel. 
 
 O dool to tell, 
 They've had a bitter black cast-out 
 Atween themsel. 
 —Burns : The Tiva Herds. 
 
 I didna ken they had casten-out. 
 
 — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Outlers, cattle left out at night in 
 the fields, -for want of byres or 
 folds to shelter them. 
 
 Amang the brackens on the brae, 
 
 Between her an' the moon, 
 The Deil or else an outler quey 
 
 Gat up and gae a croon. 
 Poor Lizzie's heart maist lap the hool — 
 
 Near lav'rock height she jumpit, 
 But miss'd a foot, and in the pool 
 
 Out owre the lugs she plumpit. 
 
 —Burns: Halloween. 
 
Outside of the Loof- — Ower-word. 
 
 145 
 
 Outside of the Loof, the back 
 of the hand. " The outside of 
 my loof to ye," is a phrase that 
 signifies a wish on the part of 
 the person who uses it to reject 
 the friendship or drop the ac- 
 quaintance of the person to 
 whom it is addressed. 
 
 " If ye 'II no join the Free Kirk," said a 
 ■wealthy widow to her cousin, to whom 
 she had often conveyed the hint that he 
 might expect a handsome legacy at her 
 death (a hint that never ripened into a 
 fact), " ye'll hae the outside o my loof, and 
 never see the inside o't again." — C. M. 
 
 Outspeckle, a laughing - stock ; 
 and IcenspecTde, to be easily re- 
 cognised by some outer mark 
 of singularity. These words 
 have a common origin, and are 
 derived either from speck, or 
 speckle, a small mark or spot ; 
 or from spectacle, corrupted into 
 speckle ; but most probably from 
 the former. 
 
 " Wha drives thir kye," gan Willie to say, 
 " To mak' an outspeckle o' me ! " 
 — Border Ballads : Janiie Telfer. 
 
 Outwittens, unknowingly, with- 
 out the knowledge of. 
 
 Outwittens of my daddie \i.e., my father 
 not knowing it], — Jamieson. 
 
 Overlay or owerlay, the burden 
 or chorus of a song ; the refrain. 
 
 And aye the owerlay o' his sang 
 Was, wae's me for Prince Charlie. 
 — Jacobite Ballad. 
 
 The French refrain, recently 
 adopted into English, is of 
 Gaelic origin, from ramh or raf, 
 an oar, and rann, a song ; a sea 
 song or boat-song, formerly 
 
 chanted to the motion of the 
 oars by Celtic boatmen in Brit- 
 tany and the Scottish High- 
 lands. 
 
 Ower Bogie, a proverbial phrase 
 used in regard to a marriage 
 which has been celebrated by a 
 magistrate, and not by a clergy- 
 man. Synonymous in Aberdeen- 
 shire with the English Gretna 
 Green marriages, performed 
 under similar conditions. The 
 origin is unknown, though it is 
 supposed that some accommo- 
 dating magistrate, at some time 
 or other, resided on the opposite 
 side of the river Bogie from 
 that of the town or village 
 inhabited by the lovers who 
 desired to be joined in the 
 bonds of matrimony without 
 subjecting themselves to the 
 sometimes inconvenient inter- 
 rogations of the kirk. Jamieson 
 erroneously quotes the phrase 
 as ovyre ioggie. 
 
 I will awa wi' my love, 
 
 I will awa' wi' her. 
 Though a' my kin' had sorrow and said, 
 I'll ower Bogie wi' her. 
 
 — Allan R ams ay : Tea Table 
 Miscellany. 
 
 Owergang, to surpass, to exceed. 
 
 You're straight and tall and handsome 
 withal. 
 But your pride owergangs your wit. 
 —Ballad of Proud Lady Margaret. 
 
 Ower-word, a chorus or burden. 
 A phrase often repeated in a 
 song, the French bourdon, the 
 English burthen of a song. 
 K 
 
146 
 
 Oxter — Pad. 
 
 And aye the ower-word of his song 
 Was, wae's me for Prince Charlie. 
 
 — Glen : A Jacobite Song. 
 
 The starling flew to the window stane, 
 
 It whistled and it sang, 
 And aye the ower-ivord o the tune 
 
 Was "Johnnie tarries lang." 
 
 — Johnnie of Breadislee. 
 
 Oxter, the armpit and the space 
 between the shoulder and the 
 bosom ; sometimes it is used in- 
 correctly for the lap ; and to em- 
 brace, to encircle with the arms 
 in fondness. From the Gaelic 
 uchd, the breast or bosom; 
 whence also the Latin uxor, a 
 wife, i.e., the wife of one's 
 bosom ; and uxorious, fondly at- 
 tached to a wife"; uchd mhac, an 
 adopted son, the son of one's 
 bosom. Jamieson derives oxter 
 
 from the Teutonic oxtel, but no 
 such word is to be found in the 
 German language. The Flemish 
 and Dutch have oksel, a gusset, 
 which Johnson defines as "an 
 angular piece of cloth, inserted 
 in a garment, particularly at 
 the upper end of the sleeve of 
 a shirt, or as a part of the neck." 
 This word has a clear but re- 
 mote connection with the Gaelic 
 uchd. 
 
 He did like ony mavis sing, 
 And as I in his ojrter sat 
 He ca'd me aye his bosome thing. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay: Tea Table 
 Miscellany. 
 
 Here the phrase "sitting in 
 his oxler " is equivalent to sitting 
 folded in his arms, or clasped 
 to his bosom. 
 
 Pack, familiar, intimate, closely 
 allied. 
 
 Nae doubt but they were fain o' ither, 
 And xxnco pack and thick thegither, 
 Wi' social nose whiles snufFd and howkit. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Pack is not only used as an 
 adjective, but is common as a 
 noun in colloquial English, as 
 in the phrase, a jpach of rascals, 
 and a pack of thieves. In this 
 sense it is derivable from the 
 Gaelicjpac orjpacca^troop,a mob. 
 
 Pad, to travel, to ride. Often in 
 Scotland when a lady is seen on 
 horseback in the rural districts, 
 the children of the villages fol- 
 
 low her, crying out, *' Lady jjo^i / 
 lady pad .! " Jamieson says that 
 on pad is to travel on foot, that 
 pad, the hoof, is a cant phrase, 
 signifying to walk, and that the 
 ground is paddit when it has 
 been hardened by frequent pass- 
 ing and repassing. He derives 
 the word from the Latin pes, 
 pedis, the foot. It seems, how- 
 ever, to be more immediately 
 derived from path; pad, to go 
 on the path, whether on foot 
 or on horseback; from the 
 German pfad, the Flemish pad, 
 and voet -pad, the foot - path. 
 The English dictionaries erro- 
 neously explain pad in the word 
 
Padda — Paik, 
 
 147 
 
 f<jot-pad, a highway thief. But 
 pad by itself is never used in the 
 sense of steal. Grose's Classical 
 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue 
 ha,s pad-borrotoers, horse-stealers, 
 as if pad signified a horse. The 
 phrase really means path-hor- 
 roicers, i.e., borrowers on the 
 path or journey. 
 
 Padda, Paddock, a frog or toad ; 
 paddock stool, a toad-stool, a wild 
 fungus or mushroom. Flemish 
 pad and padde, a frog. 
 
 Says the mother, " What noise is that at 
 the door, daughter ? " "Hoot," says the 
 lassie, "it's naething but a filthy padda." 
 "Open the door," says the mother, "to 
 the puir padda." Sae the lassie opened 
 the door, and the padda cam loup, loup, 
 loupin' in, and sat doun by the ingle side. 
 — Scottish Songs collected, by Robert 
 Chambers, 1829. 
 
 Gowks and fools, 
 Frae colleges and boarding schools, 
 May sprout like summer paddock-stools. 
 In glen or shaw. 
 — Burns : Verses written at Selkirk. 
 
 Old Lady Perth, offended with a French 
 gentleman for some disparaging remark 
 which he had made on Scottish cookery, 
 answered him curtly, " Weel ! weel ! some 
 folk like parritch, and some \C&& paddocks." 
 — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Paidle. This eminently Scottish 
 word has no synonym in the 
 English language, nor in any 
 country where everybody, even 
 the poorest, wears shoes or 
 boots, and where, to go bare- 
 footed, would imply the lowest 
 social degradation. But in Scot- 
 land, a land of streams, rivulets, 
 and burns, that wimple down 
 the hills and cross the paths and 
 roads, to go barefooted is a 
 
 pleasure and luxury, and a con- 
 venience, especially to the chil- 
 dren of both sexes, and even to 
 young men and women verging 
 upon manhood and womanhood. 
 An Englishman may paddle his 
 boat and his canoe, but a Scots- 
 man paidles in the mountain 
 stream. How the young chil- 
 dren of England love to paidle, 
 may occasionally be seen at the 
 sea-side resorts of the southern 
 counties in the summer season, 
 but the Scottish child in the 
 rural districts paidles all the 
 year, and needs no holiday for 
 the purpose. 
 
 We twa hae paidled in the burn, 
 Frae morning sun till dine, 
 But seas between us braid hae roared, 
 Sin' the days of auld lang syne. 
 
 — BURNS- 
 
 The remembrance of paidlirC 
 when stirred by the singing of 
 this immortal song by Scotsmen 
 in America, in India, in Africa, 
 or at the Antipodes, melts every 
 Scottish heart to tenderness, or 
 inspires it to patriotism, as every 
 Scotsman, who has travelled 
 much, very surely knows. 
 
 Paik, a beating, to beat, to thrash, 
 to fight, to drub, to strike. 
 Jamieson derives this word from 
 the German pauken, to beat ; 
 but there is no such word in that 
 language. Pauke in German, 
 pauk in Flemish, signifies a 
 kettle-drum ; and pauken, to 
 beat the kettle-drum, but not 
 to beat in any other sense. The 
 word is probably from the Gaelic 
 paigh, to pay ; and also, by an 
 
148 
 
 Paihie — Pash. 
 
 extension of meaning, to pay" 
 one's deserts by a beating, as in 
 the proverb in Allan Eamsay — 
 " He's sairest dung that is -paid 
 with his own wand," i.e., he is 
 sorest hit who is beaten with 
 his own cudgel. 
 
 Paikie, a trull, a prostitute, B,Jille 
 dejoie, a euphemism from the 
 Gaelic peacadh (peaca), a sinner. 
 Faik, a sin ; the French pecker ; 
 and the Italian peccare. 
 
 In adulterie he was ta'en — 
 Made to be punisht for his paik. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Pang, to fill full, to cram ; pang- 
 fu\ as full as one can hold. 
 Etymology unknown; but pos- 
 sibly related to the French 
 pause, belly; pansu, large-bel- 
 lied ; English paunchy. 
 
 Leeze me on drink ; it gies us mair 
 Than either school or college, 
 
 It kindles wit, it waukens lair, 
 It j>angs us fu' o' knowledge. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Parle, a discourse ; from the 
 French parler, to speak ; the 
 Italian ^av'Zare. The Gaelic 6cwrZa 
 signifies language, and more par- 
 ticularly the English language. 
 A tocher's nae word in a true lover's 
 
 parle. 
 But gie me my love, and a fig for the 
 warl.— Burns : Meg o' tlie Mill. 
 
 Parritch or porridge. A formerly 
 favourite, if not essential, food of 
 the Scottish people of all classes, 
 composed of oatmeal boiled in 
 water to a thick consistency, 
 and seasoned with salt. This 
 healthful food is generally taken 
 
 with milk, but is equally palat- 
 able with butter, sugar, beer, 
 or wine. It is sometimes re- 
 tained in middle and upper class 
 families ; but among the very 
 poor has unfortunately been dis- 
 placed by the cheaper and less 
 nutritious potato. 
 
 The hailsome parritch, chief o' Scotia's 
 food. 
 — Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Partan, a crab, from the Gaelic ; 
 partanach, abounding in crabs ; 
 partan-handit, epithet applied 
 to one who is hard-fisted and 
 penurious, who grips his money 
 like a crab grips with its claw. 
 
 An' there'll be partans and buckies, 
 An' singit sheeps' heads and a haggis. 
 —The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Pash, the head, the brow, the 
 forehead. Allan Ramsay, bar- 
 ber and wig-maker, sang of his 
 trade : — 
 
 I theek [thatch] the out, and line the 
 
 inside, 
 Of mony a douce and witty /ojA, 
 And baithways gather in the cash. 
 
 A bare pash signifies a bald 
 head, and mad-^as/t is equiva- 
 lent to the English madcap. 
 Latham's Todd's Johnson has 
 pash, to push or butt like a ram 
 or bull, with the head. Pash 
 was current English in the time 
 of Shakspeare, who uses it in 
 the "Winter's Tale," in a pas- 
 sage which no commentator has 
 been able to explain. Leontes, 
 suspicious of the fidelity of his 
 wife Hermione, asks his child 
 Mamilius — 
 
Paughty — Pawky, 
 
 149 
 
 Art thou my calf? 
 To which Mamilius replies — 
 Yes ! if you will, my Lord. 
 
 Leontes, still brooding on 
 his imaginary wrong, rejoins 
 moodily — 
 
 Thou wants a rough /«jA and the shoots 
 that I have to be full like me. 
 
 It is amusing to note into 
 what errors the English editors 
 of Shakspeare have fallen, in 
 their ignorance of this word. 
 Nares thought that ^as^ was 
 something belonging to a bull 
 — he did not know what — or a 
 calf, and Steevens thought that 
 it was the Spanish paz, a kiss. 
 Mr. Howard Staunton, the 
 editor of Shakspeare, had a 
 glimpse of the meaning, and 
 thought that 'pash meant a 
 ^'tufted head." Jamieson ac- 
 knowledged the word, but at- 
 tempted no etymology. Pash is 
 clearly derivable from the Gaelic 
 6ai7iais (pronounced 6asA OYjpash), 
 and signifies the forehead. The 
 allusion of the unhappy Leontes 
 to the shoots on his rough pash 
 (wrinkled brow) is to the horns 
 that vulgar phraseology places 
 on the foreheads of deceived 
 and betrayed husbands. Kead 
 by this gloss, the much-mis- 
 understood passage in the 
 "Winter's Tale" becomes clear. 
 
 Paughty, proud, haughty, repul- 
 sive, but without having the 
 qualities of mind or person to 
 justify the assumption of supe- 
 riority over others. Probably 
 derived from the Flemish pochen, 
 
 to vaunt, to brag, and pocher, a 
 braggadocio, a fanfaron. 
 
 An askin', an askin', my father dear. 
 
 An askin' I beg of thee ; 
 Ask not th&t paughty Scottish lord, 
 
 For him ye ne'er shall see. 
 
 — Ballad 0/ the Gay Goss-Hawk. 
 
 Yon paughty dog 
 That bears the keys of Peter. 
 
 — Burns : A Dream. 
 
 Paumie and taws. All Scottish 
 school-boys, past and present, 
 have painful knowledge of the 
 meaning of these two words. 
 Paumie is a stroke over the 
 open hand, with a cane or the 
 taws. The taws is a thong of 
 leather cut into a fringe at the 
 end, and hardened in the fire. 
 It is, and was, the recognised 
 mode of punishment for slight 
 offences or breaches of dis- 
 cipline at school, when the 
 master was unwilling to resort 
 to the severer and more de- 
 grading punishment, inflicted a 
 posteriori, after the fashion of 
 Dr. Busby. Paumie is derived 
 from the palm of the hand, the 
 French peaume, and taws is the 
 plural form of the Gaelic taod, 
 a rope, a scourge. 
 
 Pawky, of a sly humour, wise, 
 witty, cautious, discreet, and 
 insinuating, — all in one. There 
 is no synonym for this word 
 in English. The etymology is 
 unknown. 
 
 The pawky auld carle cam owre the lea, 
 Wi' mony good e'ens and good days to 
 me. 
 
 Dear Smith, the slee'est, /aw^V thief. 
 —Burns: To James Smith. 
 
ISO 
 
 Peat-Reek — Pedder- coffe. 
 
 Peat-Reek and Mountain Dew. 
 
 Peat-Reck is the smoke of peat 
 when dried and burned for fuel, 
 the flavour of which used to be 
 highly appreciated in Scottish 
 whiskey, when made by illicit 
 ■ distillers in lonely glens among 
 the mountains, out of the usual 
 reach of the exciseman. From 
 the solitary places of its manu- 
 facture, whiskey received the 
 poetic name of Mountain Dew, 
 or the "Dew ofiE Ben Nevis," 
 which it still retains. 
 
 Mountain Dew, clear as a Scot's under- 
 standing, 
 Pure as his conscience wherever he goes, 
 Warm as his heart to the friends he has 
 chosen, 
 Strong as his arm when he fights with 
 his foes ! 
 In liquor Uke this should old Scotland be 
 toasted, 
 So fill up again, and the pledge we'll 
 renew ; 
 Unsullied in honour, our blessings upon 
 her— 
 Scotland for ever ! and old Mountain 
 Dew /— Mackay. 
 
 Pech, to pant, to blow, for want 
 of breath. Derived by Jamieson 
 from the Danish 'pikken, to pal- 
 pitate. 
 
 My Pegasus I gat astride. 
 And up Parnassus /^c,^/«'. 
 — Burns : To Willie Chalmers. 
 
 There comes young Monks of high com- 
 plexion. 
 Of mind devout, love and affection ; 
 And in his court their hot flesh dart (tame), 
 Fule father-like with ^ech and pant, 
 
 They are sa humble of intercession, 
 Their errand all kind women grant, 
 Sic tidings heard I at the session. 
 —Allan Ramsay : The Evergreen— 
 Frae the Session. 
 
 Pechan, the stomach. 
 
 Ev'n the ha' folk fill Xh€\r pechan 
 Wi' sauce, ragouts, and such like trashtrie. 
 That's little short o' downright wastrie. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 This word seems to be a cor- 
 ruption of the Gaelic ^oc, a bag, 
 a poke ; and pocan, a little bag f 
 and to be ludicrously applied 
 to the belly or stomach. The 
 English slang peckish, hungry, is 
 probably derived from the same 
 root, and not from the beak, or 
 peck of a bird. 
 
 Pedder-coffe, a pedlar. In Allan 
 Ramsay's " Evergreen," a poem 
 ascribed to Sir David Ljmdsay 
 is entitled a " Description of 
 Pedder-coffs, their having no 
 regard to honesty in their voca- 
 tion." Both pedder and coffe are 
 of Teutonic derivation ; ped, 
 sometimes written p>ad, from 
 the German pfad ; Flemish pad, 
 a path ; and coffe or koffe, from 
 kail fen, to buy ; whence a pedlar 
 signified a walking merchant 
 who carried his wares along 
 with him. But it should be 
 observed with regard to the 
 Teutonic derivation, that in the 
 Kymric, or ancient language of 
 Wales, more ancient than the 
 German, padd signifies one that 
 keeps a course. Attempts have 
 been made to trace pedlar to 
 ped, a local word in some parts 
 of England for a basket : but 
 this derivation would not ac- 
 count for pedder, a mounted 
 highwayman ; for ioot-pad, a 
 Mghway robber on foot, from 
 
Peel — P eerie. 
 
 iji 
 
 the slang expression among 
 thieves and beggars to go on 
 the 'pad, i.e., on the tramp. 
 
 Jamieson derives the Scottish 
 pedder from the barbarous low 
 Latin pedariuSj i.e., nudis ambu- 
 lans pedibus. Sir David Lynd- 
 say in his poem was exceed- 
 ingly indignant, both with the 
 Pedders and the Coffes, who 
 seem to have been in their mode 
 of transacting business with 
 the country people, whom they 
 favoured with their visits on 
 their peregrinations through 
 districts afar from towns, the 
 exact counterparts of the tally- 
 men at the present day. He 
 recommends, in the interest of 
 the people, that wherever the 
 " pedder knaves appear in a 
 burgh or town where there is 
 a magistrate, that their lugs 
 should be cuttit off," as a warn- 
 ing to all cheats and regrators. 
 A similar outcry is sometimes 
 raised against the "tallymen," 
 or travelling linen-drapers and 
 haberdashers, who tempt the 
 wives of working men, and poor 
 people generally, to buy their 
 goods at high prices, and accept 
 small weekly payments on ac- 
 count, until their extortionate 
 bills are liquidated. 
 
 Peel, a border tower, a small for- 
 tress, of which few specimens 
 are now left standing. A very 
 interesting one, however, still 
 remains in the town of Melrose. 
 Possibly a corruption of bield, 
 a shelter. 
 
 And black Joan, frae Creighton-/^^/, 
 O' gipsy kith an' kin'. 
 
 —Burns : T^e Five Carlins. 
 
 An' when they came to the fair Dodhead 
 Right hastily they clam (climbed) the 
 peel, 
 They loosened the kye out, ane and a', 
 An' ranshackled the house right weel. 
 —Border Minstrelsy : Jamie Telfer. 
 
 Peep, to utter a faint cry or sound, 
 like an infant or a young bird. 
 Peepie-weepie, a querulous and 
 tearful child ; peep-snia\ a feeble 
 voice, a weak person who has to 
 submit to the domination of one 
 stronger ; synonymous with the 
 English "sing small." "He 
 daurna play peep," he must not 
 utter a word in defence of him- 
 self. In Dutch and Flemish, 
 pirpen signifies to cry like an 
 infant ; and piep-yong is a word 
 for a very young or new-born 
 child. The etymology is that 
 of pipe, or the sound emitted 
 by a flute or pipe, when gently 
 blown upon. 
 
 Peesweep, a lapwing, or plover ; 
 peesweep -like, a contemiptihle epi- 
 thet applied to a feeble, sharp- 
 featured man or woman, with a 
 shrill but not loud voice, like 
 the cry of a plover. 
 
 Peerie, pearie or perie, a hum- 
 ming top; sometimes a peg- 
 top ; from the Gaelic beur (6 
 pronounced as p), to hum, to 
 buzz. Brand, in his well-known 
 work on Popular Antiquities, 
 quotes Jamieson as his autho- 
 rity. He defines it to mean a 
 peg-top, and adds that the 
 
152 
 
 Peik- thank — Pensy. 
 
 name was apparently derived 
 from its close similarity to a 
 pear, and that the Scotch origin- 
 ally called it a French pear or 
 jiearie, because it was first im- 
 ported from France. 
 
 Peik-thank, is, according to 
 Jamieson, an ungrateful person, 
 one who returns little or no 
 thanks for benefits conferred. 
 PeiJc in this phrase seems to be 
 a corruption and misspelling of 
 the Gaelic beag {b pronounced 
 as p), little. Jamieson derives 
 it from the Italian poco. 
 
 The EnglishpichthanJc appears 
 to have had a different origin 
 and meaning, and signifies, 
 according to the examples of 
 its use in Nares, a sycophant, 
 a favourite, a flatterer, who 
 strove to pick up, acquire, or 
 gather thanks from the great 
 and powerful Shakspeare has 
 "smiling picJc-thanlcs, and base 
 newsmongers ; " Fairfax, "a flat- 
 terer, a pick-thank, and a liar." 
 
 Possibly, however, the Scot- 
 tish and English interpretations 
 of the word may be more akin 
 than might appear at first 
 glance. Sycophants, flatterers, 
 and parasites are proverbially 
 ungrateful, unless it be, as La 
 Rochefoucauld so wittily asserts, 
 ** for favours to come." 
 
 Pendles, ear-rings ; from pen- 
 dants. 
 
 She's got pendles in her lugs, 
 Cockle-shells wad set her better ; 
 
 High-heel'd shoon and siller tags, 
 And a' the lads are wooin' at her. 
 
 Be a lassie e'er sae black, 
 
 Gin she ware the penny -siller. 
 
 Set her up on Tintock tap, 
 The wind will blaw a man till her ! 
 — Herd's Collection : Tibbie Fowler. 
 
 Pennarts. Jamieson says this 
 word means "revenge," and 
 quotes the proverbial saying, 
 " I'se hae pennarts o' him yet ; " 
 suggesting that the derivation 
 may be from pennyioorths. It 
 is more likely to be from the 
 Gaelic 2?ein, punishment; peanas, 
 revenge ; and pein-aixi, high or 
 great revenge. 
 
 Penny-fee, wages. Penny is com- 
 monly used in Scottish par- 
 lance for money generally, as in 
 penny-siller, a great quantity of 
 money ; penny-maister, the town- 
 treasurer ; penny - wedding, a 
 wedding at which every guest 
 contributed towards the ex- 
 pense of the marriage festival ; 
 penny-frierid, a friend whose 
 only friendship is for his friend's 
 money. The French use denier, 
 and the Itahans danari, in the 
 same sense. 
 
 Peny is ane hardy knyght, 
 Peny is mekyl of myght, 
 Peny of wrong he raaketh ryght 
 In every country where he go. 
 — Ritson's Ancient Songs and 
 Ballads : A Song in Praise 
 of Sir Peny. 
 
 My riches a's ray penny-fee, 
 And I maun guide it canny, O. 
 
 —Burns : My Nannie, O. 
 
 Pensy, proud, conceited ; above 
 one's station. Probably a cor- 
 ruption of pensive or thought- 
 ful 
 
Perlins — Pickle. 
 
 153 
 
 Helen Walker was held among her 
 equals to be pensy, but the facts brought 
 to prove this accusation seem only to 
 evince a strength of character superior to 
 those around her.— Scott : Heart of Mid- 
 lothian, 
 
 Perlins or pearlins, fine linen 
 ornamented with lace work or 
 knitted work. 
 
 Oh where, oh where, is her auld son, 
 
 Spak out the Lammikin ; 
 He's gane to \)\xy pearlins 
 
 Gin our lady lye in. 
 These pearlins she shall never wear, 
 
 Spak out the Lammikin. 
 
 — Herd's Collection : Lammikin, 
 
 Pemickitie (sometimes written 
 prig-7iickitie), precise about 
 trifles; finicking, over -dainty, 
 trim, neat, nicely dressed, 
 adorned with trifling articles 
 of finery, or knick - knackets. 
 Etymology doubtful. 
 
 The English are sae pemickity about 
 what they eat, but no ?^^ pemickity about 
 what they drink. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Peuter or peuther, to canvass, to 
 solicit votes, to thrust one's 
 self forward in election times to 
 ask for support ; from the Gaelic 
 'put, to thrust, and putair, one 
 who thrusts ; and the Flemish 
 peuteren, to poke one's fingers 
 into other people's business, — 
 rendered in the French and 
 Flemish Dictionary (1868), 
 " pousser les doigts, dans quel- 
 que chose." 
 
 He has peuthered Queensferry and In- 
 verkeithing, and they say he will begin to 
 peuther Stirling next week. — Jamieson. 
 
 Philabeg or fillabeg, the kilt as 
 worn by the Highlanders ; lite- 
 
 rally a little cloth; from the 
 Q2lq\\q, fileadk, a cloth, a woven 
 garment, and heag, little. 
 
 Oh to see his tartan trews. 
 Bonnet blue, and laigh-heeled shoes, 
 Philabeg aboon his knee — 
 That's the laddie I'll gang wi'. 
 
 — Geddes : Lewie Gordon. 
 
 r faith, quo' John, I got sic flegs (frights) 
 Wi' their claymore and philabegs. 
 If I face them again, deil break my legs, 
 So I wish you a good mornin'. 
 
 —Jacobite Ballad: Hey Johnnie Cope. 
 
 They put on him z. philabeg. 
 An' up his dowp they rammed a peg, 
 How he did skip, and he did roar, 
 The deils ne'er saw sic fun before. 
 
 They took him niest to Satan's ha', 
 There to lilt wi' his grandpapa ; 
 Says Cumberland, I'll no gang ben 
 For fear I meet wi' Charlie's men. 
 
 — Jacobite Ballad : Bonnie Laddie 
 Highland Laddie. 
 
 Pickle, a small quantity; from 
 the Italian piccolo, small, akin 
 to the Gaelic heag {or peag), little. 
 PicJcle in familiar English, as 
 applied to a small, unruly, and 
 troublesome boy, is of the same 
 origin ; "a wee pickle saut," 
 a very small quantity of salt ; 
 ** a. pickle o' tow," a small quan- 
 tity of flax or hemp for spinning 
 into yarn. Pickle is sometimes 
 used for pilfer, to steal small 
 things. *' To pickle in one's ain 
 pock, or peuk," i.e., to take 
 grain out of one's own bag, is a 
 proverbial expression signifying 
 to depend on one's own resources 
 or exertions. A hen is said to 
 ''pickle up" when she searches 
 for and feeds on grain. The 
 word, in these senses, is not from 
 
154 
 
 Pig — Pinkie-small. 
 
 the same source as pickle, to pre- 
 serve in salt or ^dnegar. 
 
 She gies the herd 2i pickle nits 
 And twa red-cheekit apples. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 Pig, an earthen pitcher or other 
 vessel, a flower-pot. Piggerie, 
 a place for the manufacture of 
 crockery and earthenware . Pig- 
 man and pigwife, hawkers of 
 crockery, or keepers of shops 
 where earthenware is sold ; from 
 the Gaelic pigeadh, an earthen 
 pot or jar ; pigean, a little pot ; 
 pigeadair, a potter or manufac- 
 turer of crockery. The English 
 pig iron, iron in a lump, before 
 its final manufacturing by fire 
 into a superior quality, seems 
 to be derived from its coarse 
 nature, as resembling the masses 
 of clay from which crockery and 
 earthenware are formed by the 
 similar agency of fire. 
 
 My Paisley pig-gy 
 Contains my drink, but then, oh. 
 No wines did e'er my brains engage 
 To tempt my mind to sin, oh. 
 
 — Chambers's Scots Songs : The 
 Country I.ass. 
 She that gangs to the well wi' ill-will 
 Either thepig breaks or the water will spill. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 Where the pig's broken, let the shards lie. 
 — Idem. 
 An English lady, who had never before 
 been in Scotland, arranged to spend the 
 night at a respectable inn, in a small pro- 
 vincial town in the south. Desiring to 
 make her as comfortable as possible, Grizzy, 
 the chambermaid, on showing her to the 
 bedroom, said — 
 
 " Would you like to hae a pig in your 
 bed this cauld nicht, mem ? " 
 " A what ? " said the lady. 
 " A pig, mem ; I will put a pig in your 
 bed to keep you warm ! " 
 
 " Leave the room, young woman ; your 
 mistress shall hear of your insolence." 
 
 " Nae offence, I hope, mem. It was my 
 mistress bade me ask it, an' I'm sure she 
 meant it oot o' kindness." 
 
 The lady was puzzled, but feeling satis- 
 fied that no insult was intended, she looked 
 at the girl and then said pleasantly — 
 
 " Is it common in this country for ladies 
 to have/z^5 in their beds?" 
 
 " Gentlemen hae them tae, mem, when 
 the weather's cauld. I'll steek the mouth 
 o't an* tie it up in a clout." 
 
 A right understanding was come to at 
 last, and the lady found the pig with hot 
 water in her bed not so disagreeable as she 
 imagined. — Douglas's Scottish Wit and 
 Humour. 
 
 A rich Glasgow manufacturer, an illi- 
 terate man who had risen from the ranks, 
 having ordered a steam yacht, sent for a 
 London artist to decorate the panels in 
 the principal cabin. The artist asked what 
 kind of decoration he required ? The reply 
 was, Ony thing simple, just a pig ivi a 
 flower. Great was the surprise of the 
 Glasgow body when the work was com- 
 pleted, to see that the decoration con- 
 sisted of swine, each with a flower in its 
 jaws, which had been painted on every 
 panel. He made no complaint — paid the 
 bill, and declared the effect to be satisfac- 
 tory, though " it was no exactly what he 
 had meant in ordering it." — Traits q/ 
 Scottish Life. 
 
 Pike, to pick and steal ; pUde, one 
 addicted to pilfering and petty 
 thefts. 
 
 By these pickers and stealers. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Hamlet. 
 
 Pinch and drouth, hunger and 
 thirst. 
 
 Nae mair -wx pinch and drouth we'll pine 
 As we hae done — a dog's propine — 
 But quaflf our draughts o' rosy wine, 
 Carle ! an' the king come. 
 
 — Jacobite Song. 
 
 Pinkie-small, the smallest candle 
 that is made, the weakest kind 
 
Pirrie-dog — Pit-dark. 
 
 155 
 
 of table beer, anything small. 
 The word is also applied to the 
 eye when contracted. 
 
 There's a wee pinkie hole in the stock- 
 ing. — Jamieson. 
 
 Possibly this word is from the 
 Latin punctus, a point, or from 
 the Dutch and Flemish 'pink, 
 the little finger, and pink-oogen, 
 to look with half -closed eyes. 
 The Kymric pine signifies a 
 small branch or twig. 
 
 Pirrie-dog, a dog that follows at 
 his master's heels ; pirrie, to 
 follow and fawn upon one, like 
 a dependant, for what can be 
 gained from or wheedled out 
 of him. Jamieson derives this 
 word from the Teutonic paeren, 
 or paaren, to pair or couple ; 
 and refers to parry, an Aber- 
 
 ' deenshire word, with a quota- 
 tion, " When ane says parry, 
 a' say parry,'' signifying that 
 when anything is said by a 
 person of consequence, it is 
 echoed by every one else. The 
 true origin both of pirrie and 
 the Aberdonian parry seems to 
 be the Gaelic peire, a polite word 
 for the breech. A dog that fol- 
 lows at the heels is a euphemism 
 for a less mentionable part of the 
 person. Jamieson suggests that 
 the Aberdeenshire parry is de- 
 rived from the French il parait ; 
 but the Gaelic peire better suits 
 the humour of the aphorism. 
 
 Piss-a-bed, a vulgar name for 
 the dandelion or taraxacum — a 
 beautiful, though despised, wild 
 
 flower of the fields. The word 
 appears to have originated in 
 Scotland, and thence to have 
 extended to England. It is a 
 corruption of the Gaelic pios, 
 a cup, and buidhe, " yellow — a 
 yellow cup, not, however, to 
 be confounded with buttercup, 
 another wild flower — the com- 
 panion in popular affection of 
 the daisy. 
 
 The daisy has its poets, — all have striven 
 Its world-wide reputation to prolong ; 
 
 But here's its yellow neighbour ! — who 
 has given 
 The dandelion a song ? 
 
 Come, little sunflower, patient in neglect, 
 Will ne'er a one of them assert thy 
 claim. 
 
 But, passing by, contemptuouslj'^ connect 
 Thee and thy Scottish name ? 
 
 — Robert Leighton : To a Dandelion. 
 
 Several years before Robert 
 Leighton strove to vindicate 
 the fair fame of the dandelion, 
 a couplet in its praise appeared 
 in the Illustrated London News, 
 in a poem entitled " Under the 
 Hedge " :— 
 
 Dandelions with milky ring, 
 
 Coins of the mintage of the spring. ' 
 
 Pit-dark, dark as in the bottom 
 of a pit. 
 
 'Tis y^t pit-dark, the yard a' black about, 
 And the night fowl begin again to shout. 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 It is very probable that pit- 
 dark was the original form of 
 the English pitch-dark, as dark 
 as pitch, i.e., as dark as tar, or 
 coal tar. The etymology from 
 pit, a hole, is preferable. 
 
156 
 
 Pixie — Plea. 
 
 Pixie, a fairy. This Scottish 
 word is used in some parts of 
 England, particularly in the 
 south and west. It has been 
 supposed to be a corruption of 
 fuck, or jouckie, little puck, 
 sometimes called Kobin Good- 
 fellow. It is more probably 
 from the Gaelic beag (peg), little, 
 sith (shee), a fairy, anglicised 
 into pixie, a little fairy, a fairy 
 sprite. Puch is the name of one 
 particular goblin and sprite in 
 Shakspeare, and in popular 
 tradition ; but the pixies are 
 multitudinous, and the words 
 puck and pixie are from different 
 sources. The English puck is 
 the word that, in one variety 
 or another, runs through many 
 European languages. The Welsh 
 or Kymric has pivca (pooca), a 
 goblin, a sprite, the Gaelic bocan, 
 and Lowland Scottish bogie, the 
 Russian bug, the Dutch and 
 Flemish spook, the German spuk, 
 &c. 
 
 Pixie-rings are fairy-rings, sup- 
 posed to be made in the grass 
 by the footsteps, not of one 
 puck, but of many little sprites 
 that gamble by moonlight on 
 the green pixie-stool, a popular 
 name for the fungus, sometimes 
 called toad-stool; pixie-led, be- 
 wildered and led astray by the 
 ignis fatuus, Jack o' Lantern, or 
 WiU o' the Wisp. 
 
 Plack, an ancient Scottish coin 
 of the value of one-twelfth of 
 an English penny. 
 
 There's yam plack an' my plack. 
 An' Jenny's bawbee. 
 
 —Old Song. 
 
 Nae howdie gets a social night. 
 Or plack frae them. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 Stretch a joint to catch 2i plack. 
 Abuse a brother to his back. 
 
 — Burns : To Gavin Hamilton. 
 
 The word is probably derived 
 from the ancient Flemish coin, 
 a flaquette, current before the 
 introduction into the Nether- 
 lands of the French money, 
 reckoned by francs and cen- 
 times. 
 
 Plea, a lawsuit ; the substitution 
 of the aggregate of law for the 
 segregate. The English verb, to 
 plead, has received in Scottish 
 parlance a past tense which does 
 not correctly belong to it, in 
 the phrase, " he jpZerf guilty," in- 
 stead of ''he pleaded guilty," as 
 if plead were a word of Teutonic 
 origin and subject to the Teu- 
 tonic inflexion which governs 
 most of the ancient English 
 verbs, which are derived from 
 the Dutch, German, or Dan- 
 ish, such as "bleed, bled;" 
 "blow, blew;" "run, ran;" 
 " freeze, froze," &c. &c. Verbs 
 derived from the Latin and 
 French cannot be correctly con- 
 jugated in the past tense, ex- 
 cept by the addition of d or ed 
 to the infinitive, as in " coerce, 
 coerced ; " "plead, pleaded." 
 
 l>ia.eplea is best. (It is best not to go to 
 law at a\\.)—Old Proverb. 
 
 When neighbours anger at 3. plea, 
 
 The barley bree 
 Cements the quarrel. — Burns. 
 
Pliskie — Fluff. 
 
 157 
 
 Pliskie, a trick, a prank. From 
 the Gaelic plaosgach, a sudden 
 noise, a flash, a blaze. 
 
 Her lost militia fired her blood, 
 Deil na they never mae do guid. 
 Played her ihdX pliskie. 
 — Burns : Author's Earnest Cry 
 and Prayer. 
 
 Ghaist ! ma certie, I sail ghaist them 1 
 If they had their heads as muckle on their 
 wark as on her daffins, they wadna play 
 svzpliskies /—Scott : St. Ronans Well. 
 
 Plooky, swollen, blotchy, pimpled. 
 From the Gaelic 'ploc, a tumour, 
 a bunch, a knob, a swelling. 
 The English slang Udke, a swell, 
 is probably from the same root. 
 
 Plooky, plooky are your cheeks, 
 And plooky is your chin, 
 
 And plooky are your armis twa 
 My bonnie queen's layne in, 
 — Scott's Minstrels of the Scottish 
 Border: Sir Hugh Le Blonde. 
 
 Plotcock, the devil ; the dweller 
 in the pit of hell, the fiend, the 
 archenemy. This singular word, 
 or combination of words, appears 
 in Jamieson as "from the Ice- 
 landic Blotgod, a name of the 
 Scandinavian Pluto ; or hlothoh 
 — from blot, to sacrifice ; and 
 hoka, to swallow — i.e., the swal- 
 lower of sacrifices." May not 
 a derivation be found nearer 
 home than in Iceland: in the 
 Gaelic hlot (pronounced xilot), a 
 pit, a cavern ; and cog, to con- 
 spire, to tempt, to cheat 1 
 
 Since you can cog, I'll play no more with 
 you. 
 — Shakspeare : Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 Lies, coggeries, and impostures. 
 
 — Nares. 
 
 The Kymric has coegiaw, or 
 cogio, to cheat, to trick. To cog 
 dice was to load the dice for the 
 the purpose of cheating; and 
 cogger, in old English, signified 
 a swindler, a cheat. This deri- 
 vation would signify the cheat, 
 the tempter who dwells in the 
 cavern or bottomless pit of hell ; 
 and might have been included 
 by Burns in his "Address to 
 the Deil," among the other 
 names which he bestows upon 
 that personage. 
 
 Plout, plouter, to wade with dif- 
 ficulty through mire or water ; 
 akin to the English plod, as in 
 the line in Gray's Elegy : — 
 
 The ploughman homewards //(7^5 his 
 weary way. 
 
 From the Gaelic plodan, a clod 
 of mud or mire, a small pool of 
 water ; plodanachd, the act of 
 paddling in the water or the 
 mud. 
 
 Flouting through thick and thin. 
 
 — Grose. 
 Many a -wtsxy plouter she cost him 
 Through gutters and glaur. 
 
 — Jamieson : Popular Ballads. 
 Had it no been, Mr. North, for your 
 plowterin' in a* the rivers and lochs o' 
 Scotland, like a Newfoundland dog. 
 
 — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Ploy, a plot, scheme, contri- 
 vance. 
 
 I wish he mayna hae been at the bottom 
 o' t\\t.ploy himsel'. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Pluff, a slight emission or short 
 puff of smoke, either from a 
 tobacco-pipe or of gas from a 
 burning coal; possibly of the 
 
158 
 
 Pockpud — Point. 
 
 same derivation as the English 
 •puff, a slight, short or sudden 
 movement of the wind or the 
 breath. 
 
 Pockpud, an abbreviation of the 
 contemptuous epithet of -pock- 
 pudding applied by the Scottish 
 multitude to the English, in the 
 bygone days when the English 
 were as unpopular in Scotland 
 as the Scotch still are among 
 the more ignorant of the lower 
 classes in England. 
 They gloom, they glower, they look sae 
 
 big. 
 At ilka stroke they fell a Whig ; 
 They'll fright the fuds o' the Pock^uds, 
 For mony a buttock 's bare coming. 
 
 — Jacobite Song, 1743. 
 
 The English pockpuddings ken nae 
 better. — Sir Walter Scott : Waverley. 
 
 Pock-shaking's, a humorous and 
 vulgar term applied to the last 
 born child of a large family, 
 expressive of the belief that no 
 more are to be expected. 
 
 Poind, to lay a distraint on a 
 debtor's goods, to make a seiz- 
 ure for non-payment or arrears 
 of rent. The word was once 
 current in English, and survives 
 in a corrupt form, as impound, 
 and pound, an enclosure for 
 stray cattle. The oflQcer whose 
 duty it was to impound was 
 formerly called a pindar, a 
 word that survives in tradition 
 or legend in the '^Pindar of 
 Wakefield," celebrated in con- 
 nection with the deeds, real or 
 fabulous, of Eobin Hood and his 
 merry band of poachers and out- 
 
 laws. The etymology is from 
 the French poigne, the closed 
 fist, and empoigner, to seizre. 
 Multiple-^omc^in^r is a Scottish 
 law-phrase, expressive of a series 
 of poindings. 
 
 An' was na I a weary wight, 
 
 They poind my gear and slew my knight : 
 
 My servants a' for life did flee, 
 
 An' left me in extremitie. 
 
 — Lament of the Border Widow. 
 
 "A puir poind" signifies a 
 weak, silly person, metaphori- 
 cally applied to one who is not 
 substantial enough to take hold 
 of, intellectually or morally ; one 
 of no account or importance. 
 
 Point, an old Scottish word for 
 state of body ; almost equivalent 
 to the modem "form," which 
 implies good condition generally 
 of body, mind, and manners. 
 
 Murray said that he never saw the Queen 
 in better health or in better point. — 
 Robertson : History of Mary Queen of 
 Scots. 
 
 This is a French idiom, nearly allied to 
 that which is now familiar to English ears, 
 en bon point. " In better point " signifies 
 more plump, or in fuller habit of body. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 The word point has so many 
 meanings, all derivable from and 
 traceable to the Latin punctus, 
 such as the point of a weapon ; 
 puncture, the pinch of a sharp 
 weapon ; punctual, true to the 
 point of time, or the time ap- 
 pointed, &c., as to suggest that 
 the etymology of point, in the 
 sense of the French en bon point, 
 and of the old Scotch, as used 
 by Robertson in his reference to 
 
Post — Pow. 
 
 159 
 
 Queen Mary, must be other than 
 punctus. En bon point is euphem- 
 istic for stout, fat, fleshy, in- 
 clining to corpulency — all of 
 which words imply the reverse 
 of pointed. It is possible that 
 the true root is the Gaelic bun 
 {b pronounced as p), foundation, 
 root ; applied to one who is in 
 solid and substantial health or 
 condition of body ; well formed 
 and established, physically and 
 morally. The word is indica- 
 tive of stability rather than of 
 sharpness or pointedness. The 
 now current slang of " form," 
 derived from the language of 
 grooms, jockeys, and racing 
 men, springs from the same idea 
 of healthiness and good condi- 
 tion. The Gaelic bunanta signi- 
 fies firm, well-set, and estab- 
 lished. The colloquial and 
 vulgar word bum is from the 
 same root of bun, and produces 
 fundament; the French fonde- 
 ment, the bottom, the founda- 
 tion. 
 
 Post, to tramp, to tread. To post 
 the linen was to tread upon it 
 with the bare feet in the wash- 
 ing-tub, a common practice 
 among the women of the work- 
 ing-classes in Scotland. Seen 
 for the first time by English 
 travellers in the far North, the 
 fashion excited not only their 
 surprise, but sometimes their 
 admiration, by the display of 
 the shapely limbs of the bonnie 
 Highland and Lowland lassies 
 engaged in the work, with their 
 petticoats kilted up to the knee, 
 
 without the faintest suspicion 
 of immodesty. Post is derived 
 from the Gaelic, "to tread;" 
 postadh, treading; postanach, a 
 little child that is just begin- 
 ning to walk or tread. The 
 word is thus of a different origin 
 and meaning from jpos^, an oflSce, 
 a station, a place, which is de- 
 rived from the Latin positum. 
 The post-office and the postal 
 service, words which are com- 
 mon to nearly all the European 
 languages, are more probably 
 traceable to the Gaelic and 
 Celtic source, in the sense of 
 tread and tramp, than to the 
 Latin positum. The postman 
 treads his accustomed rounds 
 to the great convenience of 
 the public in all civilised coun- 
 tries. 
 
 In scouring woollen clothes or coarse 
 linen when the strength of arm and manual 
 friction are found insufficient, the High- 
 land women put them in a tub with a 
 proper quantity of water, and then with 
 petticoats tucked up commence the opera- 
 tion of posting. When three women are 
 engaged, one commonly tramps in the 
 middle, and the others tramp around her. 
 This process is called postadh. — Arm- 
 strong's Gaelic Dictionary, 1820. 
 
 Pot, a deep pool, or eddy in a 
 river. 
 
 The neist step that she waded in, , 
 
 She waded to the chin ; 
 The deepest pot in Clyde water 
 
 They gat sweet Willie in. 
 —Ballad of Willie and May Margaret. 
 
 Pow or powe, the head ; from the 
 old English poll. The impost 
 called the "Poll-tax," that 
 created such great dissatisfac- 
 
i6o 
 
 Powsoudie — Prick-me-dainty. 
 
 tion in the days of Wat Tyler, 
 was a personal tax on the head 
 or i^oll. 
 
 There is little wit in \v\?,j>ow 
 That lights the candle at the low [or fire]. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The miller was of manly make, 
 
 To meet him was nae mows [joke] ; 
 
 There durst not ten cum him to take, 
 Sae noytit [thumped] he their pows. 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Fat pouches bode lean pows. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Blessings on your frosty /<?«/, 
 John Anderson, my jo. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Powsoudie. Sheep's head broth. 
 This word occurs in the humo- 
 rous ballad by Francis Semple, 
 "Fy let us a' to the bridal," 
 which contains an ample list of 
 all the dainty eatables served up 
 at a marriage-feast among the 
 rural population of Scotland in 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 And there'll be fadges and bracken. 
 And fouth o' gude gebbocks o' skate, 
 
 Powsoudie and drammock and crowdie. 
 And caller nowte-feet on a plate. 
 
 — Watson's Collection, 1706. 
 
 The word is compounded of 
 ^ow, the head, and soudie, broth. 
 
 Powt, a young fowl or chicken ; 
 from the French, poule and 
 poulte ; in English, poultry and 
 poulterer. 
 
 Ye peep (chirp or pipe) like a powt, 
 O Tammy, my man, are ye turned a saunt ? 
 — Hew Ainslee : Tarn d the Balloch. 
 
 Free, to taste, to sip, " \,opree the 
 mou," to kiss the mouth. A 
 story his long been current that 
 
 a young English nobleman, 
 visiting at Gordon Castle, had 
 boasted that during his six 
 weeks' shooting in the north he 
 had acquired so much Scotch 
 that it was impossible to puzzle 
 him. The beautiful and cele- 
 brated Duchess of Gordon took 
 up his challenge, and defied him 
 to interpret the sentence, " Come 
 pree my bonnie mou, my canty 
 callant." It was with intense dis- 
 gust that he afterwards learned 
 what a chance he had lost by 
 his ignorance. 
 
 Ye tell me that my lips are sweet, 
 Sic tales I doubt are a' deceit. 
 At any rate it's hardly meet, 
 
 To pree their sweets before folk. 
 — Chambers's Scotch Songs : Behave 
 Yoursel before Folk. 
 
 Preen, a pin; from the Gaelic 
 prine, a pin ; prineachan, a little 
 pin ; prinich, to secure with pins. 
 
 Prick-me-dainty, prick-ma-leerie. 
 
 These two apparently ridiculous 
 phrases have the same meaning, 
 that of a finical, conceited, super- 
 fine person, in his manners or 
 dress, one who affects airs of 
 superiority — without the neces- 
 sary qualifications for the part 
 he assumes. Jamieson suggests 
 that prick-me-dainty is from the 
 English prick-me-daintily ! Of 
 prick-ma-leerie, he conjectures 
 nothing. Both phrases seem to 
 be traceable to the Gaelic hreagh, 
 fine, beautiful, braw ; and deanta, 
 complete, finished, perfected ; 
 and leor or leoir, enough, suffi- 
 cient, entirely ; so that prick- 
 me-dainty resolves itself into a 
 
Prig — Puirtith, 
 
 i6r 
 
 corruption of breagh-me-deanta, 
 I am beautifully perfect ; and 
 prick - ma - leerie into breagh - ma- 
 leor, I am beautiful entirely. A 
 comic and scornful depreciation 
 miderlies both phrases. 
 
 Prig", to cheapen, to beat down 
 the price; whence the English 
 word prig, a conceited person, 
 who thinks he knows better 
 than other people. The English, 
 ''to prig" in the sense of com- 
 mitting a petty theft, appears 
 to have no connection with the 
 Scottish word. 
 
 Men who grew wise PriggifC ower hops 
 and raisins. 
 
 —Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 Ane o' the street-musician crew 
 Is hvL^y priggin wi' him now ; 
 An' twa auld sangs he swears are new, 
 
 He pawns on Jock ; 
 For an auld hod o' coals half fou, 
 A weel-matched troke. 
 —James Ballantine ; Coal Jock. 
 
 Jamieson defines to prig as 
 to haggle, and derives it from 
 the Flemish prachgen, to beg ; 
 French briguer, barter,, from 
 bngue, ** rechercher avec ar- 
 deur." 
 
 Prig. — I don't know how this word in 
 Scotch means to cheapen, and in English 
 to steal ; perhaps there is some connection 
 which a knowledge of the root from which 
 it comes would help us to understand. 
 Prig, as a conceited person, is purely a 
 conventional use of the word. Prig in 
 Scotch has also the meaning of earnestly 
 to entreat. " I prigged wi' him for mair 
 nor an' hour that he shouldna leave me." 
 — R. Dkennan. 
 
 Prink and preen. Prinlc signifies 
 to adorn, to dress out in finery ; 
 
 preen or prein, a pin — or to pin ; 
 and preen-head, a pin's head. 
 
 She has prinked hersell and preen' d hersell 
 
 By the ae light o' the mune, 
 And she's awa to Castelhaugh 
 To speak wi' young Tamlane. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ; 
 Ballad of the Young Tamlane. 
 
 Prinkling, a slight pricking; a; 
 tingling sensation, either of 
 pain or pleasure. 
 
 Her wily glance I'll ne'er forget, 
 
 The dear, the lovely blinkin' o't. 
 Has pierced me through and through 
 the heart, 
 And plagues me in the prinkling o't. 
 The parson kissed the tinker's wife, 
 An' coudna preach for thinking o't. 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs: Love's 
 Like a Dizziness. 
 
 Prog, to goad, to stab, to thrust, 
 to prick, to probe ; metaphori- 
 cally, to taunt, to gibe, to pro- 
 voke by a sarcastic remark; a 
 sting, a lance, an arrow. From 
 the Kymric proc, a thrust ; and 
 pi'ociaw, to thrust or stab. 
 
 Prapine, a gift, or the power of 
 giving. Also drink-money — 
 equivalent to the German word 
 trink-geld, the French pour boire, 
 and the English tip. To propine 
 also means to pledge another in 
 drinking, or to touch glasses in 
 German fashion. 
 
 If I were there and in thy propine, 
 Oh, what wad ye do to me. 
 
 —Border Minstrelsy : Lady Anne. 
 
 Puirtith, poverty. 
 
 Oh puirtith cauld, and restless love, 
 Ye wreck my peace atween ye ; 
 
 Yet puirtith a' I could forgi'e. 
 An' 'twerna for my Jeanie. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
1 62 
 
 Punchy — Quarters. 
 
 Punchy, thick, short, squat, and 
 broad; applied to the human 
 frame. From the Gaelic hun, 
 foundation ; and bunaich, to 
 establish firmly on a broad 
 foundation. 
 
 Purlicue, the unnecessary flourish 
 which people sometimes afiix at 
 the end of their signatures ; also, 
 a whim, a caprice ; and, in de- 
 rision, the summing up of a 
 judgment, and the peroration 
 of a sermon or a speech. The 
 French par la queue, by the tail 
 or finish, has been suggested as 
 the derivation. 
 
 Puslic (more properly huslicJc), 
 a cow-sherd, gathered in the 
 fields when dried by the weather, 
 and stored for winter fuel by 
 the poor. According to Jamie- 
 son, this is a Dumfriesshire and 
 
 Galloway word, and used in 
 such phrases as ** dry as a pus- 
 lick," and "as light as a pus- 
 lich" It is compounded of the 
 two Gaelic words buac, cow- 
 dung; and leag, a dropping, or 
 to drop or let fall: used in a 
 similar sense to the English 
 " horse-droppings," applied to 
 the horse-dung gathered in the 
 roads. 
 
 Pyle, a small quantity ; small as 
 a hair, or as a grain. From the 
 Latin pUus, French poil. 
 
 The cleanest corn that e'er was dight 
 May hae some p^les o' caff in. 
 
 — Burns : T/ie Unco Guid. 
 
 Pyot, a magpie ; from the Gaelic 
 pighe, a bird. 
 
 I tent it z.pyot 
 Sat chatterin' on the house heid. 
 — Andrew Sutar : Sytnon and 
 J-anet. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quarters, a place of residence or 
 abode, a domicile, an apartment 
 or lodging. 
 
 An' it's oh for siccan quarters 
 As I gat yesternight. 
 — King James V.. : W£^ II Gang 
 Nae Mair a-Rovin. 
 
 Quarters, in this sense, is not 
 derived from quatuor, or from 
 the fourth part, as is generally 
 asserted in the dictionaries, and 
 exemplified by the common 
 phrase, "From which quarter 
 does the wind blow ? " i.e., from 
 
 whicTi of tbe fmir points of the 
 compass ? The true derivation 
 of quarter, the French quartier, 
 and of the military functionary, 
 the Quarter-master General, is 
 the Gaelic cuairt, a circle. 
 " Paris," says Bescherelle in his 
 French Dictionary, " was for- 
 merly divided into four quar- 
 ters ; it is now divided into 
 forty-eight, which, if quarters 
 were translated into circZe, would 
 not be an incongruous expres- 
 sion, as it is when quarter repre- 
 
Quean — Quey. 
 
 I6J 
 
 sents a fourth part only." The 
 French use the word arrondisse- 
 ment in the same sense, which 
 supports the Gaelic etymology. 
 The quarter or habitation of a 
 bird is its nest, which is a circle. 
 "The circle of one's acquaint- 
 ance," and " the social circle," 
 are common expressions ; and 
 the points of the compass are 
 aU points in a circle, which, as 
 all navigators know, are con- 
 siderably more than four. 
 
 Quean, wench, winklot. These 
 are all familiar or disrespectful 
 terms for a woman. 
 
 I wat she was a cantie guean. 
 And weel could dance the Highland 
 walloch. 
 
 —Roy's Wife. 
 
 By that the dancin' was all done. 
 Their leave took less or mair, 
 
 "When the ivtnklots and the woers turn'd 
 To see it was heart -sair. 
 
 —Peblis to the Play. 
 
 Quean, like queen, seems to ori- 
 nate in the Greek yvf, a woman ; 
 Danish quinde, a woman ; quin- 
 delig, feminine ; Gaelic gin, to 
 beget, to generate ; gineal, off- 
 spring. Wench, by the common 
 change of gu into w^ as in war 
 for guerre, is from the same 
 root. Wink-lot, or wench-let, as 
 a little wench or quean, is of the 
 same parentage. 
 
 Queer cuffin. English and Scot- 
 tish gipsy slang — a justice of 
 the peace. This phrase is of 
 venerable antiquity, and is a 
 relic of the Druidical times 
 
 when the arch-druid, or chief 
 priest, was called coibhi {coivi), 
 since corrupted into cuffin. The 
 arch-druid was the chief ad- 
 ministrator of justice, and sat 
 in his coi^, or court (whence 
 qu^er), accessible to all sup- 
 pliants ; like Joshua, Jephtha, 
 Eli, and Samuel, judges of 
 Israel. A Druidical proverb, 
 referring to this august per- 
 sonage of the olden time, is 
 still current among the Gaelic- 
 speaking population of the 
 Highlands, that " the stone is 
 not nearer to the ground on 
 which it rests, than is the ear 
 of Coibhi to those who apply to 
 him for justice." 
 
 Queet, an ankle ; sometimes writ- 
 ten cute (which see). 
 
 The firstan step that she stept in, 
 She steppit to the gueet ; 
 
 " Ochone ! alas ! " said that lady, 
 " The water's wondrous deep." 
 — Buchan's Aficient Ballads: The 
 Drowned Lovers. 
 
 I let him cool his cutes at the door. 
 — Jamieson : Aberdeenshire Proverb. 
 
 Quey, a young cow ; from the 
 Danish quay, cattle, the Ger- 
 man vieh, the Dutch and Flem- 
 ish vee. 
 
 Amang the brachans on the brae, 
 Between her and the moon, 
 
 The Deil, or else some outler quey. 
 Gat up and gae a croon. 
 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 The cow was eager to browse the pas- 
 turage on which she had been fed when 
 she was a young and happy guey.—Noctes 
 AmbrosiancB. 
 
1 64 
 
 Rad — Rattan, 
 
 R 
 
 Rad, to fear, to be afraid, or to 
 
 guessr 
 
 I am right rad of treasonry. 
 
 — Song of the Outlaw Murray. 
 
 O ance ye danced upo' the knowes. 
 
 And ance ye lightly sang, 
 But in herrying o' a bee byke 
 I'm rad ye gat a stang. 
 — Burns : Ye hae been a' wrang, 
 Lasiie. 
 
 Jamieson derives rad from the 
 Danish raed, afraid, which 
 meets the sense of the passage 
 in which it is used by Burns. 
 The sense, however, would be 
 • equally well rendered by a 
 derivation from the Danish, 
 Flemish, and Dutch raad, Ger- 
 man ratherif to guess or conjec- 
 ture. 
 
 Ram and ran. The Scottish lan- 
 guage contains many expressive 
 and humorous words commenc- 
 ing with the syllables ram and 
 ran, which are synonymous, 
 and imply force, roughness, 
 disorder ; and which appear to 
 be primarily derived from the 
 Gaelic ran, to roar, to bluster. 
 Among others are — randy, viol- 
 ent or quarrelsome ; rampage, a 
 noisy frolic, or an outburst of ill- 
 
 ■ humour, a word which Charles 
 Dickens revived and rendered 
 popular in the English verna- 
 cular ; ramgunshocJc, rough, rug- 
 ged, coarse ; ramshackle, old. 
 Worn out with rough usage. 
 
 Our ramgunshock glum gudeman, 
 Is out and owre the water. 
 
 —Burns : Had I the Wyte. 
 
 Rangunshock. This seems to be 
 a corruption of the Gaelic ran, 
 to roar; gun, without ; and seach 
 (pronounced shach), alternation, 
 i.e., to roar incessantly, without 
 alternation of quiet. 
 
 Rant, to be noisily joyous ; rants, 
 merry-makings, riotous but joy- 
 ous gatherings ; ranter, a merry- 
 maker. From the Gaelic. 
 
 My name is Rob the ranter. 
 
 — Maggie Lauder. 
 
 From out the life o' publick haunts. 
 But thee, what were our fairs and rants, 
 Ev'n godly meetings o' the saunts 
 
 By thee inspired. 
 When gapin' they besiege, the tents 
 
 Are doubly fired. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Rattan, rottan, a rat. In Flemish 
 the word is written rat or rot. 
 Baudrons, in the following quo- 
 tation, is a famihar name for 
 a cat. 
 
 Then that curst carmagnole, old Satan, 
 Watches like baudrons by a rattan, 
 Our sinful souls to get a claut on. 
 
 — Burns : Colonel De Peysten. 
 
 "Wonderful man, Dr. Candlish," said 
 one clergyman to another. "What ver- 
 satility of talent. He's fit for onything ! " 
 "Aye, aye I that's true; put him doon 
 a hole, he'd make a capital rottan I " — 
 Anecdotes of Scottish Wit and Humour. 
 
Rax — Rhah 
 
 taint. 
 
 165 
 
 Rax, to reach; raught, reached; 
 a corruption, or perhaps the 
 original of the modern English 
 word. 
 
 Never rax aboon your reach. 
 
 The auld guidman raught down the pock. 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 And ye may rax Corruption's neck, 
 And gi'e her for dissection. 
 
 — Burns : A Dream. 
 
 " Rax me a spaul o' that bubbly Jock." 
 Reach me a wing of that turkey. — Dean 
 Ramsav. 
 
 Ream, to froth like beer, or 
 sparkle like wine, to effervesce, 
 to cream ; from the German 
 rahmen, to froth; rahm, yeast; 
 Flemish room. 
 
 Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, 
 
 Wi' reaming swats that drank divinely. 
 
 The swats sae reamed in Tammy's noddle, 
 Fair play ! he cared na deils a boddle. 
 — Burns : Tarn 0' Shanter. 
 
 The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream.. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 That merry night we got the corn in, 
 Oh sweetly then thou reafns the horn in. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Reaming dish, a shallow dish for 
 containing the milk until it is 
 ready for being creamed. 
 
 Red-wud, stark, raging mad. 
 
 And now she's like to run red-wud 
 
 About her whisker. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Redy used as an intensitive 
 prefix to a word, is not uncom- 
 mon in English and Scottish 
 literature. Red vengeance is a 
 vengeance that demands blood ; 
 and possibly red-wud may mean 
 a madness that prompts blood. 
 
 In Gaelic the great deluge is 
 called the DUe Ruadk, or red- 
 flood. 
 
 Rede, advice, counsel. 
 
 Rede me noght, quod Reason, 
 
 No ruth to have 
 
 Till lords and ladies 
 
 Loves alle truth 
 
 And hates alle harlotrie. 
 
 — Vision of Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Short rede is good rede. 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 I rede ye weel— tak care o' skaith— 
 
 See there's a guUie ! 
 —Burns : Death and Dr. Homiook. 
 
 Ye gallants wight, I rede ye right. 
 Beware o' bonnie Anne. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 This word was once good Eng- 
 lish, as appears from the ex- 
 tract from " Piers Ploughman," 
 and was used by Chaucer, Gower, 
 and Shakspeare. It is either 
 from the Flemish and Dutch 
 raed, counsel; the German reden, 
 to speak; or the Gaelic radh, 
 raidh, or raite, a saying, an 
 aphorism. 
 
 Renchel, a tall, lean, lanky per- 
 son; from the Gaelic reang, or 
 reing, thin, lean; and gUlie, a 
 youth, a young man, a feUow. 
 
 He's naething but a lang renchel. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Rhaim, Rhame. According to 
 Jamieson, these words signify 
 either a commonplace speech, 
 a rhapsody; or **to run over 
 anything in a rapid and un- 
 meaning way," " to repeat by 
 rote, to reiterate." He thinks 
 
1 66 
 
 Rickle — Rind. 
 
 it a corruption of rhyme, "be- 
 . cause proverbs were anciently 
 expressed in a sort of rhyme." 
 
 Is not the true derivation of 
 the word the Teutonic rahm, 
 the Flemish room, froth ; to 
 ream, to cream, to froth, to 
 eifervesce like soda-water or 
 champagne? " A /ro^/i^ speaker" 
 is a common expression of dis- 
 paragement. 
 
 Rickle or ruckle, a loose heap; 
 rickler, a term of contempt ap- 
 plied to a bad architect or 
 
 ■ builder. 
 
 I'm grown so thin ; I'm naething but a 
 rickle o' banes. — Jamieson. 
 
 The proud Percy caused hang five of 
 the Laird's henchmen at Alnwick for burn- 
 ing a rickle of houses. 
 
 Scott : The Monastery. 
 
 A wild goose out o' season is but a ruckle 
 o' banes. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Rigfging. In English this word 
 is seldom used except in refer- 
 ence to ships, and the arrange- 
 ments of their masts, spars, 
 ropes, &c. In the Scottish lan- 
 guage it is employed to signify 
 the roof, cross-beams, &c., of a 
 house. 
 
 This is no my ain house^ 
 
 I ken by the rigging o't ; 
 Since with my love I've changed vows, 
 I dinna like the bigging [building] o't. 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 There by the ingle-cheek 
 
 I sat, 
 And heard the restless rations squeak 
 About the riggin. 
 
 — Burns : The Vision. 
 
 The word is derived from the 
 Teutonic ruQlc^ the Flemish rug, 
 
 a ridge, top, or back ; whence 
 the ridge at the top of the house, 
 the roof. The rigging tree is the 
 roof tree. The rigging of a ves- 
 sel is in like manner the roof, or 
 ridge of a ship, as distinguished 
 from the hull. So the colloquial 
 expression to "rig out," to dress, 
 to accoutre, to adorn, to put the 
 finishing touch to one's attire, 
 comes from the same idea of 
 completion, which is involved 
 in the rigging of a ship or of a 
 house. 
 
 Rigwoodie, old, lean, withered. 
 
 Withered beldams, auld and droll, 
 Rigwoodie hags. . 
 
 —Burns : Tarn o' Shunter. 
 
 Rigwoodie. — " Old, lean, withered." 
 Mr. Robert Chambers says it means 
 " worthy of the gallows." Neither of 
 these meanings is correct. Rigivoodie is 
 the name of the chain or rope which passes 
 across the saddle to support the shafts of 
 a cart or other conveyance — what an Eng- 
 lishman would call the back band. This 
 very likely was anciently made of twisted 
 woodies or saugh or willow wands, now it 
 is generally made of twisted chain and of 
 iron. By a very evident metonomy Burns 
 applied the twisted wrinkled appearance 
 of a rigwoodie to these old wrinkled hags. 
 — R. Drennan. 
 
 Rind or rhynd, hoar frost ; a cor- 
 ruption of the English rime, or 
 possibly of the Kymric rhym, 
 great cold ; rhyme, to shiver. 
 Jamieson derives the Scottish 
 rhynd and the English rime from 
 the Anglo-Saxon hrim, and the 
 Dutch and Flemish rym; but 
 in these languages rym — more 
 correctly rijm — signifies rhyme, 
 in versification, not rime or 
 
Ringle-eyed — Rippet. 
 
 167 
 
 frost. Jihind is all but obsolete 
 in Lowland Scotch, and has 
 been superseded by cranreuch, 
 sometimes written crandruch, a 
 particularly cold and penetrat- 
 ing mist or fog. The etymology 
 is uncertain, but the word is 
 most probably a corruption 
 and mispronunciation by the 
 Lowland Scotch of the Gaelic 
 grainn, horrible ; whence cran- 
 reuch, from grainn and driugh, 
 penetrate, ooze, drip ; whence 
 also the word drook, to saturate 
 with moisture, and droohit, wet 
 through. Jamieson derives cran- 
 reuch from the Gaelic cranntar- 
 ach, but no such word is to be 
 found in the Gaelic dictionaries 
 of Armstrong, Macleod, and 
 Dewar, MacAlpine, or the High- 
 land Society of Edinburgh. 
 
 When hailstones drive wi' bitter skyte, 
 And infant frosts begin to bite 
 In hoary cranreuch drest. 
 
 —Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Trumpets and shalms with a shout 
 
 Played ere the rink began, 
 And equal judges sat about 
 To see wha tint or wan 
 
 The field that day. 
 —Allan Ramsay ; The Evergreen. 
 Then Stevan cam steppand in, 
 Nae rink might him arrest. 
 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Jamieson derives rink from the 
 English ring, a circle ; but it is 
 more probably from the Gaelic 
 rianaich, to arrange, to set in 
 order,, to prepare. 
 
 Ripp, a handful of unthrashed 
 ears of corn pulled out of the 
 sheaf or stack to give to an ani- 
 mal; from the Gaelic reub, to 
 rend, to pull out. 
 
 A guid New Year I wish thee, Maggie ; 
 
 Hae ! there's a ripp to thy auld baggie. 
 
 —Burns : Auld Farmer to his 
 
 Auld Mare Maggie. 
 
 An' tent their duty, e'en and mom, 
 
 Wi' teats o' hay and ripps o' com. 
 
 — Burns : Mailie, the Authors 
 Pet Vowe. 
 
 The French word for hoar-frost 
 or cranreuch is verglas, which is 
 also of Gaelic origin, from fuar, 
 cold, and glas, grey. 
 
 Ringled-eyed, squinting. 
 
 He's out-shinned, in-kneed, and ringled- 
 
 eyed too, 
 Auld Rob Morris is the man I'll ne'er 
 lo'e. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay : Auld Rob 
 Morris. 
 
 Rink, a space cleared out and set 
 aside for sport or jousting, and 
 in winter for curling or skating 
 on the ice. 
 
 Rippet, a slight matrimonial quar- 
 rel. The word seems to be de- 
 rived either from the Gaelic r\a- 
 paladh, mismanagement, bung- 
 ling, misunderstanding, or from 
 reubte, a rent, from reub, to tear, 
 to rend, to pull asunder; the 
 English rip, or rip up. 
 
 Mr. Mair, a Scotch minister, was rather 
 short tempered, and had a wife named 
 Rebecca, whom, for brevity sake, he 
 called Beckie. He kept a diary, and 
 among other entries this one was very fre- 
 quent. " Beckie and I had a rippet, for 
 which I desire to be humble." A gentle- 
 man who had been on a visit to the mini- 
 ster went to Edinburgh and told the story 
 to a minister and his wife there, when the 
 
1 68 
 
 Rispie — Roose. 
 
 lady replied, " Weel, weel ! he must have 
 been an excellent man that Mr. Mair. My 
 husband and I sometimes have rippets, but 
 deil tak' me if he's ever humble." — Dean 
 Ramsay's Reminiscences. 
 
 Rippet means a noise or disturbance of 
 any kind, not specifically and only a do- 
 mestic quarrel between husband and wife. 
 I have often been told by my mother, 
 when a boy, to be "quate and no breed 
 sic a rippet." — R. Drennan. 
 
 Rispie, a bulrush ; the badge of 
 the clan Mackay, worn in the 
 bonnet. 
 
 Among the greene rispies and the reeds. 
 — Allan Ramsay: The Evergreen — The 
 Golden Terge. 
 
 Jamieson erroneously defines 
 ru-pie to mean coarse grass, and 
 derives the word from the Eng- 
 lish ras-p^ to scrape, with which, 
 however, it has not the slight- 
 est connection. It seems to be 
 derived from the Gaelic Was, or 
 riasg, a moor, a fen, a marsh, 
 where bulrushes grow ; and thus 
 to signify a marsh flower or bul- 
 rush. 
 
 Ritt, to thrust with a weapon, to 
 stab. The etymology cannot be 
 traced to the Gaelic, the Ger- 
 man, the Flemish, or any other 
 of the known sources of the 
 Scottish language. Jamieson 
 seems to think it signifies to 
 scratch with a sharp instru- 
 ment. It is possibly a corrup- 
 tion oi right ; "rittcd it through " 
 may mean, drove it right 
 through. 
 
 Young Johnston had a rust-brown sword 
 
 Hung low down by his gair [belt], 
 And he ritted'iX. through the young Colonel, 
 That word he never spak mair. 
 —Motherwell's Collection : Ballad 
 of Young Johnson. 
 
 Roddins, the red berries of the 
 hawthorn, the wild rose, the 
 sweet briar, and the mountain 
 ash, more commonly called 
 rowan, or rodden, in Scotland ; 
 from the Gaelic ruadh, red. 
 Jamieson confines the use of 
 the word to the berries of the 
 mountain ash, but in this he is 
 mistaken, as appears from the 
 following : — 
 
 I've mair need o' the roddins, Willie, 
 That grow on yonder thorn. 
 
 He's got a bush o' roddins till her 
 
 That grew on yonder thorn, 
 Likewise a drink o' Maywell water 
 
 Out o' his grass-green horn. 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads, vol. ii. : 
 The Earl of Douglas and Dame 
 Oliphant. 
 
 Roop, roup, to call out, especially 
 if the voice be harsh and rough ; 
 roopet or roupit, rendered hoarse 
 by cold or by violent vocifera- 
 tion. This word seems to be 
 from the Flemish roop, to cry 
 out ; the German rufen, to call. 
 
 Alas ! my roupit Muse is hearse. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Here the poet is guilty of a 
 pleonasm, unusual with one so 
 terse in expression, of using in 
 one line the two synonymous 
 words of roupit and hearse 
 (hoarse). But he was sorely in 
 need of a rhyme for the coarse 
 but familiar word in the third 
 line of the poem. Boiip also 
 signifies a sale by auction, from 
 the " crying out " of the person 
 who offers the goods for sale. 
 
 Roose, rouse, to praise or extol ; 
 and thence, it has been sup- 
 
Row, 
 
 169 
 
 posed, by extension of meaning, 
 to drink a health to the person 
 praised ; also, any drinking-bout 
 or carousal. The etymology of 
 roosCf in the sense of to praise, 
 as used in Scotland, is unknown. 
 Rouse, in the sense of a drinking- 
 bout, has been held by some to 
 be a corruption of carouse, and 
 by others, of the German ex- 
 clamation, heraus ! signifying 
 " empty the cup or glass," 
 drink it I 
 
 Roose the ford as ye find it. 
 
 Roose the fair day at e'en. 
 
 — ^Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 To roose ye up and ca' ye guid, 
 An' sprang o' great an' noble bluid. 
 — Burns : To Gavin Hatnilton. 
 
 He roos'd my e'en sae bonnie blue, 
 He roos'd my waist sae genty sma'. 
 
 — Burns : Young Jockey. 
 
 Some o' them hae roosed their hawks, 
 And other some their houndes, 
 And other some their ladies fair. 
 — Motherwell's Ancient Minstrelsy. 
 
 In all the above quotations 
 the meaning of roost is clearly 
 to praise or extol. But the 
 English rouse has not that 
 meaning. 
 
 No jocund health that Denmark drinks 
 
 to-day, 
 But the great cannon to the clouds shall 
 
 tell, 
 And the kings rouse, the heavens shall' 
 
 bruit again. 
 Bespeaking earthly thunder. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Hamlet. 
 
 I have took since supper a rouse or two 
 too much. 
 
 — Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 It is thus clear that the Scot- 
 tish roose and the English rouse 
 
 are of different origin. The 
 German rausch, and the Dutch 
 and Flemish roes, signify semi- 
 intoxication ; roesig, in these 
 languages, means nearly drunk, 
 or, as the French phrase it, 
 *' entre deux vins," or, as the 
 English slang expresses it, "half 
 seas over." In Swedish, rus 
 signifies drunkenness ; taga rvs, 
 to get drunk; and rusig, ineb- 
 riated. In Danish, runs signifies 
 drunkenness, and ruse, intoxica- 
 ting liquor. Nares rightly sus- 
 pected that the English rouse 
 was of Danish origin. The 
 passage in Hamlet, act i. scene 
 4— 
 
 The king doth wake to-night and takes 
 his rouse, 
 
 signifies the king takes his 
 drink, and all the other instances 
 quoted by Nares are susceptible 
 of the same interpretation. Nares 
 quotes from Harman's " Caveat 
 for Common Cursitors," 1567 : — 
 
 I thought it my bounden duty to ac- 
 quaint your goodness with the abominable, 
 wicked, and detestable behaviour of all 
 these rcnvsey, ragged rabblement of rake- 
 hells. 
 
 He defines rowsey in this pas- 
 sage to mean dirty, but, in view 
 of the Danish, Dutch, and 
 Flemish derivations, it ought to 
 be translated drunken. 
 
 Row, to enwrap, to entwine, to 
 enfold, also to roll or flow on- 
 wards like the wavelets on the 
 river ; from the Gaelic ruith {rui), 
 to flow, to ripple. 
 
I/O 
 
 Rowan — Rowth. 
 
 Hap and row, hap and row, 
 Hap and row the feetie o't, 
 
 It is a wee bit eerie thing, 
 I downa bide the greetie o't. 
 
 — Creech. 
 
 Then round she rozvd her silken plaid. 
 — Ballad of Fremmet Hall. 
 
 Where Cart runs rowan to the sea. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Rowan, the mountain ash ; a tree 
 that grows in great perfection 
 in the Highlands of Scotland, 
 and named from its beautiful 
 red berries, ruadh, the Gaelic 
 for red. This tree, or a twig of 
 it, is supposed, in the supersti- 
 tion of Scotland, to be a charm 
 against witchcraft. Hence, it 
 has been supposed, but with- 
 out sufficient authority, that 
 the phrase, ' ' Aroint thee, witch , ' ' 
 in Shakspeare, is a misprint for 
 "a rowan-tree, witch!" The 
 word occurs in no author pre- 
 vious to Shakspeare. 
 
 The night was fair, the moon was up, 
 The wind blew low among the gowans. 
 
 Or fitful rose o'er Athole woods. 
 An' shook the berries frae the rowans. 
 — The IVraith oj" Garry Water. 
 
 Rowan tree and red thread 
 Mak' the witches tyne [lose] their speed. 
 — Old Scottish Proverb. 
 
 Rowt, to bellow or low like cattle ; 
 from the Gaelic roiteach, bellow- 
 ing. Nares erroneously renders 
 it " snore." " The rabble rowt," 
 i.e., the roaring rabble, the 
 clamorous multitude. 
 
 The kye stood routin in the loan. 
 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Nae mair thou'lt rowie out o'er the dale, 
 Because thy pasture's scanty. 
 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 And the king, when he had righted 
 himself on the saddle, gathered his breath, 
 and cried to do me nae harm ; " for," said 
 he, " he is ane o' our Norland stots, I ken 
 by the rowte o him ; " and they a' laughed 
 and rowted loud eneuch. — Scott: For- 
 tunes of Nigel. 
 
 Rowth, plenty, abundance ; a 
 word formed from roll and rdl- 
 elh, Scottish row. It is expres- 
 sive of the same idea as in the 
 English phrase, applied to a 
 rich man, " He rolls in wealth." 
 A peculiarly Scottish word 
 which never seems to have been 
 English. It has been suggested 
 that it is derived from the Gaelic 
 ruathar, a sudden rush, onset, 
 or inpouring ; whence meta- 
 phorically, a sudden or violent 
 influx of wealth or abundance. 
 
 A rowth o auld knick-knackets, 
 Rusty aim caps, and jingling jackets. 
 — Burns : Captain Grose. 
 
 The ingle-neuk, with routh o' bannocks 
 and bairns ! — Dean Ramsay : A Scottish 
 Toast or Sentiment. 
 
 A rowth aumrie and a close nieve. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 It's ye have wooers mony a ane, 
 An' lassie ye 're but young, ye ken, 
 
 Then wait a wee, and cannie wale, 
 A routhie butt, a routhie ben. 
 
 — Burns : Country Lassie. 
 
 God grant your lordship joy and health. 
 Long days and routh of real wealth. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : Epistle to 
 Lord Dalhousie. 
 
 A boundless hunter and a gunless 
 gunner see aye rowth o' game. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Fortune, if thou wilt give me still 
 Hale breeks, a scon, a whisky gill. 
 And rowth o' rhyme to rave at will. 
 Take a' the rest. 
 —Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
Roxle — Rule the Roast. 
 
 xn 
 
 Roxle, to grunt, to speak with 
 a hoarse voice; Gaelic roc^ a 
 hoarse voice ; French rauque, 
 hoarse; English rook, a bird 
 that has a hoarse voice in caw- 
 ing ; Gaelic, rocair, a naan with 
 a hoarse voice; rocail, croak- 
 ing. Mr. Herbert Coleridge, in 
 his dictionary of " The Oldest 
 Words in the English Language, ' ' 
 from the semi- Saxon period of 
 A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1800, derives it 
 from the Dutch rotelen, but the 
 word does not appear in any- 
 Dutch or Flemish dictionary. 
 
 Royet, wild, dissipated, riotous, 
 unruly. Roit, according to 
 Jamieson, is a term of contempt 
 for a woman, often conjoined 
 with an adjective, denoting bad 
 temper; as, *'an ill-natured 
 roit." The resemblance to the 
 English riot suggests its deriva- 
 tion from that word, but both 
 royet and riot are traceable to 
 the Gaelic raoit, noisy, obstre- 
 perous, or indecent mirth and 
 revelry ; and ruidhtear, a loud 
 reveller; riatach, indecent, im- 
 modest. Jamieson, however, 
 derives it from the French 
 roide, stiff, which he wrongly 
 translates fierce, ungovernable. 
 
 Royet lads may make sober men. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Ruddy, to roar like thunder, or to 
 rumble like wind in the stomach. 
 Derivation uncertain, but pos- 
 sibly akin to rowte or rowtin, the 
 bellowing of cattle. 
 
 I in its wame heard Vulcan ruddy. 
 — Beattie : John d Amha. 
 
 Rude, the complexion ; the ruddy 
 face of a healthy person. From 
 the Flemish rood, red, which 
 has the same meaning ; Gaelic 
 ruatli, red, corrupted by the 
 Lowland Scotch into Roy, as in 
 Rob Roy, Gilderoy, and applied 
 to the hair as well as to the 
 complexion. 
 
 Of all their maidens myld as meid 
 
 Was nane sae gymp as Gillie, 
 As ony rose her rude was reid, 
 Her lyre was like the lillie. 
 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 She has put it to her roudes lip, 
 
 And to her roudes chin, 
 She has put it to her fause, fause mouth, 
 But never a drap gaed in. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Prince Robert. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in a note to 
 this ballad, glosses roudes by 
 " haggard." Surely this is 
 wrong ? 
 
 Rug, to pull. Derivation un- 
 certain. 
 
 Trying to rug them off, tae an' heel. — 
 Noctes A jnbrosiance. 
 
 Rugg", a great bargain, a thing 
 ridiculously cheap ; to spoil, to 
 plunder, to seize. From the 
 Gaelic rug, the past tense of 
 heir, to take hold of. 
 
 When borrowers brak, the pawns were 
 
 rugg. 
 Rings, beads of pearl, or siller jug, 
 I sold them off — ne'er fashed my lug 
 
 Wi' girns or curses ; 
 The mair they whinged, it gart me hug 
 My swelling purses. 
 — Allan Ramsay : Last Speech of a 
 Wretched Miser. 
 
 Rule the roast. This originally 
 Scottish phrase has obtained 
 currency in England, and ex- 
 
172 
 
 Rummel — Ryg-hane. 
 
 cited much controversy as to 
 its origin. It has been derived 
 from the function of a chief 
 cook, to be master or mistress 
 in the kitchen, and as such, to 
 " rule the roasting." It has also 
 been derived from the mastery 
 of the cock among the hens, as 
 ruling the place where the fowls 
 roost or sleep. In the Scottish 
 language roost signifies the inner 
 roof of a cottage, composed of 
 spars or beams reaching from 
 one wall to the other; the 
 highest interior part of the 
 building. Hence, to rule the 
 roast, or roost, or to rule the 
 house, to be the master. 
 
 Rummel, to make a confused 
 sound ; from rumble. 
 
 Your crackjaw words of half an ell, 
 That rummel like a witch's spell. 
 
 — George Beattie : John 
 & Amha\ 
 
 Rump, to break ; rumpit, broken ; 
 or in English slang "to be 
 cleaned out," or exhausted of 
 money by losses at gambling. 
 "Perhaps," says Jamieson, "in 
 allusion to an animal whose tail 
 has been cut off near the rump ! " 
 The etymology did not need the 
 "perhaps" of the non-erudite 
 author, and is to be found in the 
 French rompre, to break, and 
 rompu, broken. 
 
 Rumple-bane, the lowest bone of 
 the spine. 
 
 At length he got a carline grey, 
 
 And she's come hirplin ' hame, man, 
 
 And she fell o'er the buffet stool, 
 And brak her rumplc-bane, man. 
 —Johnson's Mttsical Museum. 
 
 Rung", a cudgel, a staff, a bludgeon, 
 the step of a ladder ; any thick 
 strong piece of wood that may 
 be wielded in the hand as a 
 weapon. From the Gaelic rong^ 
 which has the same meaning. 
 The modern Irish call a bludgeon 
 a shillelah; also a Gaelic word 
 for seileach, a willow, and slaith 
 {sla), a wand, 
 
 Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue. 
 She's just a deevil wi' a rung: 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Runk, to whisper secret slan- 
 ders, also a term of opprobrium 
 applied to an old woman, a 
 gossip, or a scandal-monger. 
 From the Gaelic runach, dark, 
 mysterious, also a confidant ; 
 run, Sb secret, a mystery; and 
 by extension of the original 
 meaning, a scandal repeated 
 under the pretence of a secret 
 and confidential disclosure. 
 
 Runt; a deprecatory or contemp- 
 tuous name for an old woman ; 
 from the German rind, and the 
 Flemish rund, an ox, or a' cow 
 that calves no longer ; also, the 
 hard stalk of kail or cabbage 
 left in the ground, that has 
 ceased to sprout. 
 
 Ruther. This word, according to 
 Jamieson, means to storm, to 
 bluster, to roar, also an uproar 
 or commotion. It is probably 
 from the Gaelic rutharach, quar- 
 relsome, contentious, and rutha- 
 rachd, quarrelsomeness. 
 
 Ryg-bane, or rig-bane, the spine 
 or backbone ; from the Flemish 
 
Saikless — Sak. 
 
 173 
 
 rug, the German rucken, the 
 back, and 6em, a bone. The 
 origmal meaning of rug and 
 rucken is that of extension in 
 length ; from the Gaelic ruig, 
 to extend, to reach, and ruigh, 
 
 or righe, an arm ; ruighe (the 
 English ridge) is the extension 
 of a mountain, or of a series 
 of hills forming, as it were, 
 the spine or backbone of the 
 land. 
 
 S 
 
 Saikless, innocent, guiltless ; from 
 the Teutonic sack, the cause ; 
 whence sacMess, or saiHess, with- 
 out cause. 
 
 , " Oh, is this water deep," he said, 
 " As it is wondrous dim ; 
 Or is it sic as a saikless rnaid, 
 And a leal true knicht may swim ? " 
 — Ballad of Sir Roland. 
 Leave off your douking on the day, 
 
 And douk upon the night, 
 And where that saikless knight lies slain, 
 The candles will burn bright. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Earl Richard. 
 
 Sain, to bless, to preserve in 
 happiness ; from the German 
 segnen, to bless, and segen, a 
 benediction ; Flemish zegenen — 
 all probably from the Latin 
 sanus. 
 
 Sain yoursel frae the deil and the laird's 
 bairns. 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Sairing", enough, that which satis- 
 fies one ; used both in a favour- 
 able and unfavourable sense. 
 "He got his sairin,^' applied to 
 a drubbing or beating; in the 
 ironical sense, he got enough of 
 it, or, as Jamieson phrases it in 
 English, "he got his bellyfull 
 of it." A corruption of serve, 
 
 or serve the purpose — therefore, 
 a sufficiency. 
 
 You couldna look your sairin at her face, 
 So meek it was, so sweet, so fu' o' grace. 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Sairy or sair, very, or very great ; 
 from the German sehr, as in 
 zehr schon, sehr gut, very fair, 
 very good; sometimes used in 
 English in the form of sore ; as, 
 •' sore distressed," very much 
 distressed. 
 
 And when they meet wi' sair disasters. 
 Like loss o' health or want o' masters. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 It's a sair dung bairn that mauna greet. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 It's a sair field where a' are slain. 
 — Idem. 
 
 The state of man does change and vary : 
 Now sound, now sick, now blythe, now 
 
 sary, 
 Now dansand merry, now like to dee. 
 —Allan Ramsay : The Evergreen. 
 
 Sak, saik, sake, blame, guilt; 
 whence sacJdess, sackless, saikless, 
 guiltless, innocent ; and also, by 
 extension of meaning, foolish, 
 worthless, as in the correspond- 
 ing English word, "an inno- 
 cent," to signify an imbecile. 
 
174 
 
 Sandie — Sanshagh. 
 
 The root of all these words 
 appears to be either the German 
 jach (see S airless, ante), or the 
 Gaelic sag, weight ; whence also 
 sag, to weigh or press down, and 
 sack, a bag to carry heavy articles. 
 The idea of weight, as appHed 
 to guUt and blameworthiness, 
 is obvious, as in the line quoted 
 by Jamieson, "Mary was sack- 
 less o' breaking her vow," i.e., 
 she was not burthened with the 
 guilt of breaking her vow. A 
 saikless person, or an imbecile, 
 in like manner, is one who is 
 not weighted with intellect. 
 Sag, in EngHsh, is said of a 
 rope not drawn tightly enough, 
 and weighed down in the 
 middle. It also signifies to bend 
 or give way under pressure of 
 weight. 
 
 The heart I bear 
 Shall never sag- with doubt or shake with 
 fear. — Shakspeare. 
 
 "It is observable," says Dr. 
 Johnson, "that sack (in the 
 sense of a bag for carrying 
 weight) is to be found in all 
 languages, and is therefore 
 conceived to be antediluvian." 
 The phrase "sair sav^ht," quoted 
 by Jamieson, and defined as 
 signifying " much exhausted, 
 and especially descriptive of 
 bodily debility," is traceable to 
 the same root, and might be 
 rendered, sorely weighed down 
 by weakness or infirmity. There 
 is, however, in spite of these 
 examples, much to be said in 
 favour of the derivation from 
 the German sack. 
 
 Sandie, Sanders, Sawney, San- 
 nock, abbreviations of the fa- 
 vourite Scottish Christian name 
 of Alexander ; from the last two 
 syllables. The English com- 
 monly abbreviate the first two 
 syllables into Aleck. In the days 
 immediately after the accession 
 of James VI. to the English 
 throne, under the title of James 
 L, to the time of George III. 
 and the Bute Administration, 
 when Scotsmen were exceed- 
 ingly unpopular, and when Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson — the great 
 Scoto-phobist, the son of a 
 Scotch bookseller at Lichfield — 
 thought it prudent to disguise 
 his origin, and overdid his pru- 
 dence by maligning his father's 
 countrymen, it was customary 
 to designate a Scotsman as a 
 Sawney. The vulgar epithet, 
 however, is fast dying out, and 
 is nearly obsolete. 
 
 An', Lord ! renjember singing Sannock, 
 Wi' hale bracks, saxpence, and a ban- 
 nock. 
 
 Burns: To James Tait. 
 
 Sanshagh or sanshach. Jamieson 
 defines this word as meaning 
 wily, crafty, sarcastically clever, 
 saucy, disdainful, and cites — 
 '* * He's a sanshach callant, or 
 chiel,' is a phrase used in Aber- 
 deenshire and the Mearns." He 
 thinks it is derivable from the 
 Gaelic saobh-nosach, angry, pee- 
 vish, irascible ; but it is more 
 probable that it comes from 
 sean, old, and seach {shach), dry 
 or caustic, an old man of a 
 cynical temper. 
 
Sant — Sap. 
 
 O ■ THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 ^7S 
 
 Sant or saunter. Jamieson defines 
 this word as meaning "to dis- 
 appear, to vanish suddenly out 
 of sight," and quotes it as in 
 use in Ettrick Forest. ** It's 
 santed, but it will, may be, cast 
 up again." In Wright's *' Dic- 
 tionary of Obsolete and Provin- 
 cial English," saunt, a northern 
 word, is said to signify to van- 
 ish ; and saum, to wander lazily 
 about. The word is nearly, if 
 not quite obsolete, and does not 
 appear either in Burns or Allan 
 Kamsay. Sant was formerly 
 current in the same sense as 
 saunter, to roam idly or listlessly 
 about ; to saum, to disappear 
 from, or neglect one's work or 
 duty. Johnson derived saunter 
 from an expression said to 
 have been used in the time 
 of the crusades, in application 
 to the idle vagabonds and im- 
 postors who roamed through 
 the country and begged for 
 money to help them on their 
 way to the Holy Land, or 
 La Sainte Terre. Saunter, as 
 now used in English, is almost 
 synonymous with the Scottish 
 dauner, q.v. But no authori- 
 tative derivation has yet been 
 discovered, either for sant or 
 saunter, unless that given by Mr. 
 Wedgwood, from the German 
 schlendern, can be deemed satis- 
 factory. In Sheffield, Duke of 
 Buckingham's Essay on "Satire," 
 saunter is used in a curiously 
 unusual sense, an investigation 
 of which may possibly throw 
 light on the original meaning 
 of the word. 
 
 While sauntering Charles betwixt so mean 
 
 a brace [of mistresses], 
 Meets with dissembling still in either place, 
 Affected humour or a painted face ; 
 In loyal libels we have often told him 
 How one has jilted him, the other sold him. 
 
 Was ever Prince by two at once misled, 
 Foolish and false, ill-natured and ill-bred ? 
 
 Sir Walter Scott cites from the 
 same author, in reference to the 
 sauntering of Charles II. : — 
 
 In his later hours, there was as much 
 laziness as love in all those hours he passed 
 with his mistresses, who, after all, only 
 served to fill up his seraglio, while a be- 
 witching kind of pleasure called sauntering- 
 and talking without restraint, was the true 
 sultana he delighted in. 
 
 In Gaelic sannt, andsanntaich, 
 signifies to covet, to desire, to 
 lust after; and if this be the 
 true derivation of the word, the 
 passage from the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham would be exceedingly 
 appropriate. To saunter was 
 applied to idle men who fol- 
 lowed women about the streets, 
 with libidinous intent of admi- 
 ration or conversation ; sann- 
 taire, a lustful man. The French 
 have a little comedy entitled 
 " Un monsieur qui suit les 
 femmes," which expresses the 
 idea of saunterer, as applied to 
 Charles 11. 
 
 Sap, a fool, a simpleton, a ninny. 
 The English has milk-sop, an 
 effeminate fool. Sap and sop 
 are both derived from the Gae- 
 lic saobh, silly, foolish, as well 
 as the English slang, soft, apt 
 to be imposed upon. 
 
176 
 
 Sark — Scaff-raff. 
 
 Sark, the linen, woollen, silken, 
 or cotton garment worn next 
 to the skin by men and women ; 
 a shirt or shift ; the French 
 chemise, the German hemde. 
 Weel'SarJcif, well provided with 
 shirts. 
 
 The last Hallowe'en I was wauken, 
 My droukit sark-s\ee\Q as ye ken. 
 — Burns : Tarn Glen. 
 
 They reel'd, they sat, they crossed, they 
 
 cleekit, 
 Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, 
 And coost her duddies to the wark. 
 And linkit at it in her sark ! 
 
 Tarn tint his reason a' thegither, 
 
 And roar'd out, "Weel done ! Cutty sark ! " 
 
 And in an instant a' was dark. 
 
 — Burns : Ta»t d Shanter. 
 
 Being asked what was the diflference be- 
 tween Presbyterian ministers, who wear no 
 surplices, and Episcopalians, who do, an 
 old lady replied, " Well, ye see, the Pres- 
 byterian minister wears his sark under his 
 coat, the Episcopalian wears his sark 
 aboon his coat."— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 The phrase, " sarh-alane," is 
 used to signify nude, with the 
 exception of the shirt ; and " a 
 sarJcfu' o' sair banes," to express 
 the condition of a person suffer- 
 ing from great fatigue, or from 
 a sound beating. The etymo- 
 logy of the word, which is pecu- 
 liar to Scotland and the North 
 of England, is uncertain. At- 
 tempts have been made to trace 
 it from the Swedish, the Ice- 
 landic, the Anglo-Saxon, and 
 the Greek, but without success. 
 
 In the "Dictionaire de la 
 Langue Komane, ou du Vieux 
 Langage Frangaise " (Paris, 
 1768), the Scottish word sarJc is 
 
 rendered serecote, and serecot, 
 " une camisole, une chemisette." 
 
 Saugh, a willow ; the French 
 saule, Gaelic seUeag. 
 
 The glancin' waves o' Clyde 
 Through sauglts and hanging hazels glide. 
 — PiNKERTON : Bothwell Bank. 
 
 Saulie, a hired mourner, a 
 mute, or undertaker's man. The 
 word seems to have been em- 
 ployed to express the mock or 
 feigned sorrow assumed in the 
 lugubrious faces of these men, 
 and to be derived from the Gae- 
 lic mil, mockery, satire, deri- 
 sion ; samhladhj an apparition, a 
 ghost, has also been suggested 
 as the origin of the word. The 
 derivation of Jamieson from 
 salve reginam is scarcely worthy 
 of consideration. 
 
 Saur, to flavour ; saurless, insipid, 
 tasteless ; supposed to be a cor- 
 ruption of savour. The French 
 for a red herring is sawe ; and 
 saurir, or saurer, is to flavour 
 with salt. 
 
 Scaff-raff, rubbish, refuse. 
 
 If you and I were at the Witherspoon's 
 Latch, wi' ilka ane a gude oak hippie in 
 his hand, we wadna turn back — no, not for 
 half-a-dozen o' your scaff-raff. — Scott : 
 Guy Mannering. 
 
 Jamieson, unaware of the in- 
 digenous roots of these words, 
 derives them from the Swedish 
 scaef, a rag, anything shaved 
 off; and raja, to snatch away. 
 The true etymology, however, 
 is from the Gaelic sgamh (pro- 
 
Scag — Scarnoch. 
 
 177 
 
 nounced scav), dross, dirt, rub- 
 bish; and rdbh {raff), coarse, 
 idle, useless. 
 
 Scag, to shrivel in the heat, or by- 
 exposure to the weather, to split, 
 to crack in the heat; a term 
 applied in the fishing villages of 
 Scotland to fish, dried or fresh, 
 that have been kept too long. 
 ** A scaggit haddie " is a haddock 
 spoiled by long expos ure . Jamie - 
 son hesitates between the Ice- 
 landic skacka, inquare ; and the 
 Gaehc sgag, as the derivation of 
 this word. Sgag, in Gaelic, signi- 
 fies to shrivel up, to crack, to 
 split, or to spoil and become 
 putrid by long keeping ; sgagta, 
 lean, emaciated. 
 
 Seance, skance. To reflect upon 
 a person's character or conduct 
 by charge or insinuation ; to 
 censure, to taunt indirectly ; to 
 glance at a subject cursorily in 
 conversation ; also, a transient 
 look at anjrthing. These words 
 are not used in English, though 
 askance, a recognised English 
 word, appears to be from the 
 same root. The ordinary de- 
 rivation of askance is either from 
 the Italian schianco, athwart, or 
 from the Flemish and Dutch 
 schuin, oblique, to squint. The 
 latter etymology, though it 
 meets the English sense of the 
 word, does not correspond with 
 the variety of meanings in which 
 it is employed in Scotland. 
 Neither does it explain the 
 English scan, to examine, to 
 scrutinise,— stiU less the scan- 
 
 ning, or scansion of the syllables 
 or feet in a verse. 
 
 Perhaps the Gaelic sgath, a 
 shadow, a reflection in the water 
 or in a glass, sgathan {sga-an), a 
 mirror, and sgathanaich, to look 
 in a glass, may supply the root 
 of the Scottish, if not the Eng- 
 lish words. Tried by these tests, 
 seance might signify to cast a 
 shadow or a reflection upon one, 
 to take a rapid glance as of 
 one's self in a glass ; and to scan, 
 to examine, to scrutinise, " to 
 hold the mirror up to nature," 
 as Shakspeare has it. In these 
 senses, the word might more 
 easily be derivable from the 
 Gaelic, which does not imply 
 obliquity, than from the Flemish 
 and Dutch, of which obliquity 
 is the leading, if not the sole 
 idea, as in the English squint. 
 
 Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 Still gentler sister woman ; 
 Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human. 
 — Burns : Address to the Unco Guid. 
 
 To scan a verse, to examine or 
 scrutinise whether it contains 
 the proper number of feet or 
 syllables, or is otherwise correct, 
 may possibly be an offshoot of 
 the same idea; though aU the 
 etymologists insist that it comes 
 from the Italian scandio, to 
 climb. 
 
 Scarnoch. A scarnoch o' words 
 signifies a multitude of words, 
 such as are unnecessarily used 
 by wordy lawyers and by over 
 garrulous Members of Parlia- 
 ment, who use them, as Solomon 
 
178 
 
 Scaii — Schore. 
 
 said in old times, ** to darken 
 counsel," and as a wise and 
 cynical man of more modern 
 days— the late Prince Talleyrand 
 — said with equal appropriate- 
 ness, " pour deguiser la pensee" 
 (to disguise their thoughts). 
 Scarnoch also signifies a tumul- 
 tuous din, the murmur or shout- 
 ing of a crowd, and scarochin, 
 a great noise. Jamieson derives 
 these words* from the Swedish 
 skara, a crowd, a cohort, but 
 the true root is the Gaelic sgaim, 
 to howl as dogs, wolves, or other 
 animals, and sgarneach, howling, 
 shrieking, roaring, &c. 
 
 Scart, a scratch ; scart-free, with- 
 out a scratch or injury. Scart 
 is also a name given, in most 
 parts of Scotland, to the rapa- 
 cious sea-bird, the cormorant. 
 Scart, to scratch, is a softer 
 rendering of the harsher English 
 word ; and scart, a cormorant, is 
 a corruption of the Gaelic sgarbh, 
 which has the same meaning. 
 
 They that bourd wi' cats may count upon 
 scaris.— Allan Ramsay. 
 
 "To scart the buttons," or draw one's 
 hand down the breast of another, so as 
 to touch the buttons with one's nail, is a 
 mode of challenging to battle among Scot- 
 tish boys. — Jamieson. 
 
 Like scarts upon the wing by the hope of 
 plunder led. 
 
 —Legends of the Isles. 
 D'ye think ye'll help them wi' skirlin' 
 that gate, like an auld skart before a flaw 
 o' weather ?— Scott : The Antiquary. 
 
 Scaur, a steep rock, a cliflf on the 
 shore ; sTcerrie, a rock in the sea. 
 Scarborough, a watering-place 
 
 in England, signifies the town 
 on the cliff or rock ; STcerrievore^ 
 or the great rock or skerrie, from 
 sgeir and mhor, is the name of 
 the famous lighthouse on the 
 West Coast of Scotland. The 
 skerries are rocks in the sea 
 among the Scilly islands. Both 
 scaur and skerrie are traceable to 
 the Gaelic sgeir, a rock in the 
 sea, and sgor, a steep mountain 
 side ; whence also the English 
 scar in Scarborough. 
 
 Ye that sail the stormy seas 
 Of the distant Hebrides. 
 
 By lordly Mull and Ulva's shore 
 Beware the witch of Skerrievore. 
 
 —Legends of the Isles. 
 
 Where'er ye come by creek or scaur. 
 Ye bring bright beauty. 
 
 —James Ballantine. 
 
 Schacklock. Jamieson imagines 
 this word to mean a pickpocket 
 or burglar, or one who shakes 
 or loosens locks. It is, however, 
 a term of contempt for a lazy 
 ne'er-do-weel, like the similar 
 English word, sTvackahack, and 
 is derivable from the Gaelic seac 
 (shack), useless, withered, dried 
 up, and leug, dull, sluggish, or 
 incorrigibly lazy. 
 
 Schore, a man of high rank; 
 schore-chiefiain, a supreme chief. 
 Jamieson derives schore from the 
 German schor or schoren, " altus 
 eminens "—a word which is not 
 to be found in any German 
 dictionary, nor in Dutch or 
 Flemish, or any other Teutonic 
 speech. The etymology is un- 
 
Schrew — Sclaurie, 
 
 179 
 
 known or difficult to discover, 
 unless it be presumed that the 
 word was used metaphorically 
 for high, in the sense of an 
 eminence ; from the Gaelic sgor, 
 a steep rock, a cliff. 
 
 Schrew (sometimes written 
 sckrow), to curse; allied to the 
 English shrew, a scolding and 
 ill-tempered woman, and usually- 
 derived from the German besch- 
 reien, to curse. A screw, in 
 English slang, signifies a mean, 
 niggardly person, who, in Ameri- 
 can parlance, would be called 
 *'a mean cuss," or curse. A 
 miserable old horse is called a 
 screw, not as the Slang Dic- 
 tionary says, "from the serew- 
 liJce manner in which his ribs 
 generally show through the 
 skin," but from the original 
 sense of shrew, to curse — i.e., 
 a horse only fit to swear at 
 — or possibly from the Gaelic 
 sgruitt old, wrinkled, thin, 
 meagre. Schrewit signifies ac- 
 cursed, also poisonous, which 
 is doubtless the origin of the 
 slang English screwed, intoxi- 
 cated. The kindred English 
 word scrub, a mean person, and 
 scrubbed, vile, worthless, shabby, 
 as used by Shakspeare in the 
 phrase, "a little scrubbed boy," 
 is evidently derived from the 
 Gaelic sgrub, to act in a mean 
 manner, and sgrubair, a churl, 
 a niggard, or a despicable per- 
 son. The true derivation of the 
 Scottish schrew remains obscure. 
 In its form of shrew or schrow 
 the word was formerly used in 
 
 reference to the male sex, in 
 the sense of a disagreeable and 
 quarrelsome person ; as in shrewd, 
 an epithet applied to a man of 
 penetration and sharp common 
 sense. These words, whether 
 schrew or schrow be the correct 
 form, have given rise to many 
 discussions among etymologists, 
 which are not yet ended. Shrew 
 or schrow has been derived not 
 only from the Teutonic schreien, 
 to shriek, to call out lustily, 
 but from the little harmless 
 animal called the shrew mouse, 
 which was fabled to run over 
 the backs of cattle and do 
 them injury by the supposed 
 venom of its bite. Some of 
 these apparently incongruous 
 or contradictory derivations are 
 resolvable by the Gaelic sgi'uth 
 {sru), to run, to flow. A shrew is 
 a scold, a woman whose tongue 
 runs too rapidly, or a man, if 
 he have the same disagreeable 
 characteristic ; shrewd is an 
 epithet applied to one whose 
 ideas run clearly and precisely. 
 The shrew mouse is the running 
 mouse. 
 
 Sclaurie, to bespatter with mud ; 
 also metaphorically, to abuse, 
 revile, to asperse, make accusa- 
 tion against, on the principle 
 of the English saying, " Throw 
 mud enough; some of it will 
 stick." The lowland Scotch 
 claur, or glaur, signifies mud, 
 q.v. This word is derived from 
 the Gaelic clabar (aspirated clab- 
 har or claur), filth, mire, mud ; 
 " A gowpen o' glaur," or claur, 
 
i8o 
 
 Scogie — Scoot 
 
 the two hands conjoined, filled 
 with mud. When the initial 
 s was either omitted from or 
 joined to the root-word, is not 
 discoverable. 
 
 Scogie or scogie-lass, a kitchen 
 drudge, a maid-of-all-work, a 
 "slavey;" one unskilled in all 
 but the commonest and coarsest 
 work. From the Gaelic sgog, a 
 fool, a dolt, one who knows 
 nothing. 
 
 Scoil, shriek ; akin to the English 
 
 A n' smellin' John he gaed a scoil, 
 Then plunged and gart the water boil. 
 — yohn d AmhcC. 
 Till echo for ten miles around 
 Did to the horrid scoil resound. 
 —Ibid. 
 
 Scold or skald. Fingal and the 
 other warriors whose deeds are 
 commemorated by Ossian, drank 
 out of shells (scallop shells), 
 doubtless the first natural ob- 
 jects that in the earliest ages 
 were employed for the purpose. 
 Scold is an obsolete word, signi- 
 fying to drink a health, evi- 
 dently derived from shell, or 
 scallop; the Teutonic scTiale, a 
 shell or a cup ; the Danish 
 sTciall, the French escaiUe or 
 ecaille, the Flemish and Dutch 
 schelp and schaal, the Norse sJcul, 
 the Greek chalys, the Latin calix, 
 a shell or cup. Possibly the 
 tradition that the Scandinavian 
 warriors drank their wine or 
 mead out of the skuUs of their 
 enemies whom they had slain in 
 battle, arose fi'om a modern mis- 
 
 conception of the meaning oiskul 
 — originally synonymous with 
 the skull or cranium, or shell of 
 the brain. Skid is used by the 
 old Scottish poet, Douglas, for 
 a goblet or large bowl. 
 
 To scold or scoil, to drink healths, to 
 drink as a toast ; scolder, a drinker of 
 healths ; skul, a salutation of one who is 
 present, or of the respect paid to an absent 
 person, by expressing a wish for his health 
 when one is about to drink it. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Skeolach (sgeolach), the name of one of 
 Fingal's drinking cups, — Macleod and 
 Dewar : Gaelic Dictionary. 
 
 The custom of drinking out of shells is 
 of great antiquity, and was very common 
 among the ancient Gael. Hence the ex- 
 pression so often met with in the Fingal ian 
 poets, "the hall of shells," "the chief of 
 shells," "the shell and the song." The 
 scallop shell is still used in drinking strong 
 liquors at the tables of those gentlemen 
 who are desirous to preserve the usages of 
 their ancestors. — Armstrong's Gaelic Dic- 
 tionary, 1828. 
 
 Scon or scone, a barley cake ; 
 from the Gaelic sgonn, a lump 
 or mass. 
 
 Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, 
 
 Thou King o' grain, 
 On thee auld Scotland chaws her cood, 
 In souple scones, the wale o' food. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Sconfice, discomfit, beaten, led 
 astray, subdued ; from the Gaelic 
 sgon, bad, andj^os, knowledge. 
 
 I'm unco wae for the puir lady ; I'm feart 
 she'll grow wud gin she be lang in yon 
 hole, for it would sconfice a horse, forbye 
 a bodj\— Macleav's Memoirs of the Clan 
 MacGregor. 
 
 Scoot, a tramp, a gad-about, a 
 vagrant, a term of opprobrium 
 given to a low woman; from 
 
Scottis bed — Screed, 
 
 i8i 
 
 the Gaelic sguit, to wander. 
 The English scout, a person em- 
 ployed by an army to recon- 
 noitre, by travelling or wander- 
 ing to and fro, so as to observe 
 the motions of the enemy, is 
 obviously from the same root. 
 
 Scottis bed. *• This phrase," says 
 Jamieson, "occurs in an Aber- 
 deen Register, but it is not easy 
 to aflSx any determinate mean- 
 ing to it." May it not mean a 
 ship's bed, or a hammock ; from 
 scothach, a small skiff ? 
 
 Scouk, to sneak, to loiter idly or 
 furtively ; either a corruption 
 of the English sJctdk, or a deri- 
 vation with an allied meaning ; 
 from the Gaelic sguga, a coarse, 
 ill-mannered, ungainly person. 
 
 They grin, they glower, they scouk, 
 they gape. 
 
 —/acoitie Relics. 
 
 Scouth or skouth, elbow-room, 
 space, scope, room for the arm' 
 in wielding a weapon so as to 
 cut off an enemy or an obstruc- 
 tion at a blow ; from the Gaelic 
 sgud, to lop, to cut off ; sgudadh, 
 act of cutting down by a sudden 
 blow. 
 
 An' he get scouth to wield his tree, 
 I fear you'll both be paid. 
 
 — Ballad of Robin Hood. 
 
 By break of day he seeks the dowie 
 
 glen. 
 That he may scouth to a' his morning 
 
 len' (lend). 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : Pastoral on the 
 Death of Matthew Prior. 
 
 They tak religion in their mouth. 
 They talk o' mercy, grace, and truth— 
 
 For what ? to gie their malice scouth 
 
 On some poor wight, 
 An' hunt him down, o'er right and ruth. 
 
 To ruin straight. 
 —Burns : To the Rev. John M*Math. 
 
 " Scouth and routh " is a pro- 
 verbial phrase for elbow-room 
 and abundance. 
 
 That's a good gang for your horse, he'll 
 have scouth and routh. — Jamieson. 
 
 Scowf, a blustering, low scoun- 
 drel. Dutch and Flemish schoft. 
 Explained in Dutch and French 
 dictionaries as ^^ maroufle, coquin, 
 maraud," i.e., a low scoundrel, a 
 rogue, an impudent blackguard. 
 
 He's naething but a scouf; Danish 
 scuffer, to gull, to cheat, to shuffle ; a cheat, 
 a false pretender. — Jamieson. 
 
 Scran or skran, odds and ends 
 or scraps of eatables, broken 
 victuals ; also applied derisively 
 to food or daily bread. 
 
 Scranning is a phrase used by school- 
 boys when they spend their pocket-money 
 at the pastry-cook's. — Jamieson. 
 
 Scran-pock, a beggar's wallet to 
 hold scraps of food. The word 
 scran is derived from the Gaelic 
 sgrath (pronounced sgra), to peel, 
 to pare, to take off the rind or 
 skin, and sgrathan {sgra-an), a 
 little peeling or paring. In the 
 sense of food, the word occurs 
 in the Irish objurgation, "Bad 
 scran to ye 1 " 
 
 Screed, a lengthy discourse or 
 written article. This word is 
 defined in a note to a passage 
 in the " Noctes Ambrosianae" 
 as a '* liberal allowance of any- 
 thing." 
 
1 82 Screik d Day — Scroggam and Ruffam, 
 
 A man, condemned to death for rape 
 and murder at Inverness, requested that 
 the editor of the Courier might be per- 
 mitted to see him the night before his 
 execution. After some talk, the criminal 
 said, "Oh, Mr. Carruthers, what a screed 
 you'll be printin' in your next paper about 
 me ! "— M. 
 
 Screik (or scrai^h) o' day, the 
 
 early dawn, the first flush of the 
 morning light. Jamieson says 
 the radical word is creek ; from 
 the Teutonic krieche, "aurora 
 rutilans." It has been suggested 
 that screich, or shriek, of day, 
 means the shrill cry of the cock 
 at early morn, but it is more 
 probable that the phrase is from 
 the Flemish krieken van den 
 dag, which the French translate 
 Vauhe dujour, Vaurore, the dawn 
 of day. 
 
 Scrieve, to roll or move or glide 
 easily ; from the Gaelic sgrioh, 
 to scrape, to draw a line or a 
 furrow, to go on an excursion or 
 journey. 
 
 The wheels o' life gae down -hill scrievin. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Scrimp, bare, scarce ; scrimply, 
 barely, scarcely. 
 
 Down flowed her robe, a tartan sheen. 
 Till half a leg was scrimply seen. 
 And such a leg ! my bonnie Jean 
 Alone could peer it. 
 
 — Burns : The Vision. 
 
 Scrog", a stunted bush, furze ; 
 scroggy, abounding in under- 
 wood, covered with stunted 
 bushes or furze like the Scottish 
 mountains ; from the Gaelic 
 sgrogag, stunted timber or under- 
 wood. 
 
 The way toward the cite was stony, 
 
 thorny, and scraggy. — Gesta Romanorum. 
 
 As I came down by Merriemass, 
 
 And down among the scroggs. 
 
 The bonniest chield that e'er I saw 
 
 Lay sleeping 'mang his dogs. 
 
 — Johnnie of Bredislee.. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, when in his 
 last illness in Italy, was taken 
 to a wild scene on the mountains 
 that border the Lago di Garda. 
 He had long been apathetic, 
 and almost insensible, to sur- 
 rounding objects ; but his fad- 
 ing eyes flashed with unwonted 
 fire at the sight of the furze 
 bushes and scrogs that reminded 
 him of home and Scotland, and 
 he suddenly exclaimed, in the 
 words of the Jacobite ballad — 
 
 Up the scroggy mountain. 
 And down the scroggy glen. 
 
 We dare na gang a hunting, 
 For Charlie and his men. 
 
 Scroggam and ni£fam. These 
 two words occur as a kind of 
 chorus in a song attributed, but 
 on doubtful authority, to Kobert 
 Bums. It is wholly unworthy 
 of his genius, and appears — if 
 he had anything at all to do 
 with it — to have been slightly 
 mended, to make it more pre- 
 sentable in decent company. 
 Burns was almost wholly unac- 
 quainted with Gaelic, though he 
 occasionally borrowed a phrase 
 or a word from that language 
 without quite comprehending its 
 meaning. 
 
 There was a wife wonn'd in Cockpen, 
 
 Scroggam ! 
 She brewed guid ale for gentlemen. 
 Sing, Auld Coul lay ye down by me, 
 Scroggam, my dearie, ruffam. 
 
Scrub — Scunner. 
 
 183 
 
 Scroggam is the Gaelic for 
 sgroggam, let me put on my 
 bonnet ; and ruffam is ruhham, or 
 (ruffam) let me rub or scratch. 
 An obscene meaning is con- 
 cealed in the words. 
 
 Scrub, a terrn of contempt for a 
 mean, niggardly person ; a Scot- 
 tish word that has made good 
 its place in the English verna- 
 cular. Scroppit, sordid, parsi- 
 monious ; from the Gaelic scrub, 
 to hesitate, to delay, especially 
 in giving or paying ; sgrubail, 
 niggardly ; scrubair, a churl, a 
 miser. 
 
 S c r u n t, a worn - out broom ; 
 scrunty, a Northern word, sig- 
 nifying, according to Halliwell, 
 short, stunted. Jamieson gives 
 a second interpretation — **a 
 person of slender make, a 
 walking skeleton. ' ' Possibly the 
 word is a corruption of the 
 English shrink, shrank. There 
 is no trace of it either in the 
 Teutonic or the Gaelic. 
 
 S cuddy, stark naked ; from the 
 Gaelic sguad, to strip or lay 
 bare. 
 
 Strip a country lass o' laigh degree per- 
 fectly scuddy, and set her beside a town 
 belle o' a noble blood, equally naked, 
 and wha can tell the ewe-milker frae the 
 duchess? — Nodes Ambrosiana. 
 
 Scug or skug, to hide, to take 
 shelter, to run to sanctuary, to 
 overshadow. 
 
 That's the penance he maun dree 
 
 To scug his deadly sin. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Young Benjie. 
 
 In this quotation, skug seems 
 to mean expiate, rather than 
 hide or take refuge from the 
 consequence of the deadly sin. 
 Jamieson derives this word from 
 the Gothic-Swedish skugga, a 
 shade. It does not, however, 
 appear in modern Swedish dic- 
 tionaries. Skug and scuggery 
 are noted both by Halliwell and 
 Wright as northern English 
 words for secret, hidden, and 
 secrecy. In a note to the ballad 
 of " Young Benjie," in the 
 " Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border," Sir Walter Scott states 
 that scug means to shelter or 
 expiate. Possibly, if the inter- 
 pretation of "shelter" can be 
 accepted as connected, the ety- 
 mology of the word is the Gae- 
 lic sgathach, pronounced sgctch, 
 or skug, a screen. 
 
 Scunner or sconner, a very ex- 
 pressive word, significant of a 
 loathing or aversion to a thing 
 or person, for which it is some- 
 times diflScult or impossible to 
 account. 
 
 And yill and whisky gie to cairds 
 Until they scunner. 
 
 — Burns: To James Smith. 
 
 From the Gaelic sgonn, bad, 
 also rude, boorish, ill-mannered. 
 It enters also into the compo- 
 site of the English word scoun- 
 drel, and the Italian scondruds, 
 evidently of Celtic and Tuscan 
 origin. Or it may perhaps be 
 derived with equal propriety 
 from sgeun, a fright, and sgeun- 
 aich, to frighten. 
 
1 84 
 
 Scutch — Sell. 
 
 Scutch, to bruise or beat, to beat 
 or dress flax. The error of 
 Shakspeare's printers in spell- 
 ing scutch as scotch, has led to 
 the all but incorrigible mispro- 
 nunciation of the word — "We 
 have scotched the snake, not 
 killed it "—and to the idea that 
 the word has something to do 
 with Scotland, and with the 
 habits of the Scottish people. 
 Squids, pronounced scuitch or 
 scutch, is the Gaelic for to bruise, 
 to beat ; sguidseadh, the act of 
 dressing flax. The word scutch 
 is still used in the northern 
 counties of England. 
 
 Sea-maw, the sea-gull, or sea- 
 mew ; the beautiful white bird 
 of the ocean. 
 
 Keep your ain fish-guts to feed your ain 
 sea-maws. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 The white sea-mew, and not 
 the white dove, was considered 
 by the Druids the bird that 
 Noah let fly from the ark on 
 the subsiding of the Deluge. 
 The name of 'pigeon, sometimes 
 given to the dove, signifies in 
 Gaelic the bird of security ; 
 from jpighe, bird, and dion {di 
 pronounced ji), security, pro- 
 tection. The coincidence is 
 curious. 
 
 Seile, happiness ; from the Ger- 
 man selig, happy. 
 
 Sei^e o' your face I is a phrase in Aber- 
 deenshire, expressive of a blessing on the 
 person to whom It is addressed. — Dean 
 Kamsav. 
 
 Sokand seil is best — the happiness that 
 is earned is best — i.e., earned by the 
 plough ; from sock, the ploughshare, and 
 here used metaphorically for labour of any 
 kind. — Ferguson's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Selkouth or selcouth, seldom seen 
 or known ; rendered * ' wondrous ' ' 
 by Sir Walter Scott, in the notes 
 to "Thomas the Khymer." The 
 word is of the same origin as the 
 English uncouth, strange, or un- 
 known ; from Icythe, to show, or 
 appear". 
 
 By Leader's side 
 A selkouth sight they see, 
 A hart and hind pace side by side 
 As white as snow. 
 
 ' — Thomas the Rhymer. 
 
 Sell or selle, a seat, a chair, a 
 stool. Latin sed\le, French sdle, 
 a saddle, the seat of a rider. This 
 was once an English as well as 
 a Scottish word, though obso- 
 lescent in the Elizabethan era. 
 Shakspeare uses it in Macbeth — 
 
 Vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself. 
 And falls on the other— 
 
 which, to render the image per- 
 fect, as Shakspeare meant — 
 and no doubt wrote — ought to 
 be read — 
 
 Vaulting ambition that o'erleaps its sell, 
 And falls on the other side. 
 
 The London compositors of 
 Shakspeare's time, ignorant of 
 the word sell, insisted upon mak- 
 ing self of it, and in omitting 
 "side." Ambition, in the guise 
 of a horseman, vaulting to the 
 horse's back, could not fall on the 
 other side of itself ; though it 
 might well fall on the other side 
 
Shacklebane — Shangie-mou' d. 
 
 i8s 
 
 of the sM or saddle, and light 
 upon the ground, which is the 
 true Shakspearian metaphor. 
 
 Shacklebane, the wrist; a word 
 apparently first applied to a 
 prisoner who was handcuffed, 
 or manacled. 
 
 Shadow-half, the northern ex- 
 posure of land. Sir Walter 
 Scott built Abbotsford on the 
 wrong side of the Tweed — in 
 the shadow-half. Land with a 
 southern exposure is called the 
 sunny-half, or the sunnyside. 
 
 S h a g; h 1 e, sometimes written 
 shaucle, to walk clumsily, to 
 shuffle along, to drag or shackle 
 the feet as if they were pain- 
 fully constrained by the shoes ; 
 to distort from the original 
 shape, to wear out. 
 
 Had ye sic a shoe on ilka foot, it wad 
 gar ye shaghle. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 And how her new shoon fit her auld shachtt 
 feet. 
 — Burns : Last May a Braiv Wooer. 
 
 Schachled is metaphorically applied to a 
 young woman who has been deserted by 
 her lover. She is, on this account, com- 
 pared to a pair of shoes that have been 
 thrown aside, as being so put out of shape 
 as to be unfit to be worn any longer. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Jamieson derives this word from 
 the Icelandic skaga, deflectere ; 
 skaggrer, obliquus. If he had 
 looked at the Gaelic, he would 
 have found seac {shale), dried up, 
 worn out, without substance, 
 decayed. 
 
 Shairnie-faced, a contemptuous 
 epithet applied to a person with 
 a very dirty face; from sham, 
 or shairn, dung, more especially 
 cow-dung, sometimes called in 
 English covf-sherd, a word, in 
 all probability, from the same 
 source. 
 
 Flae luggit, shairnie-faced. 
 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Shalk, a servant, a workman, a 
 farm-servant ; from the Gaelic 
 sgalag, corrupted in America 
 into scalaivag, and used as a 
 term of opprobrium. The word 
 enters into the components of 
 the French marechal, and the 
 English marshal ; from the Gaelic 
 maor, a bailiff, overseer, steward, 
 or superintendent ; and sgalag, 
 a servant or workman, whence 
 marechal, one in charge of work- 
 men or servants. 
 
 Shang, a vulgar term for a hasty 
 luncheon or "snack," and for 
 what Scottish children call a 
 " piece ; " shangie, thin, meagre, 
 lean. 
 
 A shang o' bread and cheese, a bite be- 
 tween meals. In Icelandic skan, a crust, 
 a rind. — Jamieson. 
 
 The root is probalbly the Gaelic 
 seang {sheang), lean, hungry ; 
 thence, by extension of meaning, 
 a piece taken to satisfy hunger. 
 
 Shangie-mou'd, hare-lipped, or 
 with a cleft mouth ; from shan- 
 gan, a cleft stick, or anything 
 cleft or divided. 
 
 Shangie-mou'd, haluket Meg. 
 
 —The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
i86 
 
 Shank — Shath mont. 
 
 The word haZuJcet in this de- 
 risory line appears to be a form 
 of haZse, a giddy, thoughtless 
 girl. 
 
 Shank, the leg. This noun is 
 sometimes used as a verb in 
 Scotland, and signifies to depart, 
 to send away, to dismiss. To 
 shank a person is to send him 
 away ; equivalent in English, to 
 give him the sack ; to shanJc one's 
 self away is to leave without 
 ceremony. The English phrase, 
 to go on shank's or shanks' s mare, 
 i.e., to walk, is rendered in 
 Scottish — to go on shank's naigie, 
 or little nag. Jamieson absurdly 
 suggests that the English, to 
 travel by the marrow-hone stage, 
 i.e., to walk, or go on shank's 
 mare, may be derived from the 
 parish of Marylebone, in Lon- 
 don. The etymology of shank 
 is the Gaelic seang {shank), lean, 
 slender, like the tibia, or bone 
 of the leg. 
 
 Shannach, or shannagh, a word 
 explained by Jamieson in the 
 phrase, " ' It's ill shannagh in 
 you to do this or that,' i.e., it 
 is ill on your part, or it is 
 ungracious in you to do so." 
 In Gaelic seanacach signifies 
 wily, cunning, sagacious, which 
 is clearly the root of shannagh, 
 so that the phrase cited by 
 Jamieson signifies it is not wise, 
 or it is ill wisdom on your part 
 to do so. 
 
 Shard (more properly sharg), a 
 contemptuous epithet applied 
 
 to a little, weazened, under- 
 grown, and, at the same time, 
 petulant and mischievous child. 
 From the GaeUc searg {s pro- 
 nounced as sh), a withered, 
 insignificant person or animal, 
 one shrivelled or dried up 
 with age, sickness, or infirm- 
 ity ; seargta, withered, dried up, 
 blasted. 
 
 Shargar, sharg, a lean, scraggy, 
 cadaverous person. Shargie, thin, 
 shrivelled, dried up ; from the 
 Gaelic searg, a puny man or 
 beast, one shrivelled with sick- 
 ness or old age ; also, to wither, 
 to fade away, to dwindle or dry 
 up, from want of vitality. 
 
 Sharrow, sharp, sour or bitter 
 to the taste. Flemish schcrp, 
 French acerbe, Gaelic searbh, 
 bitter ; searbhad, bitterness ; 
 searbhag, a bitter draught. 
 
 Shathmont, a measure, of which 
 the exact length is uncertain, 
 but which is evidently smalL 
 
 As I was walking all alane 
 Atween the water and the wa', 
 
 There I spied a wee, wee man, 
 The wee'est man that e'er I saw. 
 
 His leg was scarce a shathmont lang. 
 —Ballad of the Wee, Wee Man. 
 
 This obsolete English, as well 
 as Scottish word, is sometimes 
 written shaftmond, and shaft- 
 man. It appears in "Morte 
 Arthur," and other early Eng- 
 lish poems. The etymology has 
 never been satisfactorily traced. 
 Shacht, which is also written 
 schaft, is Flemish for the handle 
 
Shaver — Shaw. 
 
 187 
 
 of a pike, or hilt of a sword ; 
 and mand is a basket or other 
 piece of wickerwork; whence 
 schacht-mand, a basket-hilt, or 
 the length of a basket hilt of 
 a sword, which may possibly 
 be the origin of the word. 
 The length of a shathmont is 
 stated to be the distance be- 
 tween the outstretched thumb 
 and little finger — a distance 
 which corresponds with the 
 position of the hand, when 
 grasping the sword-hilt. Maund, 
 for basket, is not yet entirely 
 obsolete. 
 
 Shaver, a droll fellow, a wag, a 
 funster, or one who indulges in 
 attempts at fun ; shavie, a trick. 
 
 Than him at Agincourt wha shone. 
 Few better were or braver, 
 
 And yet wi' funny, queer Sir John, 
 He was an unco shaver. 
 
 — Burns : A Dream. 
 
 But Cupid shot a shaft 
 That played the dame a shavie. 
 — Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 It has been suggested that 
 shaver, in the sense of a wag or 
 funster, is derived from Figaro 
 the barber, as the type of a 
 class who were professionally 
 funny in amusing their cus- 
 tomers, when under their hands 
 for hair-cutting or hair-dressing. 
 The words are possibly corrup- 
 tions of the old English shaver ^ 
 described by Nares as a low, 
 cunning fellow, and used by the 
 writers of the early decades of 
 the seventeenth century. Shaver, 
 in the United States, signifies 
 a bill discounter who takes ex- 
 
 orbitant interest, and a shave 
 means a swindle or an imposi- 
 tion. Some have derived the 
 word from shave, to cut the 
 beard, itself a word of very 
 uncertain etymology, and not 
 necessarily connected with any 
 idea of dishonesty. The more 
 likely derivation is from the 
 Gaelic saohh (or shaov), dis- 
 semble, prevaricate, take unfair 
 advantage of, also, foolish. 
 
 Shaw, a small wood, a thicket, 
 a plantation of trees ; from the 
 Teutonic. This word was once 
 common in English literature. 
 It still exists in the patrony- 
 mics of many families, as Shawe, 
 Alder shaw, Einshaw, Hackshaw, 
 Hawkshaw (or Oakshaiv), and 
 others, and is used by the pea- 
 santry in most parts of England 
 and every part of Scotland. 
 
 Whither ridest thou under this green 
 
 shawe ? 
 Said this yeman. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Freres Tale. 
 
 Gaillard he was as goldfinch in the shaw, 
 
 Brown as a berry, a proper short fellow. 
 
 — Idem. : The Coke's Tale. 
 
 Close hid beneath the greenwood shaw. 
 
 — Fairfax. 
 
 In summer when the shaivs be shene. 
 
 And leaves be fair and long, 
 It is full merry in fair forest, 
 To hear the fowles' song. 
 
 —Ballad 0/ Robin Hood. 
 
 To all our haunts I will repair. 
 
 By greenwood, shaw, and fountain. 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 The braes ascend like lofty wa's, 
 The foaming stream deep roaring fa's, 
 O'erhung wi' fragrant spreading shaws. 
 The birks of Aberfeldy. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
i8S 
 
 Shear — Shtll. 
 
 Gloomy winter's now awa, 
 Saft the westlin breezes blaw ; 
 'Mang the birks o' Stanley shaw. 
 The mavis sings fu* cheery, oh. 
 
 — Tannahill. 
 
 There's nae a bonnie flower that springs 
 By fountain, shaw, or green, 
 
 There's nae a bonnie bird that sings. 
 But minds me o' my Jean. 
 
 — Burns : O/a the Airts. 
 
 Shear. The primary meaning of 
 shear is to cut or clip. In this 
 sense it is used by English 
 agriculturists, for the operation 
 of cutting or clipping the fleece 
 of sheep. In Scotland it is used 
 in the sense of reaping or cut- 
 ting the corn in harvest. On 
 the occasion of the first visit of 
 Queen Victoria and the Prince 
 Consort to the Highlands of 
 Scotland, it was duly stated in 
 the Court Circular that Her 
 Majesty visited the shearers, and 
 took much interest in their 
 labours. In the following week, 
 a newly-started pictorial journal, 
 in opposition to the Illustrated 
 London News, published a wood 
 engraving, in which Her Majesty, 
 the Prince, and several members 
 of the Court in attendance, were 
 represented as looking on at the 
 shee'p - shearing. The Cockney 
 artist, ignorant alike of the 
 seasons of agricultural opera- 
 tions and of the difference be- 
 tween the Scottish and English 
 idioms, and who had no doubt, 
 wished the public to believe 
 that he was present on the 
 occasion on which he employed 
 his pencil, must have been pain- 
 fully convinced, when his fraud 
 
 was discovered, of the truth 
 of the poetic adage, that •* a 
 little knowledge is a dangerous 
 thing ; " and that shearing and 
 reaping had different meanings 
 in England and Scotland. 
 
 In hairst, at the shearitig, 
 Nae youths now are jeering. 
 At fairs or at preaching, 
 Nae wooing and fleeching. 
 
 — The Flowers o' the Forest, 
 
 Sheuch, a drain, a furrow or 
 trench. 
 
 I saw the battle sair and teuch. 
 And reekin' red ran mony a sheuch. 
 —Burns : The Battle of Sheriffmuir. 
 
 Shiel or shielin, a hut, a shed, or 
 small cottage on the moor or 
 mountain for the shelter of 
 cattle or sportsmen ; derived by 
 Jamieson from the Icelandic 
 skalay a cottage ; probably a 
 corruption of shield, or shield- 
 ing, a place where one may be 
 shielded or sheltered from the 
 weather. Wintershielins, winter 
 quarters. 
 
 No ; I shall ne'er repent, Duncan, 
 
 And shanna e'er be sorry ; 
 To be wi' thee in Hieland shzel 
 
 Is worth the lands o' Castlecary. 
 
 — Ballad of Lizzie Baillie. 
 
 The craik among the clover hay, 
 
 The paitrick whirrin' o'er the lea, 
 
 The swallow jinkin' round my shiel. 
 
 Amuse me at my spinnin' wheel. 
 
 —Burns : Bess and her Spinnin IVheeL 
 
 Shfll. Appears to be a contraction 
 for the sake of euphony of the 
 harsher English'word shrill. The 
 etymology of shrill is doubtful, 
 though some derive it from the 
 
Shilpit — Shot. 
 
 189 
 
 Scottish skirl, which they call 
 an onomatopeia, or imitation of 
 the sound. This also is doubt- 
 ful, more especially if the Teu- 
 tonic schreien, and the Dutch 
 and Flemish schreuicen, to cry 
 out discordantly, are taken into 
 consideration. 
 
 The westlin' wind blaws loud and skzli, 
 
 The night's baith mirk and rainy, O. 
 
 — Burns : My Nannie, O. 
 
 Shilpit, insipid, tasteless, dull, 
 stale, flat ; applied to liquor and 
 sometimes to persons, meta- 
 phorically to signify that they 
 are spiritless, timid, cowardly, 
 and of no account. 
 
 A shilpett {shilpit) wretch, a heart 
 stripped of manliness. — Jamieson. 
 
 The Laird of Balmawhapple pronounced 
 the claret shilpit, and demanded brandy 
 with great vociferation. — Scott : Waver- 
 ley. 
 
 According to Jamieson, shilpit 
 is used to designate ears of corn 
 that are not well filled. He 
 derives it from the German 
 schelp, signifying a reed, a 
 bulrush, which is possibly the 
 word that he referred to. But 
 neither schelp, which Jamieson 
 renders by the Latin putamen, a 
 paring, a husk, a shell, or schilp, 
 a bulrush, can be considered the 
 root of shilpit, as applied to the 
 insipidity or flatness of a liquor. 
 The origin of shilpit remains un- 
 known, though it may possibly 
 have some remote connection 
 with the Gaelic sile {shile), saliva, 
 or drivel. 
 
 Shool, a shovel. 
 
 If honest nature made you fools, 
 What sairs your grammars ? 
 
 Ye'd better ta'en up spades and shools 
 An' knappin' hammers. 
 
 —Burns : To Lapraik. 
 
 Shoon, the old plural of shoe, 
 still used in Scotland, though 
 almost obsolete in England. 
 
 If ever thou gave hosen or shoon, 
 
 Every night an awle, 
 Sit thee down and pass them on, 
 And Christ receive thy saule. 
 — Funeral Dirge, in use in England 
 before the Reformation, quoted 
 in Aubrey's Miscellanies. 
 
 Short, to divert, to amuse, to 
 shorten the time by agreeable 
 conversation; shortsome, divert- 
 ing, as opposed to langsome, or 
 longsome, tedious, wearisome. 
 In English, short is often applied 
 to a hasty or quick temper. 
 In Scottish parlance, shortly 
 or shortlie, signifies tartly, 
 peevishly, ill-naturedly. 
 
 Shot, shote, a puny or imperfect 
 young animal, especially a pig 
 or lamb. The Americans, who 
 have acquired many words from 
 the Scottish and Irish immi- 
 grants, have shote, a weakly 
 little pig, and apply the word 
 metaphorically to man or woman 
 as an epithet of contempt or 
 derision. It is derived from the 
 Gaelic seot (pronounced sheot, or 
 shote), a stunted animal, a short 
 tail, a tail that has been docked ; 
 and, generally, an incumbrance, 
 impediment, or imperfection ; 
 scotair signifies an idle, lazy, 
 
190 
 
 Shouther — Simmer Couts. 
 
 useless person, a drone ; a 
 vaurien, a good-for-nothing. 
 
 Seth Slope was what we call down East 
 a poor shote, his principal business being 
 to pick up chips and feed the pigs. — 
 B artlett's Dictionary of A mericanisms. 
 
 Shouther, the shoulder; "High- 
 landers ! shouther to shouther ! " 
 the motto of some of the High- 
 land regiments in the British 
 service. 
 
 When the cloud lays its cheek to the flood, 
 And the sea lays its shouther to the shore. 
 — Chambers's Scottish Songs: Hew 
 Ainslie. 
 
 Shue, to play at see-saw ; shuggie- 
 shue, a swing. 
 
 Sib, related, of kin by blood or 
 marriage. Hence the English 
 gossip, from god-sib, related by 
 baptismal union. From the 
 German sippe, which has the 
 same meaning ; and sippschaft, 
 relationship. 
 
 He was sidie to Arthur of Bretagne. 
 
 — Chaucer. 
 He was no fairy born or std to elves. 
 — Spenser. 
 
 A boaster and a liar are right si5. 
 A' Stewarts are no szd to the king. 
 
 It's good to be sii to siller. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 We're no more sib than sieve and riddle. 
 Though both grew in the woods together. 
 — Cheshire Proveri. 
 
 Siccan, such ; sic like, such like, 
 or such a, as an adjective ; sic 
 like a time, such a time ; sic like 
 a fashion, in such a way or 
 fashion ; generally used in the 
 sense of inopportune, improper, 
 unseemly. 
 
 What the deil brings the laird here 
 At sic like a time ? 
 
 — The Laird o Cockpen. 
 Wi' siccan beauties spread around. 
 We feel we tread on holy ground. 
 — James Ballantine : Damick Tower. 
 
 Sicker, siccar, firm, safe, secure ; 
 sickerly, safely ; sickemess, safety, 
 security ; to sicker, to make cer- 
 tain; lock sickar, lock securely, 
 or safely — the motto of the 
 ancient Scottish family, the 
 Earls of Morton. Mak sickar is 
 another motto of historic origin 
 in Scotland. 
 
 Toddlin' down on Willie's mill, 
 Setting my staff wi' a' my skill 
 To keep me sicker. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Sick-saired, nauseated by reple- 
 tion, served with food to excess, 
 and to consequent sickness and 
 loathing. 
 
 Simmer (or summer) couts, the 
 
 gnats or midges which live for 
 one summer day, bom ere noon 
 and dying ere sunset, and which 
 seem to pass their brief life in 
 whirhng and dancing in the sun- 
 shine. The word, a summercout, 
 is often applied affectionately 
 to a very troublesome and merry 
 young child. Jamieson suggests 
 that couts may be a corruption 
 of colts, in which supposition he 
 is possibly correct, though the 
 comparison of the tiny midge 
 with so large an animal as a 
 young horse is not easy to ex- 
 plain. According to Wright's 
 Dictionary of Provincial English, 
 cote signifies a swarm of bees, 
 
Sindle — Skeely. 
 
 191 
 
 which seems to approach nearer 
 to the idea of the midges. In 
 Gaelic, cuiha signifies frenzy, 
 delirium ; and cuihaich, frantic 
 dancing of the midges or other 
 ephemeral flies, allied in idea to 
 the phrase of Shakspeare — "a 
 midsummer madness." This may 
 be the real origin of the phrase. 
 
 Sindle, seldom ; from the Teutonic 
 sdten. 
 
 Kame sindle, kame sair. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Skalragf , of a shabby appearance ; 
 from the Gaelic sgail, to cover, 
 and rag, which is both Gaelic 
 and English. Skalrag is synony- 
 
 . mous, as Jamieson states, with 
 tatterdemalion, one covered with 
 rags, though he is incorrect in 
 the etymology from skail, to 
 scatter, and the explanation that 
 it signifies one who "gives his 
 rags to the wind." 
 
 Skedaddle, to disperse suddenly. 
 A long obsolete Scottish word, 
 revived unexpectedly in the army 
 of the Potomac during the great 
 American Civil War at the battle 
 of Bull's Run, in 1862, when 
 the Federal troops were seized 
 with unreasonable panic, or 
 alarm, and fled, when there 
 was no pursuit. The word is 
 said to be still occasionally used 
 in Dumfriesshire, and to be ap- 
 plied to the wasteful overflow, 
 of the milk in the pails, when 
 the milkmaids do not balance 
 them properly, when carrying 
 them from the byre to the 
 
 farm. It has been generally 
 considered to be an Ameri- 
 can coinage, on account of the 
 incident of the retreat at Bull's 
 Run, which brought it into noto- 
 riety, but was in reality em- 
 ployed either by the Gaelic- 
 speaking Irish or Scottish sol- 
 diers under General MacCleUan's 
 command, and derived from the 
 two Gaelic words sguit, to wan- 
 der, to disperse, and allta, wild, 
 irregular, ungovernable ; or else 
 from sgath {ska), to lop or cut 
 off, and adhl, a hook; though 
 some hold that it is derivable 
 from the Greek aKeda^ca, to dis- 
 perse. It is still doubtful 
 which of these derivations, or 
 either of them, is correct. 
 
 Skeigh, proud, scornful, disdain- 
 ful, mettlesome, insolent in the 
 pride of youth. 
 
 When thou and I were young and skeigh. 
 — Burns : Auld Farmer to his Auld 
 Mare, Maggie. 
 
 Maggie coost her head fu' heigh. 
 Looked asklent and unco skeigh. 
 
 — Burns : Duncan Gray. 
 
 From the Gaelic sgeig, to taunt, 
 deride, scorn ; sgeigeach, disdain- 
 ful. Jamieson has sheg, which 
 he says is not clear, though he 
 quotes "a skeg, a scorner, and 
 a scolder " — words which might 
 have helped him to the mean- 
 ing. 
 
 Skeely, for skilful, but implying 
 much more than the English 
 word ; sagacious, far-seeing. 
 
192 
 
 Skeerte — Skelpie-Hmmer. 
 
 Out and spak Lord John's mother, 
 And a skeely woman was she, 
 " Where met ye, my son, wi' that bonnie 
 boy 
 That looks sae sad on thee ? " 
 
 -'Ballad of Burd Helen. 
 
 Where will I get a skeely skipper 
 To sail this ship o' mine ? 
 — Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. 
 
 Skeerie, easily scared or fright- 
 ened, timid, shy ; from scare. 
 
 Skellum and blellum. These 
 words are directed against Tarn 
 o' Shanter by his wife, in Burns' 
 immortal poem : 
 
 She tauld thee weel thou wast a skellum, 
 A bletherin', blusterin', drunken blellum. 
 
 They are explained in the glos- 
 saries as signifying the first, " a 
 worthless fellow ; " the second, 
 ** an idle, talkative fellow." 
 STcellum was used by English 
 writers in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, among others by Taylor, 
 the water-poet, and by Pepys in 
 his diary. It is traceable to the 
 German, Dutch, and Flemish 
 schclm, a rogue, a rascal, a bad 
 fellow; and also to the Gaelic 
 sgiolam, a coarse blackguard ; 
 and sgiolomach, addicted to 
 slander and mischief - making. 
 Blellum is also from the Gaelic, 
 in which hlialum signifies inco- 
 herent, confused in speech ; 
 especially applied to the utter- 
 ances of a drunken man. 
 
 Skelp, to smack, to administer a 
 blow with the palm of the hand ; 
 to sTcelp the doup (breech), as 
 used to be the common fashion 
 of Scottish mothers. 
 
 I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie. 
 
 E'en to a deil, 
 To skelp and scaud puir dogs like me, 
 
 And hear us squeal ! 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 This word, of which the Eng- 
 lish synonym is spank, to strike 
 with the palm of the hand in a 
 quick succession of blows, ap- 
 pears to be derived primarily 
 from the Gaelic sgealhh, to dash 
 into small pieces, fragments, or 
 splinters ; and to have been ap- 
 plied afterwards, by extension 
 of meaning, to the blows that 
 might be sufficient to break any 
 brittle substance. The English 
 spank is to strike with the open 
 hand, and the Scottish spunk, a 
 match, signifies a splinter of 
 wood, in which the same exten- 
 sion of meaning, from the blow 
 to the possible results of the 
 blow, is apparent. Skelp also 
 means to walk or run at a smart 
 pace, and the slang English 
 phrase, "A pair of spanking 
 tits " (a pair of fast-trotting or 
 galloping horses), shows the 
 same connection between the 
 idea of blows and that of rapid 
 motion. 
 
 And, barefit, skelp 
 Awa' wi' Willie Chalmers. 
 
 — Burns. 
 Three hizzies, early at the road, 
 Cam skelpin' up the way. 
 
 —Burns: The Holy Fair. 
 Tarn skelpit on thro' dub and mire, 
 Despising wind and rain and fire. 
 
 — Burns : Taiti d Shanter. 
 
 Skelpie-limmer, a violent woman, 
 ready both with her hands and 
 , tongue. 
 
Skene-occle — Skink. 
 
 193 
 
 Ye little skelpie-limmers face, 
 I daur ye try sic sportin'. 
 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 Skene-occle, a dagger, dirk ; from 
 the Gaelic scjian, a knife, con- 
 cealed in the achlais, under the 
 arm, or in the sleeve ; achlasan, 
 anything carried under the arm ; 
 from whence the verb achlaisich, 
 to cherish, to fold to the bosom, 
 or encircle with the arm. 
 
 "Her ain sell," said Callum, "could 
 wait for her a wee bit frae the toun, and 
 kittle her quarters wi' his skene-occle" — 
 " Skene-occle I what's that ? " Callum un- 
 buttoned his coat, raised his left arm, and, 
 with an emphatic nod, pointed to the hilt 
 of a small dirk, snugly deposited under the 
 wing of his jacket. 
 
 — Scott: Wccverley, 
 
 Skin, a vituperative term applied 
 to a person whom it is wished 
 to disparage or revile. " Ye're 
 naething but a nasty skin.'' 
 Jamieson suggests that this 
 word is a figurative use of the 
 English shin, as denoting a husk. 
 It is more likely to be a corrup- 
 tion of the Gaelic sgonn, a block- 
 head, a dolt, a rude clown, an 
 uncultivated and boorish person, 
 a dunce ; from whence sgonn 
 bhalaoch, a stupid fellow; sgon 
 signifies vile, worthless, bad ; 
 whence the English scoundrel — 
 from sgon, and droll, or droil, 
 an idle vagabond. 
 
 Skincheon o* drink, a drop of 
 drink, a dram ; a pouring out 
 of liquor. Skincheon is a mis- 
 print for skinkin\ 
 
 Skink, to pour out; skinker, a 
 waiter at a tavern who pours 
 
 out the liquor for the guests, a 
 bar tender. From the Flemish 
 and German schenken, to pour 
 out. This word is old English 
 as well as Scotch, and was used 
 by Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and 
 their contemporaries. Skink is 
 sometimes contemptuously ap- 
 plied to soup or broth when not 
 of the accustomed flavour or 
 consistency, imparted by vege- 
 table ingredients, such as bar- 
 ley, peas, &c. 
 
 Sweet Ned, I give thee this pennyworth 
 of sugar, clapt even now into my hand by 
 an under-ski'nker. 
 
 — Shakspeare: Henry IV. 
 Such wine as Gannymede doth skink to 
 Jove.— Shirley. 
 Ye powers wha mak mankind your care, 
 And dish them out their bill o' fare ; 
 Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware 
 
 That jaups i' luggies, 
 But if ye wish her grateful prayer, 
 Gie her a haggis. 
 
 —Burns : To a Haggis. 
 The wine ! there was hardly half a 
 mutchkin, — and poor fushionless skink it 
 was. — Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 In many of the editions of 
 Burns which have been printed 
 in England, the compositors, or 
 printers' readers, ignorant of the 
 word skink, have perverted it in 
 the ** Lines to a Haggis," into 
 stink. 
 
 Auld Scotland wants nae stinking wares. 
 — Complete Works <?/" Robert Burns, 
 edited by A lexander Smith. Lon- 
 don : Macmillan &' Co., 1868. 
 
 " These editions," says Mr 
 James M'Kie of Kilmarnock 
 in his Bibliography of Robert 
 Burns, "are known to collectors 
 as the stinking editions." 
 N 
 
194 
 
 Skipper — Sklent. 
 
 Skipper, the captain of a ship, but 
 properly any sailor; s^/p-man, 
 a ship man. This word is fast 
 becoming English, and promises 
 to supersede captain as the de- 
 signation of officers in the mer- 
 cantile marine. STcipper is from 
 the Danish skiffer, the German, 
 Dutch, and Flemish schiffer. 
 
 The king sat in Dunfermline tower, 
 Drinking the blood-red wine ; 
 
 Oh whaur '11 I get a skeely skipper, 
 To sail this ship o' mine. 
 
 — Sir Patrick Spens. 
 
 It is related of the late eminent 
 sculptor, Patric Park, that, on 
 an excursion through the beau- 
 tiful lakes that form the chain 
 of the Caledonian Canal, he was 
 annoyed by the rudeness of the 
 captain of the steamer, and ex- 
 pressed his sense of it in lan- 
 guage more forcible than polite. 
 The captain, annoyed in his 
 turn, inquired sharply — "Do 
 you know, sir, that I'm the 
 captain of the boat?" "Cap- 
 tain be hanged ! " said the irate 
 man of genius, "you're only the 
 skipper, that is to say, you're 
 nothing but the driver of an 
 aquatic omnibus ! " The skip- 
 per retired to hide his wrath, 
 muttering as he went that the 
 sculptor was only a stone mason ! 
 
 Skirl, to shriek, to cry out, or to 
 make a loud noise on a wind in- 
 strument. 
 
 Ye have given the sound thump, and he 
 the loud skirl {i.e., you have punished the 
 man, and he shows it by his roaring). 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 When skirlin weanies see the light. 
 Thou mak's the gossips clatter bright, 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 A family belonging to the Scottish Bor- 
 der, after spending some time at Florence, 
 had returned home, and, proud of the pro- 
 gress they had made in music, the young 
 ladies were anxious to show oflf their ac- 
 complishments before an old confidential 
 servant of the family, and accordingly sang 
 to her some of the finest songs which they 
 had learned abroad. Instead, however, of 
 paying them a compliment on their per- 
 formance, she showed what she thought of 
 it, by asking with much naivete— ^^ Eh, 
 mem ! Do they ca' skirling like yon, 
 singing in foreign parts?" — Dean Ram- 
 say's Reminiscetices. 
 
 Skirl-naked, stark naked ; naked 
 as a child that skirls or squalls 
 at the moment of its birth. Skirl 
 is allied to screech, shriek, and 
 shrill, and comes immediately 
 from the Gaelic sgreuch, a shrill 
 cry, and sgreucJiail, shrieking. 
 
 Sklent, oblique, slanting ; to de- 
 viate, to slant off the right line 
 of truth, to cast obliquely ; 
 to push away, to look away, to 
 squint. 
 
 Now, if yer ane o' warld's folk. 
 Who rate the wearer by the cloak, 
 And sklent on poverty their joke, 
 Wi' bitter sneer. 
 — Burns : To Mr. John Kennedy. 
 One dreary, windy, winter night, 
 The stars shot doun wi' sklentin light. 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 The city gent 
 Behind a kist to lie and sklent. 
 Or purse-proud, big with cent, per cent. 
 An' muckle wame. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 Ye did present your smootie phiz 
 
 'Mang better folk, 
 And sklented on the man of Uz 
 Your spiteful joke. 
 — Burns : Address to the DeiU 
 
Skrae — Skulduddery. 
 
 195 
 
 Skrae, or scrae, a thin, skinny, 
 meagre person, a skeleton ; skrae- 
 skankit, having skinny legs ; Eng- 
 lish scraff, and scraggy; Gaelic 
 sgraidh - teach {dk silent), shri- 
 velled, dried up ; sgraidht, a lean, 
 shrivelled, ugly old woman. 
 
 But gin she say, He still ye skrae. 
 That's Water Kelpie ! 
 — Jamieson's Border Minstrelsy: 
 Water Kelpie. 
 
 In the glossary appended by 
 Sir Walter Scott to Jamieson's 
 ballad written in imitation of 
 the antique, skrae is glossed 
 as a skeleton. 
 
 Skreigh, or screigh, a shrill cry, 
 a shriek, a screech. 
 
 The skreigh o' duty, which no man 
 should hear and be inobedient.— Scott : 
 Rob Roy. 
 
 It's time enough to skreigh when ye're 
 strucken. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 When thou and I were young and skeigh, 
 An' stable meals at fairs were dreigh. 
 How thou would prance and snort, and 
 skreigh, 
 An' tak the road. 
 
 — Burns: Auld Farmer to his 
 Auld Mare, Maggie. 
 
 Skulduddery. This grotesque 
 word has been held to signify 
 indulgence in lust, or illicit 
 passion ; but it also signifies 
 obscene language or conversa- 
 tion, or, as it is sometimes called 
 in English, smut. Jamieson 
 suggests the Teutonic shuld, 
 fault or crime, as the origin of 
 the first syllable, and the Gaelic 
 
 sgaldruth, a fornicator, as the ori- 
 gin of the whole word. Scaldruth, 
 however, has long been obsolete, 
 and seems to have been a com- 
 pound of sgald, to burn or scald ; 
 and druis, lust ; whence the mo- 
 dern Gaelic di'uisear, a fornica- 
 tor. If the Gaelic etymology be 
 accepted, the word would resolve 
 itself into a corruption of sgald- 
 druis, burning lust, or burned 
 by lust. From the Gaelic druis 
 came the old Enghsh druery, 
 for courtship, intercourse of the 
 sexes, gallantry ; and drossel, an 
 unchaste woman. The French, 
 who have inherited many Celtic 
 words from their ancestors, the 
 Gauls, formerly used the word 
 dru for a lover {un ami), and 
 drue for a sweetheart [une amie). 
 BrxL, as an adjective, signified, 
 according to the "Dictionaire 
 de la Langue Romane" (Paris 
 1768), "un amant vigoureux et 
 propre au plaisir." Druerie, in 
 the sense of courtship and gal- 
 lantry, occurs in the "Roman 
 de la Rose." Another French 
 word, sgaldrine, still more akin 
 to the Scottish skulduddery, is 
 cited in the " Dictionaire Comi- 
 que de Le-Roux," as a "terme 
 d'injure pour une femme de 
 mauvaise vie ; femme publique 
 affligde d'une maladie bru- 
 lante." 
 
 And there will be Logan Macdonald — 
 Skulduddery and he will be there ! 
 — Burns : The Election. 
 
 That can find out naething but a wee bit 
 skulduddery for the benefit of the Kirk 
 Treasury.— Scott : Rob Roy^ 
 
196 
 
 Skyhald — Slanky. 
 
 Skybald, apparently the same as 
 the English skeivbald and pie- 
 bald, terms to designate a horse 
 of two colours, marked as cows 
 and oxen more usually are. 
 Both skybald and piebald, as 
 well as the English skewbald, 
 have their origin in the Gaelic. 
 Sky and skew are corruptions of 
 sgiath, a shade, a dark shade ; 
 pie comes from pigke, a pie, or 
 magpie, a bird whose black 
 plumage is marked with a white 
 streak ; bald is derived from the 
 Gaelic ball, a mark or spot ; 
 whence skybald is shade-marked, 
 and piebald is marked like a 
 bird. Jamieson says that, in 
 Scotland, skybald signifies a 
 base, mean fellow, a worthless 
 person, and that it is also ap- 
 plied to a man in rags and 
 tatters. Possibly this metaphori- 
 cal use of the word arises from 
 the fact that the rags of such 
 a person [ are often of various 
 colours. Locke, the celebrated 
 English metaphysician, uses pie- 
 bald in a similar sense, "a pie- 
 bald livery of coarse patches." 
 In Yorkshire, according to 
 Wright's Provincial Dictionary, 
 skeyVd signifies parti-coloured, 
 which is apparently from the 
 same Gaelic root as sky and 
 skew. 
 
 Skjrre. Jamieson renders this 
 word, pure, mere, utter. The 
 Flemish and German schier sig- 
 nifies nearly, almost ; while the 
 Danish skier means clear, pure, 
 limpid. Thus the Danish, and 
 not the German or Flemish, 
 
 seems to be the root of this 
 Scottish word. 
 
 Skjrte or skite, to eject liquid for- 
 cibly, a flux, or diarrhoea. This 
 vulgar word is often, both in a 
 physical and moral sense, ap- 
 plied in contempt to any mean 
 person. A skyte of rain is a sud- 
 den and violent shower ; skyter 
 is a squirt, a syringe; so called 
 from the violent ejection of the 
 liquid. Bletherum skyte — more 
 properly, blether and skyte (see 
 Blether, ante) — is a colloquial 
 phrase very often employed by 
 people who are unaware of the 
 grossness of its original mean- 
 ing, and who are impressed by 
 its aptness as descriptive of the 
 windy trash of conversation and 
 assertion which it but too power- 
 fully designates. The word is 
 derivable either from the Eng- 
 lish scu<i,fast motion, or the Gae- 
 lic sgud, to cut, a cutting wind. 
 
 When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte. 
 —Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Slack, slug, a pass, opening, or 
 gap between two hills ; from the 
 Gaelic sloe, and slochd, a hollow, 
 a cavity, a ravine. Slochd muigh, 
 or the gap of the wild swine, is 
 a wild pass in the Grampians 
 between Perth and Inverness. 
 
 But ere he won the Gate-hope slack, 
 I think the steed was wae and weary. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Border: 
 Annan Water. 
 
 Slanky, slimy. 
 
 Twa slanky stanes seemed his spule banes. 
 —Border Minstrelsy : The Water 
 Kelpie. 
 
Slap — Sliver, 
 
 197 
 
 Slap, a breach, or casual opening 
 in a hedge or fence. 
 
 At sla^s the billies [fellows] halt a blink [a 
 little while], 
 Till lassies strip their shoon. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Slawpie, slaipie, indolent, slo- 
 venly ; derived by Jamieson 
 from the Icelandic dapr, ho- 
 muncio sordidus. It is rather 
 from the Gaelic sZa^Jac/i, slovenly, 
 slapair and slaopair, a slovenly 
 man, a drawler, an idler; and 
 slapaff, a slut, a lazy, dirty, 
 slovenly woman or girl; and 
 slapaireachd, slovenliness. 
 
 Sleuth-hound, a blood-hound, a 
 hound trained to follow by the 
 scent the track of man or beast. 
 From the Gaelic slaod, a trace, 
 a trail ; and slot, sliogach, subtle, 
 keen scented. 
 
 Wi' his sleuth-dog in his watch right 
 
 sure; 
 Should his dog gie a bark, 
 He'll be out in his sark, 
 And die or win. 
 
 —Ballad of The Fray 0/ Suport. 
 
 Slid, smooth ; sUddery, slippery. 
 
 Ye had sae saft a voice, and a slid 
 tongue. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Gentle 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Sliddery, slippery ; from slide. 
 Slidder, unstable, changeable in 
 thought or purpose, not to be 
 depended upon. 
 
 There's a sliddery stane afore the ha' 
 
 door. 
 [It is sometimes dangerous to visit 
 great houses.] 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 Though I to foreign lands must hie, 
 Pursuin' fortune's sliddery ba'. 
 —Burns: Farewell to his Native 
 Country. 
 
 Slink, a tall, idle person ; a term 
 of depreciation. The word is 
 usually associated with lang, as, 
 a lang slink. It is sometimes 
 written and pronounced slunk. 
 It is derived apparently from the 
 Teutonic schlang, the JDutch and 
 Flemish slang, a snake. Slinkcn 
 means to grow long, thin, and 
 attenuated ; and Jamieson has 
 the adjective slunk, lank and 
 slender ; and the substantive 
 slink, a starveling. 
 
 Slint or slinter, a slovenly, untidy, 
 awkward man, corresponding 
 with the English slut as applied 
 to a woman ; from the Gaelic 
 slaod, to draggle or trail lazily 
 along the ground ; slaodag, a slut ; 
 slaodair, a sluggard. Jamieson 
 derives it from the Teutonic 
 slodde, a dirty female ; but the 
 word is not to be found in Ger- 
 man dictionaries, though it pos- 
 sibly exists in the vulgar patois. 
 
 Sliver, a slice, a small piece. The 
 word was eiliployed in this sense 
 by Chaucer, and is akin to the 
 English slice, and to the Gaelic 
 slios, a side. Stormonth derives 
 it from the Anglo-Saxon slifan, 
 to cleave or split. Shakspeare 
 uses the word three times. 
 
 Slivered in the moon's eclipse. 
 
 — Macbeth, act iv. scene 1. 
 
 An envious sliver broke. 
 
 —Hamlet, act iv. scene 7. 
 Sliver and disbranch. 
 
 — Lear, act iv. scene a. 
 
1 98 
 
 Slacken — Slounge. 
 
 Slocken, to slake, to allay thirst, 
 to extinguish. 
 
 Foul water may slocken fire. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 It slackened not my drouth, but aggra- 
 vated a thousandfold the torrent o' my 
 greed. — Nodes AmbrosiancF. 
 
 The Rev. John Heugh of Stirling was 
 one day admonishing one of his people on 
 the sin of intemperance : " Man 1 John I 
 you should never drink except when 
 you're dry." " Weel, sir," said John, 
 " that's what I'm aye doin', but I'm never 
 slocken'd." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Slogan, the war-cry of a High- 
 land clan. 
 
 Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge. 
 
 — Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 When the streets of high Dunedin, 
 Saw lances gleam and falchions redden, 
 And heard the slogan s deadly yell. 
 
 Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 Jamieson has this word as 
 slughorn, and derives it from the 
 Irish Gaelic sluagh, an army, 
 and arm, a horn. Jamieson 
 might have found the true ety- 
 mology in the Scottish Gaelic 
 sluagh, the people, the multi- 
 tude, the clan ; and gairm, a cry, 
 a shout, a loud call. The slogan 
 was not made on a horn ; and 
 arm does not signify a horn in 
 Gaelic. Slogan, the war-cry, has 
 been used by English writers 
 as synonymous with pibroch, 
 especially in a play that en- 
 joyed considerable popularity a 
 quarter of a century ago, on the 
 siege and relief of Lucknow dur- 
 ing the Indian Mutiny. When 
 General Havelock approaches 
 with his gallant Highlanders, 
 
 Jeanie, the heroine of the piece, 
 who hears the music of the 
 pibroch from afar, exclaims, 
 " Oh ! hear ye not the slogan?" 
 But the " pock puddings," as 
 one of Sir Walter Scott's char- 
 acters called the English, knew 
 no better, and always applauded 
 the slogan. 
 
 S logger, to swallow broth, por- 
 ridge, or spoon meat awkwardly 
 and voraciously; from the Gaelic 
 sluig, to swallow ; slugair, or 
 slogair, a glutton. Synonymous 
 with the local English slorp, 
 
 Sloom, a deep sleep, whence the 
 English word slumber, a light 
 sleep ; from the Flemish slui- 
 meren, to sleep ; sluimerig, sleepy. 
 
 Sloomy, lethargic. 
 
 Slorp, slotter, to eat or drink 
 greedily, and with a guttural 
 and vulgar noise ; from the 
 Flemish and Dutch slorpen, 
 which has the same meaning. 
 
 There's gentle John, and Jock the slorp, 
 And curly Jock, and burly Jock, 
 And lying Jock himsel'. 
 
 — Hogg's Jacobite Relics. 
 
 Slort, a sloven ; slotter, to work in 
 an idle, slovenly, and bungling 
 manner; akin to the English 
 slut, applied in the same manner 
 to a woman. From the Gaelic 
 slaodair, a sluggard ; a lazy, 
 careless person. 
 
 Slounge, to go idling about, to go 
 sorning (q.v.), or seeking for a 
 
Slunk — Smervy. 
 
 199 
 
 dinner, lounging about and 
 coming into the house of a 
 friend or acquaintance at or 
 near dinner time, as if acciden- 
 tally. Apparently a corruption 
 of the Gaelic slugair, a glutton ; 
 sluganach, a voracious person, 
 and slugan, the gullet. 
 
 Slunk, sometimes written slung, 
 an Aberdonian word, which ac- 
 cording to Jamieson signifies a 
 tall, cadaverous-looking person 
 of inferior intellect, ** a lang, 
 toom, haiverilly kind o' chiel." 
 He derives it from the Icelandic 
 slani, an imbecile. The word, 
 however, seems akin to the 
 English slink, as its past par- 
 ticiple slunk, and to be derivable 
 from the German schlang, a 
 snake that slinks away, and is 
 hence, by association of ideas, 
 applied metaphorically, in the 
 same way as the English sneak, 
 which has a similar origin. 
 
 Sma' drink, a weak liquor ; the 
 English say small beer, for weak 
 beer or ale, and the French 
 petit vin, for inferior wine. To 
 "think nae sma' drink o' him- 
 sel'," is a phrase applied to any 
 one who thinks too much of his 
 own dignity or importance. 
 
 Smaik, a mean, low fellow, a 
 poltroon, a puny fellow, a per- 
 son of small moral or physical 
 account. 
 
 " Oh, I have heard of that smaik," said 
 the Scotch merchant ; " it's he whom your 
 principal, like an ohstinate auld fule, wad 
 male a merchant o' — wad he, or wad he 
 no ! " — Scott : Jiofi Roy, 
 
 This false, traitorous smaik. I doubt 
 he is a hawk of the same nest. — Scott : 
 Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
 From the Teutonic schmach, 
 insult, ignominy ; schmdchtig, 
 slender, lank. 
 
 Smeddum, spirit, pith, energy. 
 Also dust, powder ; from the 
 Gaelic smodan, small dust. 
 
 Now and then ye may overhaul an article 
 that's ower lang and ovver stupid, and put 
 some smeddum into it. — Nodes Ambro- 
 siance. 
 
 Oh, for some rank mercurial rozet, 
 
 Or pale red smeddum, 
 I'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o't 
 Wad dress your droddum.* 
 
 — Burns : To a Louse. 
 
 Smeerless, pithless, marrowless; 
 from the Gaelic smior, marrow. 
 
 I mark him for a sjneerless dolt. 
 Who'd jink to eschew a thunderbolt. 
 — George Beattie : John d Arnha. 
 
 Smergh, marrow, vigour, pith ; 
 strength either of body or of 
 mind; smergJders, weak, mar- 
 rowless, pithless, vapid, insipid; 
 from the Gaelic smior, marrow, 
 and smiorach, marrowy, or full 
 of marrow and pith. The Teu- 
 tonic mark, marrow, seems to 
 be of this origin, with the omis- 
 sion of the initial s, though 
 Jamieson traces it to the Teu- 
 tonic mergh, which does not 
 mean marrow, but marl. 
 
 Smervy, fat and marrowy. 
 
 They scum'd the cauldron, fed the fuel, 
 They steer'd and preed, the smervy gruel. 
 —George Beattie : John d Arnha'. 
 
 * Droddum, a ludicrous word for the 
 posterior of a child. 
 
200 
 
 Sm iddle — Smook. 
 
 Smiddle, to work by stealth; 
 derivation uncertain, but pos- 
 sibly related to smith, smithy, 
 and smiddy. 
 
 Smird, to gibe, to jeer. Jamieson 
 derives this word from the Ice- 
 landic sma' (the Scottish sma' 
 and the English small), and ord, 
 a word, and supposes it to mean 
 small and contemptuous lan- 
 guage. It is more probably 
 from the Gaelic smioradh or 
 smiuradh, smearing, or besmear- 
 ing; used metaphorically for 
 larding with abuse or ill-natured 
 jests. 
 
 Smit, the noise, clash, or clank of 
 smitten metal ; from the English 
 smite. 
 
 As she was walking maid alane 
 Down by yon shady wood, 
 
 She heard a smt'i o bridle reins 
 She wished might be for good. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy: Lord William. 
 
 Smitch or smytch, a term of 
 contempt or anger applied to 
 an impudent boy ; from smtit, 
 dirt, a stain, an impurity. Ger- 
 man schmiitzig, dirty ; Flemish 
 and Dutch smotsen, to soil, to 
 dirty, to defile ; the English 
 smudge. 
 
 Smirl, a roguish or mischievous 
 trick. Jamieson derives this 
 word from the German schmieren, 
 illudere ; but in the German 
 • dictionaries it is defined as "to 
 . smear." It is more probably 
 from the Gaelic smiorail, strong, 
 active, lively ; and "I'll play him 
 a smirl for that yet," as quoted 
 by Jamieson, simply means, 
 "I'll play him a lively trick for 
 that yet." 
 
 And in some distant place, 
 Plays the same sviirle. 
 
 — T. Scott. 
 
 Smirtle, a slight, or half -sup- 
 pressed laugh or smile. 
 
 And Norie takes a glack of bread and 
 
 cheese. 
 And wi' a smirtle unto Lindie goes. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 This word is akin to the Eng- 
 lish smirk, but without any de- 
 preciatory meaning. 
 
 Smolt, an epithet applied to the 
 weather when fair and calm, 
 with a blue sky. 
 
 Merry maidens, think na lang, 
 The weather is fair and smolt. 
 — Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 This word is used, according 
 to Messrs. Halliwell and Wright, 
 in Sussex and other parts of 
 England. It is probable that 
 the root is the Teutonic schmalte^ 
 deep blue, applied to the un- 
 clouded sky. 
 
 O'er Branxholme Tower, ere the morning 
 hour, 
 Where the lift is like lead so blue, 
 The smoke shall roll white on the weary 
 night, 
 And the flame shine dimly through. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Lord Inglis. 
 
 Smook, to prowl stealthily about 
 a place, with a view to pilfer 
 small articles ; from the Flemish 
 smuig, furtive, secret. 
 
Smookie — Sneck. 
 
 20 r 
 
 Smookie, addicted to petty lar- 
 ceny. 
 
 The smookie gipsy i' the loan. 
 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Smoor, abbreviation and corrup- 
 tion of smother. 
 
 What's the matter, quo' WilHe, 
 Though we be scant o' claes, 
 
 We'll creep the closer thegither, 
 An' we'll smoor a' the fleas. 
 
 — Wood an' Married an A '. 
 
 Smjrte, a small particle ; possibly 
 derived from the spark of an 
 anvil when smitten; smytrie, a 
 large collection of little things, 
 or little children' 
 
 A smytrie o' wee duddie weans. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Snack, a slight repast, a cut from 
 the loaf, refreshment taken 
 hastily between meals ; to go 
 snacks, to share with another. 
 From the Gaelic snaigh, to cut. 
 SnacTc, and to go snacks, are still 
 used in colloquial English, and 
 are derived by Worcester and 
 
 t others from snatch, i.e., as much 
 of a thing as can be snatched 
 hastily. An etymology which 
 may apply to snack, a lunch, 
 but scarcely applies so well as 
 the Gaelic snaigh, to the phrase 
 of go snacks, or shares in any 
 thing. 
 
 Snag, to chide, to taunt, to re- 
 prove, to snarl ; snaggy, sar- 
 castical, apt to take offence. 
 This word, with the elision of 
 the initial s, remains in Eng- 
 lish as nag, the form of scolding 
 
 . or grumbling, which is pecu- 
 
 liarly attributed to quarrelsome 
 women. It is one of the numer- 
 ous family of words commenc- 
 ing with m, which, in the 
 Scottish and English languages, 
 generally imply a movement of 
 the lips and nose, expressive of 
 anger, reproof, scorn, and in 
 inferior animals, of an inclina- 
 tion to bite ; such as snarl, snub, 
 sneer, snort, snap, snack, or 
 snatch (as an animal with its 
 jaws), and many others, all of 
 which, inclusive of snore, sniff, 
 snuff, sneeze, snigger, snivel, 
 snout, have a reference to the 
 nose. They appear to be de- 
 rivable primarily from the Gae- 
 lic sron, pronounced strone, the 
 nose. The Teutonic languages 
 have many words commencing 
 with schn, which also relate to 
 the action of the nose, and are 
 possibly of the same Celtic 
 origin. 
 
 Snag'gerel, a contemptuous term 
 for a puny, deformed child; from 
 snag, a broken bough. 
 
 Snash, impertinence, rebuff, re- 
 buke. 
 
 Poor bodies . . . 
 . . . thole (endure) a factor's snash. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Sneck or snick, the latch, bolt, or 
 fastening of a door. The ety- 
 mology is uncertain, and can- 
 not be traced to any branches 
 of the Teutonic, either High 
 Dutch, Low Dutch, or Danish 
 and Swedish. The English has 
 
 . snacket and snccket, a fastening. 
 
202 
 
 Sneeshin^ — Snool. 
 
 a hasp; as well as sneck and 
 snick, with the same meaning 
 as the Scotch, but the words 
 are local, not general. 
 
 And you, ye auld sneck-dravf'ing dog, 
 Ye came to Paradise incog. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Sneeshin', snuif; from sneeze; 
 sneeshin^ -mull, a snuff-box. 
 
 Snaped haddocks, wilks, dulse an' 
 tangles, 
 An' a mull o' gude sneeshin to prie ; 
 When weary wi' eatin' and drinkin' 
 We'll up an' we'll dance till we die. 
 — The Blithesome Bridal. 
 
 Snell, keen, bitter, sharp, quick ; 
 from the Flemish sneZZ, and the 
 German schneU, swift. 
 
 And bleak December's winds ensuing 
 Baith snell and keen. 
 
 — Burns : 7'<? a Mouse. 
 Sir Madoc was a handy man, and snell 
 In tournament, and eke in fight. 
 
 —M arte Arthur. 
 Shivering from cold, the season was so 
 snell. 
 
 —Douglas : Eneid. 
 
 The winds blew snell. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 Snelly the hail smote the skeleton trees. 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 Snirtle, to laugh slily, or in a half 
 suppressed manner. 
 
 He feigned to snirtle in his sleeve,. 
 When thus the laird addressed her. 
 
 — Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 Snood or snude, a ribbon, a 
 band worn by young unmarried 
 women in or around the hair. 
 
 To tyne one's snude is a phrase applied 
 in Scotland to a young woman who has 
 lost her virginity. It is singular that the 
 ancient Romans had the same figure. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 The word and the fashion 
 appears to be peculiar to the 
 Celtic nations. In Gaelic, snuadh 
 signifies beauty and adornment, 
 and thence an ornament, such 
 as the snood of the Scottish 
 maidens. The word appears in 
 Snowdon, the ancient name of 
 Stirling, which signifies the fair 
 or beautiful hill. The Kymric 
 and Welsh has ysnoden, a fillet, a 
 lace, a band, evidently from the 
 same root. The much despised 
 English patronymic Snooks, 
 sometimes alleged to be a cor- 
 ruption of sevenoaks, is probably 
 of Celtic origin, from snuadhach 
 {snu-ach), beautiful. 
 
 Snool, to flatter abjectly, to cringe, 
 to crawl. This word also means 
 to snub, to chide ill-naturedly 
 and unduly. 
 
 They snool me sair and haud me down, 
 And gar me look like bluntie, Tam ; 
 But three short years will soon wheel roun', 
 And then comes ane and twenty, Tam. 
 — Burns. 
 Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
 Ow're blate (shy) to seek, ow're proud to 
 snool. 
 
 —Burns : A Bard's Epitaph. 
 Your snools in love and cowards in war, 
 Frae maidens' love are banished far. 
 
 — John o' Amha. 
 
 The etymology of this word 
 is uncertain. It seems to have 
 some relation to the nose and 
 mouth, and expression of the 
 features in an unfavourable 
 sense ; like many words in the 
 English language commencing 
 withsn. (See Snag, an<6.) The 
 most probable derivation is that 
 given by Jamieson from the 
 
Snoove — Sodger, 
 
 203 
 
 Danish snojle, to reprimand un- 
 necessarily, continually, and un- 
 justly — the French rabrouer. 
 
 Snoove, to glide away easily, 
 like a worm or snake ; to sneak. 
 Probably from the Gaelic sniomh 
 (pronounced sni-ov), to twist, to 
 twine, to wriggle, 
 
 But just thy step a wee thing hastit, 
 Then snoovt away. 
 
 — Burns : Auld Farmer to his 
 Auld Mare, Maggie. 
 
 Snowk, to snuff, to smell, to 
 scent. 
 
 Wi' social nose they snuffed and snowket. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Snuit, to go about in a careless, 
 half-stupefied manner; snuitit, 
 having the appearance of sleepy 
 inebriety. 
 
 He was gaun snuitin down the street ; 
 he came snuitin in. — Jamieson. 
 
 Jamieson traces the word to 
 the Dutch and Flemish &nuxt, 
 the snout. The Gaelic has snot, 
 to smell, to snuff up the wind, 
 to turn up the nose suspiciously ; 
 and snotach, suspecting, inclined 
 to suspicion. 
 
 Snurl, to ruffle the surface of the 
 waters with a wind; meta- 
 phorically applied to the temper 
 of man or woman. 
 
 Northern blasts the ocean snurl. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Sockdologer, a heavy, knock- 
 down blow. This word is 
 usually considered to be an 
 Americanism. But it clearly 
 
 comes from the "old country," 
 from the Gaelic sogh, easy ; and 
 dolach, destructive ; dolaidk, 
 harm, detriment, injury, de- 
 struction ; thus a sockdolager 
 means a blow that destroys 
 easily. 
 
 Sodger or sojer, a soldier ; sioad- 
 die or swad, a familiar and vulgar 
 name for a soldier. 
 
 My humble knapsack a' my wealth, 
 A poor but honest sodger. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 The Scottish word sodger is 
 possibly not a mere corruption 
 or mispronunciation of the Eng- 
 lish soldier, or the French soldat, 
 as it is generally considered to 
 be. The old Teutonic for soldier 
 was Jcriegsman, warman, or man 
 of war ; a word which was not 
 adopted by the early English 
 of German, Danish, and Flemish 
 descent. The English soldiers 
 were called bowmen, spearmen, 
 archers, &c. The commonly 
 accepted derivation of soldier is 
 from solde, pay, — i.e., one who 
 is paid. But in early times, 
 before the establishment of 
 standing armies, people who 
 took up arms in defence of their 
 country were not mercenaries, 
 but patriots and volunteers, or 
 retainers of great territorial 
 chieftains. Sodger, as distin- 
 guished from soldier, dates from 
 a period anterior to the inven- 
 tion of gunpowder and the use 
 of fire-arms, when bows and 
 arrows were the principal wea- 
 pons of warfare over all Eu- 
 rope ; may be derived from the 
 
204 
 
 Sokand Set'l — Sook. 
 
 Gaelic saighead, an arrow ; and 
 saighdear, an arrower, an archer, 
 a bowman ; the same as the 
 Latin saggitarius. Thus the 
 Scottish sodjer appears to be a 
 word of legitimate origin and of 
 respectable antiquity. Soldier, 
 from the French soldat, is com- 
 paratively modern, and does not 
 appear in the * ' Dictionary of the 
 First or Oldest Words in the 
 English Language, from the 
 Semi-Saxon Period from a.d. 
 1250 to 1300," by Herbert Cole- 
 ridge, published in 1862. It is 
 worthy of mention that Jamie- 
 son's Scottish Dictionary does 
 not contain sodger or sojer, but 
 has sodgerize, to act as a soldier, 
 or go a soldiering ; and the 
 strange term sodgertheed, which 
 he explains to be a low word 
 meaning one that has little or 
 no money, or having " the thigh 
 of a soldier ! " Had Jamieson, 
 before hazarding this sugges- 
 tion, looked to another page of 
 his own dictionary, he would 
 have found the word thig, to 
 beg, and might have explained 
 the phrase in the sense of a dis- 
 banded soldier, begging from 
 door to door, without any parti- 
 cular reference to his thigh. 
 
 Sokand sell. An old Scottish pro- 
 verb says, " Sokand sell is best." 
 Dean Ramsay, who quotes it, 
 defines it to mean, " The plough 
 and happiness is the best lot." 
 The translation is too loose to 
 be accepted. Soc is, indisput- 
 ably, a ploughshare, in Gaelic, 
 in French, in Flemish (in Latin 
 
 soccus), and other languages. 
 No trace, however, has hitherto 
 been discovered of its employ- 
 ment as a verb, signifying to 
 plough. It would seem, neverthe- 
 less, from the terminal syllable 
 in sockand, that it was in old 
 time so used in Scotland. Sell 
 is from the Gaelic sealbh, signify- 
 ing good fortune, good luck, 
 happiness, — whence the Teu- 
 tonic selig, happy. Ploughing, 
 in the proverb, may be taken to 
 mean labouring generally ; and 
 then the proverb might be ren- 
 dered, " Labouring happiness, 
 or the happiness that results 
 from labour, is the best." 
 
 Sonk, a stuffed seat, or a couch 
 of straw ; sonkie, a gross, coarse, 
 unwieldy man, of no more 
 shapely appearance than a sack 
 of straw. The root of these 
 two words seems to be the 
 Gaelic sonnach, anything thick, 
 bulky, or strong ; sonn is a stout 
 man, also a hero ; and sonnach, 
 a fat, ill-shaped person. 
 
 The Earl of Argyle is bound to ride, 
 And all his habergeons him beside, 
 Each man upon a sonk of strae. 
 — Introduction to Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 Sonse, happiness, good luck; 
 sonsie, strong, happy, pleasant ; 
 from the Gaelic sona, happy, 
 and sonas, happiness. Sonas agus 
 donas, happiness and unhappi- 
 ness. 
 
 His honest, sonsie, baws'nt face 
 Aye gat him friends in ilka place. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Sook, a suck, a drop, a sup or sip, 
 a taste of liquor. 8ooch or sook 
 
Sool — Soss. 
 
 205 
 
 is defined by Jamieson as "a 
 copious, draught. " 
 
 There sat a bottle in a hole, 
 
 Ayont the ingle low ; 
 And aye she took the ither sook, 
 
 To drook the stoury tow. 
 
 — The Weary Fund 0' Tow. 
 
 Sool (sometimes written soul), a 
 sufficiency of food, also, a relish 
 taken with insipid food to ren- 
 der it more palatable. ' ' Sod to 
 a potatoe," often applied to a 
 finnan haddie, or a red herring ; 
 sometimes ludicrously used by 
 the Irish as, "potatoes and 
 point," a potato pointed at a 
 red herring hanging from the 
 roof, to whet the imagination 
 with the unattainable flavour of 
 the sool. 
 
 I have, sweet wench, a piece of cheese as 
 good as tooth may chaw. 
 And bread and wildings souling well. 
 — Warner : Albion s England. 
 
 Sool, anything eaten with bread, such as 
 butter, cheese, &c. — Wright's Dictionary 
 of Obsolete English. 
 
 Soul, French saouler, to satisfy with 
 food. Soul, silver, the wages of a re- 
 tainer, originally paid in food. — Idem. 
 
 The French have soul, full; 
 and sc souler, to get drunk, i.e., 
 full either of meat or of liquor. 
 The Gaelic suit seems to be of 
 kindred derivation, and signifies 
 fat, full, replenished with good 
 things. 
 
 Sooth. Old English for truth, still 
 preserved in such phrases as, 
 " in sooth," *^ for-sooth," &c. In 
 Scottish, sooth is used as an ad- 
 jective, and signifies " true." 
 
 A sooth boord is nae boord (i.e., a jest 
 with too much truth in it may be no jest at 
 all). — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Sorn, to go to a person's house, 
 without invitation, and fasten 
 yourself upon him to feast or 
 lodge. The English synonym is 
 "to sponge upon;" a very in- 
 ferior form of expression, par- 
 taking of the character of 
 slang, and not to be compared 
 for force and compactness to 
 the Scottish word. Mr. John 
 Thompson, private secretary to 
 the Marquis of Hastings in 
 India, in his "Etymons of Eng- 
 lish Words," defines sorn to be 
 a corruption of sojourn. The 
 true etymon appears to be the 
 Gaelic saor, free, and saoranach, 
 one who makes free or esta- 
 blishes himself in free quarters. 
 It is related of a noble Scottish 
 lady of the olden time, who 
 lived in a remote part of the 
 Highlands, and was noted for 
 her profuse and cordial hospi- 
 tality, that she was sometimes 
 overburdened with habitual sor- 
 ners. When any one of them 
 out-stayed his welcome, she 
 would take occasion to say to 
 him at the morning meal, with 
 an arch look at the rest of the 
 company — " Mak' a guid break- 
 fast, Mr. Blank, while ye're 
 about it ; I dinna ken whar' 
 ye'll get your dinner." The 
 hint was usually taken, and the 
 sorner departed. 
 
 Soss, an incongruous, miscel- 
 laneous mixture of eatables. 
 
206 
 
 Soudie — Spae. 
 
 Soss-poke, a ludicrous term for 
 the stomach ; usually derived 
 from sal and salsum, because the 
 ingredients are salted ; but the 
 word is more likely to have 
 originated in soss, tjie old French 
 sause, the Flemish sass, the 
 modern sauce, compounded of 
 several ingredients, all blend- 
 ing to produce a particularly 
 piquant flavour. Soss is used 
 in colloquial and vulgar English 
 in the >Scottish sense of a mixed 
 mess; and sorde, evidently a 
 corruption of soss, is, according 
 to Mr. Wright's Archaic Dic- 
 tionary, a v(rord used in the 
 East of England to signify " any 
 strange mixture." 
 
 Soudie, broth ; from the old 
 English seethe, to boil. (See 
 PowsouDiE, ante.) 
 
 Sowens, flummery ; a mixture of 
 oatmeal and sour milk. 
 
 Sowie, diminutive of sow. An 
 implement of war for demolish- 
 ing walls, which the English 
 call a ram, and the French un 
 helier, or a battering ram; the 
 Scotch call it a sow, from its 
 weight and rotundity. 
 
 They laid their sowies to the wall 
 
 Wi' mony a heavy peal ; 
 But he threw ower to them again 
 Baith pitch and tar -barrel. 
 
 — Scott's Border Minstrelsy : 
 Auld Maitland. 
 
 Sowth, to try over a tune with 
 a low whistle, to hum a tune to 
 one's self involuntarily. 
 
 On braes when we please, then, 
 We'll sit and sowth a tune, 
 
 Syne rhyme till't ; we'll time till't, 
 And sing't when we hae done. 
 
 —Burns : To Davie, a Brother Poet. 
 
 Sourocks, wild sorrel ; any sour 
 vegetable. 
 
 S outer, a shoemaker, a cobbler. 
 This word occurs in early Eng- 
 lish literature, though it is now 
 obsolete. 
 
 Ploughmen and pastourers, 
 
 And other common labourers, 
 
 Souters and shepherds. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 The devil males a reeve to preach, 
 Or a souter, a shipman, or a bear. 
 
 — Chaucer : Canterbury Tales. 
 
 "Mair whistle than woo," 
 As the souter said when he sheared the 
 soo. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Souters wives are aye ill shod. 
 
 — Idem. 
 
 Sowther, or soother, to solder, 
 to make amends for, to cement, 
 to heal. 
 
 A towmond o' trouble, should that be my 
 
 fa', 
 Ae night o' good fellowship sowthers it a'. 
 —Burns : Contented wi Little. 
 
 Spae, to tell fortunes, to predict. 
 Etymology uncertain; derived 
 by Jamieson from the Icelandic, 
 but probably connected with 
 spell, a magic charm or enchant- 
 ment, or with s'pes, hope ; spae- 
 ivife, a fortune-teller ; spae-hooh, 
 magic book, a fortune-teller's 
 book. 
 
 The black spae-book from his breast he 
 took, 
 Impressed with mony a warlock spell ; 
 
Spairge — Spartle. 
 
 207 
 
 And the book it was wrote by Michael 
 Scott, 
 He held in awe the fiends o' hell. 
 
 — Lord Soulis ; Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 S;pae, which in Scottish means 
 to prophesy, has no connection 
 with the English spae, written 
 by Johnson spay, to castrate a 
 female animal for the purpose 
 of producing barrenness. 
 
 Be dumb, you beggars of the rhyming 
 
 trade, 
 Geld your loose wits, and let the muse be 
 
 spay'd. 
 
 A singular misconception of 
 the true meaning of a spay'd, or 
 one who is spay'd, has led to a 
 current English proverb, that 
 will doubtless drop out of use as 
 soon as its true origin is under- 
 stood. In Taylor's works (1630), 
 quoted by Halliwell, occurs the 
 couplet : — 
 
 I think it good plaine English without 
 
 fraude 
 To call a spade a spade, a bawd a bawd. 
 
 The juxtaposition of hawd and 
 spade in this passage suggests 
 that the true reading should be 
 spayd. In Dr. Donne's satires, 
 anterior to the works of Taylor, 
 there appears the line : — 
 I call a bawd a bawd, a spaed a spaed. 
 
 Nares in his Glossary asks 
 very naturally, "why the spade 
 (rather than the poker, or hoe, 
 or plough, or pitchfork, or any 
 other implement) was especially 
 chosen to enter into this figura- 
 tive expression is not clear." 
 If he had known the true mean- 
 ing of the word spay'd or spae'd, 
 
 the obscurity would have been 
 cleared up. 
 
 Spairge, to sprinkle, to scatter 
 about as liquids. From the 
 French asperger, to sprinkle 
 with water. 
 
 When in yon cavern grim and sootie. 
 
 Closed under hatches, 
 Spairges about the brimstane cootie.* 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Spank, to move rapidly ; spanker, 
 one who walks with a quick 
 and lively step ; spariky, frisky, 
 lively, sprightly. The phrase 
 "a spanking tit" is still em- 
 ployed by the sporting brother- 
 hood of the lower classes to 
 signify a fast horse. The Eng- 
 lish spank, to beat, to slap, 
 seems to be derivable from the 
 same idea of rapidity of motion 
 which pertains to the Scottish 
 word, and to be suggestive of 
 the quick and oft-repeated mo- 
 tion of the hands in spanking or 
 slapping the posterior. Spanker- 
 ing, nimble, active, alert. The 
 word is derived by Jamieson 
 from the Teutonic spannen, to 
 extend. The German word, 
 however, does not exactly mean 
 extend, but to put the horses to 
 a carriage, as the French dtteler. 
 
 Spargeon, plaister ; spargeoner, 
 a plaisterer ; from the French 
 asperger, to sprinkle. 
 
 Spartle, from the Flemish sparteln, 
 to move the limbs quickly or 
 
 * Cootie signifies a large dish, and also 
 the broth or other liquor contained in it. 
 
208 
 
 Spatch'Cock — Spaul. 
 
 convulsively, to kick about help- 
 lessly or involuntarily. Sprattle, 
 to struggle or sprawl. 
 
 Listening the doors and windows rattle, 
 I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
 Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 
 
 O' winter war, 
 And through the drift deep-lairing sprattle, 
 Beneath a scaur. 
 
 — Burns : A Winter Night. 
 No more was made for that lady, 
 
 For she was lying dead ; 
 But a' was for her bonnie bairn, 
 Lay spartling at her side. 
 . — Buchan's Ancient Ballads. 
 
 Spatch-cock, a fowl split open, 
 to be broiled in haste, on a 
 sudden demand for dinner from 
 an unexpected guest ; a corrup- 
 tion of o^ispaicA-cock, a cock 
 quickly cooked. The word is 
 
 \ common in the United States. 
 
 Spate, a flood or freshet, from the 
 overflow of a river or lake ; also 
 metaphorically an overflow of 
 idle talk. 
 
 The water was great and mickle o' spate. 
 — Kinmont Willie. 
 Even like a mighty river that runs down in 
 
 spate to the sea. 
 — W. E. Aytoun : Blackwood's Magazine. 
 
 He trail'd the foul sheets down the gait, 
 Thought to have washed them on a 
 stane. 
 The burn was risen out of spate. 
 
 — 'Rxrsoii's Caledonian Muse : The 
 Wife of A uchtermtichty. 
 
 While crashing ice, borne on the roaring 
 
 spate, 
 Sweeps dams an' mills an' brigs a' to the 
 
 gate. 
 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 And doun the water wi' speed she ran, 
 While tears in spates fa' fast frae her e'e. 
 —Border Mmstrelsy : Jock d the Side. 
 
 The Laird of Balnamoon was a truly 
 eccentric character. He joined with his 
 drinking propensities a great zeal for the 
 Episcopal Church. One Sunday, having 
 visitors, he read the services and prayers 
 with great solemnity and earnestness. 
 After dinner, he, with the true Scottish 
 hospitality of the time, set to, to make 
 his guests as drunk as possible. Next 
 day, when they took their departure, one 
 of the visitors asked another what he 
 thought of the laird. "Why, really," he 
 replied, "sic a spate o' praying, and sic a 
 spate o' drinking, I never knew in all the 
 course of my life." — Dean Ramsay's Re- 
 miniscences. 
 
 Spate, or spaite, is from the 
 Gaelic speid, a mountain torrent 
 suddenly swollen by rain. In 
 the North of England, accord- 
 ing to Messrs. Halliwell and 
 Wright, a spait signifies a more 
 than usually heavy downpour of 
 rain ; and in the county of Dur- 
 ham it signifies a pool formed 
 by the rain. 
 
 Spaul, sometimes written spald, a 
 shoulder; from the French es- 
 paule, or ipaule, often used to 
 signify a leg or limb. " To 
 spaul," according to Jamieson, 
 "is to push out the limbs like 
 a dying animal." 
 
 The late Duchess of Gordon sat at 
 dinner next to an Englishman, who was 
 carving, and who made it a boast that he 
 was thoroughly master of the Scottish 
 language. Her Grace turned to him and 
 said, " Rax me a spaul o' that bubbly- 
 jock ! " The unfortunate man was com- 
 pletely nonplussed. — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 The gander being longer in the spauld. 
 — Noctes AtnbrosiancE. 
 
 Wi' spur on heel, or splent (armour) on 
 
 spauld. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Kinmont Willie. 
 
Spean — Spier. 
 
 209 
 
 The Scotch employ the French 
 word gigot for a leg of mutton ; 
 but they do not say a spaul of 
 mutton for a shoulder. 
 
 Spean (sometimes spelled spane or 
 spayn), to wean. The English 
 wean is derived from the Ger- 
 man wohnen, or entuohnen ; and 
 the Scottish spean from the 
 Flemish and Low Dutch speen, 
 which has the same meaning. 
 Speaning-brash, an eruption in 
 children, which often occurs at 
 weaning-time. 
 
 Withered beldams auld and droll, 
 Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, 
 Louping and flinging on a crummock, 
 I wonder did na turn thy stomach. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn o' Shunter. 
 
 The meaning of spean, as used 
 by Burns, implies that the hags 
 were so very hideous, that, had 
 they been brood mares, a foal 
 would in disgust have refused 
 to imbibe nourishment from 
 them. 
 
 Speer-windit or spier-windit, out 
 of breath or wind from asking too 
 many questions, tired of asking ; 
 a word most applicable to im- 
 pudent barristers cross-examin- 
 ing a witness; from speer, or 
 spier, to inquire. 
 
 Spell, an interval. The Scotch 
 and the Americans say : ** a 
 spell of work," " a speU of idle- 
 ness," "a spell of bad weather," 
 ^^ Si spell of good weather," "a 
 s'pell of amusement," &c. The 
 derivation of the word is sup- 
 posed to be from the Dutch and 
 
 Flemish spel, the German spide, 
 to play. Possibly, though not 
 certainly, the root is the Gaelic 
 speal, to mow, cut down ; and 
 thence a stroke, i.e., a stroke of 
 good or bad weather, &c. The 
 word has recently become cur- 
 rent in English. 
 
 Spence, a store-room next to a 
 kitchen, where the provisions 
 are kept ; an inner apartment in 
 a small house. The word is 
 supposed to be derived from 
 dispense, to distribute ; whence 
 dispensary, the place where me- 
 dicines are distributed. 
 
 Wi' tottering step he reached the spence. 
 Where soon the ingle blazed fu' hie ; 
 
 The auld man thought himself at hame, 
 And the tear stood twinkling in his e'e. 
 —Pickering : Domocht Sea^ or the 
 Auld Minstrel. 
 
 Our Bardie lanely keeps the spence 
 Sin' Mailie's dead. 
 — Burns : Poor Mailie's Elegy. 
 
 "Edward," said the sub-Prior, "you 
 will supply the English knight here, in 
 this spence, with suitable food and accom- 
 modation for the night." — Scott : The 
 Monastery. 
 
 The word is still used in the 
 north of England for a buttery, 
 also for a cupboard, a pantry, 
 and a private room in a farm 
 house. 
 
 Yet I had leven she and I 
 Were both togydir secretly 
 In some corner in the spence. 
 
 — Halliwell. 
 
 Spier, to inquire, to ask after; 
 
 of unknown etymology. The 
 
 derivation from the Gaelic speur, 
 
 clear, whence by extension of 
 
 
 
210 
 
 Sperthe — Sphite. 
 
 meaning, an inquiry, to make 
 clear, is scarcely satisfactory. 
 
 Mony a ane spiers the gate he knows full 
 well. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 I am Spes, quoth he, 
 And spier after a knight, 
 That took me a mandement 
 Upon the mount of Sinai. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 I spiered for my cousin fu couthie and 
 
 sweet. 
 — Burns : Last May a Braw Wooer. 
 
 When lost, folks never ask the way they 
 want. 
 
 They spier the gait. 
 ' — Robert Leighton : Scotch Words. 
 
 A very expressive derivation of spier is 
 back-spier, meaning to cross-examine. — 
 R. Drennan. 
 
 Her niece was asking a great many 
 questions, and coming over and over the 
 same ground, demanding an explanation 
 how this and that had happened, till at 
 last the old lady lost patience, and burst 
 forth — " I winna be back-spiered, noo, 
 Polly Fullerton." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Sperthe, a spear, a javelin, or, 
 more properly, a battle-axe; a 
 word that might well be rescued 
 from oblivion for the use of 
 rhymers, often hardly pushed for 
 a rhyme to earth, birth, girth, 
 and mirth — all well, or too well 
 worn. 
 
 His helmet was laced. 
 At his saddle girth was a good steel 
 sperthe, 
 
 Full ten pound weight and more. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Eve of 
 St. John. 
 
 Spin-drift, sometimes corruptly 
 written and pronounced s'peen- 
 drift^xA spune-drift, snow driven 
 by the wind in whirls or spin- 
 nings in the air, and finally 
 
 accumulates on the ground 
 when the force of the wind is 
 exhausted. 
 
 Spirlie, a person with slender legs ; 
 spindle-shanked, slim, thin, often 
 combined with lang ; as, "A 
 lang spirlie," a tall slender per- 
 son. From the Gaelic speir, a 
 shank, a claw ; speireach, having 
 slender limbs. 
 
 Spleuchan, a Highland purse ; 
 from the Gaelic spliuchan, an 
 outside pouch or receptacle of 
 small matters, and spliuch, any- 
 thing that hangs down. 
 
 Deil mak' his king's-hood [scrotum] 
 
 in a spleuchan. 
 —Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Splore, a riotously merry meeting ; 
 to make a splort, to create a 
 sensation. The Americans have 
 splurge, a word with the same 
 meaning. The derivation is un- 
 known. 
 
 In Poosie Nancy's held the splore. 
 
 Wi' quaffing and laughing, 
 They ranted and they sang. 
 —Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 The squads o' chiels that lo'ed a splore, 
 
 On winter evenings never ca' ; 
 Their blythesome moments now are o'er. 
 Since Rabbie gaed an' left them a'. 
 —Richard Gall : On the Death 
 of Bums. 
 
 Splute, to exaggerate in narrative, 
 to indulge in fiction. Jamieson 
 derives this word from the 
 French exploit, but it is more 
 probably a corruption of the 
 Gaelic spleadh, a romance, a 
 
Spoacher — Sproage. 
 
 211 
 
 boast, a gasconade, a vain- 
 glorious assertion; spleadhaich, 
 hyperbolical. 
 
 Spoacher, a poacher, one who 
 steals game. The Scottish word 
 seems to have been the origi- 
 nal form, and to have become 
 poacher by the elision of the 
 initial s, a not uncommon result 
 in words from the Celtic, as the 
 Welsh hen, old, is the same as 
 the Gaelic scan; the English 
 nag is the same as snag, to snarl 
 or say provoking things, as is 
 the custom with spiteful women 
 if they wish to quarrel with 
 their husbands. The English 
 ^poacher is usually derived from 
 poke, the French jpoc/ie, a pocket, 
 pouch, or bag, because the 
 poacher, like the sportsman, 
 lags his game. But if the Scot- 
 tish spoacher be the elder word, 
 it will be necessary to account 
 for the lost s. This is supplied 
 in the Gaelic spog, to seize vio- 
 lently, as birds of prey do with 
 their claws and talons, and 
 spogadh, seizure. Jamieson was 
 of opinion that the s was added 
 in the Scottish word ; but this 
 would be a singular instance, 
 contradicted by all previous ex- 
 perience of similar cases. 
 
 Spoutie, a word of contempt for 
 a too fluent orator, or a garru- 
 lous boaster ; one who, accord- 
 ing to a wealthy Scottish phil- 
 anthropist, is too plentifully 
 endowed with "the pernicious 
 gift of the gab — the curse of 
 all free countries, especially of 
 
 Great Britain and the United 
 States." To spout is a common 
 English vulgarism that signifies 
 to talk at an inordinate length 
 to a public meeting. The Ame- 
 ricans derisively call it to orate. 
 
 Sprack, lively, alert, animated; 
 common in Scotland and pro- 
 vinces in the south of England. 
 
 Spraikle, sprackle, sprauchle, to 
 
 clamber up a hill with great 
 exertion and difficulty. From 
 the Gaelic spracail, strong, ac- 
 tive. The English words sprawl 
 and sprag seem to be of the same 
 parentage. 
 
 I, rhymer Robin, alias Bums, 
 
 October twenty-third ; 
 A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day, 
 Sae far I sprachled up the iDrae, 
 I dinnered wi' a lord. 
 —Burns : The Dinner with Lord Doer. 
 Wad ye hae naebody spraickle up the 
 brae but yoursel, Geordie.— Scott : For- 
 tunes of Nigel. 
 
 Spring, a lively tune. 
 
 Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 
 He played of spring 
 Beneath the gallows tree. 
 — Old Song : Macphersons Farewell. 
 
 Let him play a spring on his ain fiddle 
 {i.e., let him have his own way; let him 
 ride his own hobby.) — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Ye are as lang in tuning your pipes as 
 anither man wad be in playing a spring. — 
 Scottish Proverb. 
 
 Sproage. This eccentric-looking 
 word signifies, according to 
 Jamieson, to go out courting at 
 night, to wander by the light 
 of the moon or stars. Alexander 
 Ross, in *' Helenore, or the 
 
212 
 
 Spulzie — Spurtle. 
 
 Fortunate Shepherdess, 
 the lines : — 
 
 has 
 
 We maun marry now ere lang ; 
 Folk will speak o's, and fash us wi' the kirk. 
 Gin we be seen thegither in the mirk. 
 
 Neither Burns, Allan Ramsay, 
 nor Scott employs this word, 
 and its origin is wholly un- 
 known, unless the Gaelic sporach, 
 to incite, excite, or instigate, 
 may supply a clue. 
 
 Spulzie, to despoil, to ravage, to 
 devastate, to lay waste ; from 
 depouUZer, to spoil, or despoil. 
 
 Spulzie him, spulzie him ! said Craigievar, 
 
 Spulzie him presentlie, 
 For I wad lay my lugs in pawn, 
 He'd nae gude will at me. 
 
 —'Buchat^'s Ancient Ballads: The 
 Death of John Seton. 
 
 Spune-hale, in such restored 
 health as to be able to take 
 one's ordinary food, one's kail or 
 parritch, with a good appetite. 
 Parr itch-hale and meat-hale are 
 synonymous. 
 
 Spung, a purse that fastens with 
 a clasp ; sporan, the large purse 
 worn by the Highlanders on full- 
 dress occasions. 
 
 Rut wastefu' was the want of a', 
 Without a yeuk they gar ane claw. 
 When wickedly they bid us draw 
 
 Our siller spunk's. 
 For this and that to mak them braw 
 And lay their tongues. 
 — Allan Ramsay : Last Speech of 
 a Wretched Miser. 
 
 Spunk, a match, a spark ; spunkie, 
 fiery, high spirited ; also an 
 "ignis fatuus" or will o' the 
 
 wisp. The word is derived by 
 Jamieson from the Gaelic spong, 
 rotten wood, or tinder, easily 
 inflammable ; but it is question- 
 able whether the root is not 
 the Teutonic /wn^, a sparkle of 
 light] funkeln, to sparkle; and 
 ausfunkeln, to sparkle out, to 
 shine forth. Ausfunk is easily 
 corrupted into sfunk and spunk. 
 
 Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie, 
 
 And mony ithers ; 
 Whom auld Demosthenes and Tully, 
 
 Might own as brithers. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 If mair they deave us wi' their din 
 
 O' patronage intrusion ; 
 We'll light a sfunk, and every skin 
 We'll rin them aff in fusion. 
 Like oil some day. 
 
 —Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 And oft from moss-traversing spunkies. 
 Decoy the wight that late and drunk is. 
 —Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Spurtle or parritch spurtle, a 
 
 rounded stick or bar of hard 
 wood, used in preference to a 
 spoon or ladle for stirring oat- 
 meal porridge in the process of 
 cooking. Jamieson — who sel- 
 dom dives deeper than the Teu- 
 tonic — derives the word from 
 spryten, the Latin assula. The 
 Gaelic has sparr or sparran, a 
 little wooden bar or bolt ; and 
 the Flemish has sport, with the 
 same meaning; and also that 
 of the rung of a ladder (a bar of 
 wood which a Scottish house- 
 wife, in default of any better 
 spurtle, might conveniently use 
 for the purpose). Good bairns 
 in the olden times when oatmeal 
 porridge was the customary food 
 
Staffa — Stank. 
 
 213 
 
 of the peasantry, were often re- 
 warded by having the spurtle to 
 lick in addition to their share of 
 the breakfast. 
 
 Our gudeman cam' hame at e'en, 
 
 And hame cam' he ; 
 And there he saw a braw broad sword, 
 
 Where nae sword should be. 
 
 How's this ? gude wife, 
 
 How's this, quo he, 
 How came this sword here 
 
 Without the leave o' me 7 
 
 A sword ! quo she. 
 
 Aye, a sword, quo he ; 
 Ye auld blind doited bodie, 
 
 And blinder may ye be, 
 'Tis but a parritch spurtle, 
 
 My minnie gied to me. 
 
 Far hae I travelled. 
 
 And muckle hae I seen, 
 But scabbards upon sj>urtles. 
 
 Saw I never nane ! 
 
 — Our Gudeman. 
 
 Staffa, the name of the well- 
 known island of the West that 
 contains the ** cave of Fingal." 
 Colonel Robertson, in " The 
 Gaelic Topography of Scot- 
 land," has omitted to give the 
 etymology of the word. Many 
 people suppose it to be Eng- 
 lish, and akin to Stafford. It 
 is, however, pure Gaelic, and 
 accurately descriptive of the 
 natural formation of the cave, 
 being compounded of stuadk {dh 
 silent), a pillar or pillars, column 
 or columns; and uamh {uav or 
 uaf), a cave, whence stua-uaf 
 or staffa, the cave of pillars or 
 columns. 
 
 Staig, a young, unbroken stallion. 
 In the North of England, this 
 word stag, or staig, is applied to 
 
 any young male quadruped, and, 
 in contempt, to a strong, vulgar, 
 romping girl, whose manners are 
 masculine. The word is also 
 applied to the Turkey cock and 
 the gander. From the German 
 steigen, to mount, to raise, to 
 stick up, to stand erect. In the 
 old Norse, steggr signifies male. 
 
 It's neither your stot nor your staig I 
 
 shall crave. 
 But gie me your wife, man, for her I 
 
 must have. 
 
 — Burns : The Carle o> Kellyburn 
 Braes. 
 
 Stance, situation, standing-place, 
 or foundation. This word has 
 not yet been admitted into the 
 English dictionaries. 
 
 No ! sooner may the Saxon lance. 
 Unfix Benledi from his stance. 
 
 — Scott : Lady of the Lake. 
 We would recommend any Yankee be- 
 liever in England's decay to take his 
 stance in Fleet Street or any of our great 
 thoroughfares, and ask himself whether it 
 would be wise to meddle with any member 
 of that busy and strenuous crowd. — Black- 
 woods Magazine, June 1869. 
 
 Stank, a pool, a ditch, an en- 
 trenchment filled with water 
 for the defence of a fortress. 
 This word, with the elision of 
 the initial letter, becomes the 
 English tank, a receptacle for 
 water. StanJdt, entrenched. 
 From the French etaing, or 
 estaing; the Gaelic staing, a 
 ditch, a pool ; staingichte, en- 
 trenched. 
 
 I never drank the Muses stank, 
 
 Castilia's burn and a' that ; 
 But there it streams, and richtly reams, 
 
 My Helicon, I ca' that. 
 
 —Burns: The /oily Beggars, 
 
214 
 
 Stanners — Steenies. 
 
 Clavers and his Highland men 
 
 Cam down among the raw, man ; 
 Ower bush, owerbank, ower ditch, ower 
 stank. 
 She flang amang them a', man. 
 
 — Battle of Killiecrankie. 
 
 Stanners, gravel, small stones on 
 the banks of a stream, shingle 
 on the sea shore. 
 
 Yestreen the water was in spate, 
 
 The stanners a' were curled. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Water Kelpie. 
 
 Stark, strong ; from the German. 
 The word, however, is English, 
 with a different meaning, as in 
 the phrase, %tark naked, utterly 
 naked. 
 
 Fill fu' and hand fu' males a stark man. 
 ^Old Proverb. 
 
 Staumrel, a stupid person; 
 saumer, to stutter, to be inco- 
 herent in speech, to stammer; 
 from the German stumme, dumb ; 
 and stumpf, stupid, the Flemish 
 and Dutch stumper, a fool, a silly 
 and idle person. 
 
 Nae langer, thrifty citizens, an' douce, 
 Meet owre a pint or in the council house, 
 But staumrel, corky-headed gentry, 
 The herriment and ruin of the country. 
 — Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 The lad was aye a perfect stump. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Staves. "To go to staves " is a 
 proverbial expression used in 
 Scotland to signify to go to 
 ruin, to fall to pieces like a 
 barrel, when the hoops that 
 bind the staves together are 
 removed. 
 
 Staw, to surfeit, to disgust. Ety- 
 mology uncertain ; not Flemish, 
 
 as Jamieson supposes, but pro- 
 bably from the Gaelic stad or 
 stadh (pronounced sta), to desist, 
 or cause to desist. 
 
 Is there that o'er his French ragout, 
 Or olio that wad staw a sow. 
 
 — Burns : To a Haggis. 
 
 Curryin's a grand thing, when the edge 
 o' the appetite's a wee turned, and ye're 
 rather beginnin' to be stawed. — Nodes 
 A mbrosiance. 
 
 Steek, to close, to shut, to fasten 
 with a pin. 
 
 Sages their solemn e'en may steek. 
 — Burns : Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Steek the awmrie. 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Donald Caird. 
 
 Ye're owre bonnie ! ye're owre bonnie I 
 
 Sae steek that witchin' e'e, 
 It's light flees gleamin' through my brain. 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 Your purse was steekit when that was 
 paid for. 
 
 When the steed's stown steik the stable- 
 door. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Steeks, the interstices of any wo- 
 ven or knitted fabric, stitches ; 
 steek, probably from stitch, as kirk 
 from church. 
 
 He draws a bonnie silken purse, 
 As lang's my tail, where, through the steeks, 
 The yellow-lettered Geordie [guinea] keeks. 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Steenies, guineas, foreign or other 
 gold coins ; derivation unknown, 
 unless the term be a mock de- 
 preciation of the precious metal, 
 from stone, or stein, applied upon 
 the same principle that money 
 is called dross or filthy lucre. 
 
Steeve — Steward. 
 
 215 
 
 What though we canna boast of our 
 
 guineas, O, 
 We've plenty of Jockies and Jeanies, O, 
 An' these, I'm certain, are 
 More daintier by far 
 Than a pock full of yellow steenies, O. 
 
 —Rev. John Skinner : The Old 
 Mans Song. 
 
 Steeve, or steive, firm, erect, 
 stout; from the English ztiff, 
 and the Flemish zti^f. 
 
 Sit ye steeve in your saddle seat, 
 For he rides sicker who never fa's. 
 —James Ballantine. 
 
 Sten, to spring to one side, a sud- 
 den motion in the wrong direc- 
 tion ; to turn away, to twist, to 
 bend; stennis, a sprain. From 
 the Gaelic staon, awry, askew ; 
 and staonaich, to bend, to twist, 
 to turn. Jamieson erroneously 
 derives sten from extend. 
 
 Yestreen at the valentines' dealing, 
 My heart to my mou' gied a sten, 
 
 For thrice I drew ane without failing, 
 And thrice it was written Tam Glen. 
 — Burns : Tam Glen. 
 
 Stevin or steven. Before the in- 
 troduction from the Latin vox, 
 and the French voix, of the 
 word voice into the English and 
 Scottish languages, the word 
 stevin was employed. It was 
 used by Chaucer in England, 
 and by Gawin Douglas in Scot- 
 land. From its resemblance 
 to the Teutonic stimme, a voice, 
 and stimmen, voices, the Flemish 
 stem, it is probable that it was a 
 corruption or variation of that 
 word. 
 
 With dreary heart and sorrowful steven. 
 — Morte Arthur. 
 
 Betwixt the twelfth hour and eleven, 
 I dreamed an angel cam frae heaven. 
 With pleasant stevin sayand on hie, 
 Tailyiors and soutars, blest be ye ! 
 
 — Dunbar : Allan Ramsay's 
 Evergreen. • 
 
 Lang may thy steven fill with glee 
 The glens and mountains of Lochlee. 
 — Beattie : To Mr. Alexander Ross. 
 
 Quoth Jane, " My steven, sir, is blunted 
 
 sair, 
 And singing frae me frighted off wi' care ; 
 But gin ye'll tak' it as I now can gie't, 
 Ye're welcome til't— and my sweet blessing 
 
 wi't." 
 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 The rhymes to "heaven" in 
 Scottish and English poetry are 
 few, and stevin would be an 
 agreeable addition to the num- 
 ber if it were possible to re- 
 vive it. 
 
 Steward, a director, a manager, 
 an administrator. As a patro- 
 nymic, the word is sometimes 
 spelled Stewart and stuart, and 
 has been derived from the Teu- 
 tonic stede-ward, one who occu- 
 pies the place delegated to him 
 by another ; or from the Ice- 
 landic stia, work, and weard, a 
 guard or guardian. It seems, 
 however, to have an indigenous 
 origin in the Gaelic stiuir, to 
 lead, direct, guide, steer, super- 
 intend, manage, &c. ; and ard, 
 high or chief. The ''Steward 
 of Scotland " was in early times 
 the chief officer of the crown, 
 and next in power and dignity 
 to the king. There was a simi- 
 lar functionary in England : — 
 
 The Duke of Norfolk is the first, 
 And claims to be high Steward. . 
 
2l6 
 
 Stey — Stirk, 
 
 The attributes of the ^^ Steward 
 of Scotland" are set forth by 
 Erskine as quoted in Jamieson ; 
 and the last holder of the office 
 — who became king of Scotland 
 — gave the name of his function 
 to his royal descendants. In its 
 humbler sense, of the steward of 
 a great household, or of a ship, 
 the name is still true to its 
 Gaelic derivation, and signifies 
 the chief director of his parti- 
 cular department. 
 
 It has been suggested in the 
 " Gaelic Etymology of the Lan- 
 guages of Western Europe," 
 that the true etymon of stew or 
 stu (the first syllable of steward 
 and Stuart) is the Gaelic stuth, 
 pronounced stu, which signifies 
 any strong liquor, as well as 
 food, sustenance, or nourish- 
 ment for the body; and that 
 consequently s^ewarchneans chief 
 butler, or provider of the royal 
 household. There is much to 
 be said in favour of this hypo- 
 thesis, but the derivation from 
 stiur seems preferable. 
 
 The Irish Gaelic spells steward 
 in the English sense stiohhard. 
 The Scottish Gaelic has it stiuh- 
 liard ; but the words thus writ- 
 ten have no native etymology, 
 and are merely phonetic render- 
 ings of an obsolete Gaelic term, 
 re-borrowed from the modern 
 English. The suggested Teu- 
 tonic etymology of steward from 
 stede-ward, has no foundation in 
 the Teutonic languages. Ste- 
 ward in Germany is Verwalter, 
 administrator or director; and 
 Jfaushofmeister, master of the 
 
 household. In Flemish, hestieren 
 signifies to administer, to direct ; 
 and hestierder, an administrator, 
 a director, a steward. 
 
 Stey, steep, perpendicular. In 
 Cumberland and Westmoreland, 
 a mountain of peculiar steepness 
 is called a sty ; and in Berkshire, 
 sty signifies a ladder. Stey and 
 sty are both from the German 
 stiegen, and the Flemish stijgen, 
 to mount, to climb. 
 
 Set a stout heart to a stejf brae. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scois Proverbs. 
 
 The stey est brae thou wouldst hae face't at. 
 — Burns : The Auld Farmer to His 
 A uld Mare, Maggie^ 
 
 Stickit minister, a term of oblo- 
 quy in Scotland for a candidate 
 for holy orders who has failed 
 to pass the necessary examina- 
 tion, or to give satisfaction to 
 the congregation before whom 
 he preached the probationary 
 sermon. The phrase is akin to 
 the vulgar English — "old siick 
 in the mud." 
 
 Puir lad ! the first time he tried to 
 preach, he stickit his sermon. — Jamieson. 
 
 A speech is stickit when the si>eaker 
 hesitates and is unable to proceed. — Idem. 
 
 Still. This word is sometimes em - 
 ployed in the Scottish vernacular 
 in a sense which it possesses no 
 longer in English, that of taci- 
 turn, or reticent of speech. " A 
 stiil dour man," signifies a taci- 
 turn, reserved, and hard man. 
 
 Stirk, a bullock; stirJcie, a bull 
 calf. 
 
Stob — Stoup, 
 
 217 
 
 There's aye water where the stirkie 
 drowns (r.*., there's a reason or cause for 
 everything ; or there's never a smoke with- 
 out fire). 
 
 Stob, to push the foot accidentally 
 against a stone or other impedi- 
 ment in the ground. " I have 
 stobhed my toe," said the late 
 President Lincoln, in explana- 
 tion of his temporary lameness ; 
 from the Gaelic stob, a stake, a 
 thrust, or anything thrust in 
 the ground ;. a stick, a stump, 
 any stalk broken or cut and still 
 projecting from the ground ; 
 whence the English word stubble. 
 
 Stoit, to stagger. 
 
 And aye as on the road he sioiiii, 
 His knees on ane anither knockit 
 [knocked together]. 
 -^George Beattie : John d Amhd. 
 
 Stound, a moment, a very short 
 space of time ; also, a quick 
 sudden momentary pain. From 
 the German stund, an hour. 
 
 Gang in and seat you on the sunks a' 
 
 round, 
 And ye'se be sair'd wi' plenty in a 
 
 stound. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 And aye the stound, the deadly wound, 
 Came frae her e'en sae bonnie blue. 
 — Burns : / Gaed a Waefu Gate. 
 
 Stoup or stoop, a flagon, a pitcher, 
 a jug. Pint-stoup, a bottle or 
 jug containing a pint. This 
 word was used by Shakspeare, 
 Ben Jonson, and other drama- 
 tists of the Elizabethan era ; it 
 has long been obsolete in Eng- 
 land, but survives with undi- 
 minished vitality in Scotland. 
 
 Come, [Lieutenant ! I have a stoop of 
 wine, and here without are a brace of 
 Cyprian gallants, that would fain have a 
 measure to the health of black Othello.— 
 Othello. 
 
 Set me the stoup of wine upon that table. 
 —Hamlet. 
 And surely ye'll be yo\xx pint-stoup, 
 As sure as I'll be mine. 
 
 — Burns : A uld Lang Syne. 
 Waitr-stoups ? quo' he ; 
 Aye, water-stoups, quo' she — 
 Far hae I ridden, 
 And muckle I hae seen ; 
 But silver spurs on ■waX&r-stoups 
 Saw I never nane ! 
 
 — Herd's Collection : Our 
 Guidman. 
 
 The etymology of stmji'p or 
 stoo'p has long been contested. 
 Johnson derives it from the 
 Dutch and Flemish sto-p, a cork 
 or stopper of a bottle ; the Ger- 
 man stopsel ; but this can 
 scarcely be the origin of the 
 Scottish word, for a mUk-stoup, 
 a water-s^oM^, a can, a pitcher, 
 a bucket, a pail,. are not corked 
 or stopped. In some Scottish 
 glossaries a stoup is said to be a 
 tin pot, and in others it is de- 
 fined as a jug with a handle ; 
 while in Northumberland, ac- 
 cording to Wright's Provincial 
 Dictionary, a stoop signifies a 
 barrel. In Gaelic, stop means a 
 wooden vessel for carrying water, 
 a measure for liquids, or a flagon ; 
 and stopan signifies a small 
 flagon. Between the Flemish 
 and Gaelic derivations it is diffi- 
 cult to decide ; but the Gaelic, 
 which applies the word to wide 
 and open utensils, seems to be 
 preferable, at least in compre- 
 hensiveness. 
 
2l8 
 
 Stour — Strappan. 
 
 Stour, dust in motion, and meta- 
 phorically trouble, vexation, or 
 disturbance ; stourie, dusty. The 
 word is akin to the English stivy 
 and in its metaphorical sense is 
 synonymous with the Scottish 
 steer, as in the song " What's a 
 the steer, kimmer ? " what's the 
 disturbance, or in the broad 
 vernacular, what's the row ? 
 " To kick up a dust" is a slang 
 expression that has a similar 
 origin. 
 
 Yestreen I met you on the moor. 
 Ye spak na, but gaed by like stour; 
 Ye geek at me because I'm poor. 
 
 —Burns : Tibbie, I hae Seen 
 the Day. 
 
 After service, the betheral of the strange 
 clergyman said to his friend the other 
 betheral, "I think our minister did weel. 
 He aye gars the stour flee out o' the 
 cushion." To which the other replied, 
 with a calm feeling of superiority, " Stour 
 out o' the cushion ! Hoot ! our minister, 
 sin' he cam' wi' us, has dung [knocked or 
 beaten] the guts out o' twa Bibles." — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 How blithely wad I bide the stoure, 
 A weary slave frae sun to sun, 
 
 Could I the rich reward secure 
 Of lovely Mary Morrison. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Burns uses the word in the 
 sense of mould, earth, or soil, as 
 in his "Address to the Daisy : " — 
 
 Wee, modest, crimson-tippet flower, 
 Thou'st met me in an evil hour. 
 For I man crush amang the stour, 
 Thy slender stem. 
 
 Stour, in the sense of strife, 
 was a common English word in 
 the time of Chaucer and his 
 predecessors. 
 
 Stowlins, stownlins, by stealth, 
 stealthily, or stolen moments 
 unobserved, or expecting to be 
 unobserved. 
 
 Rob stowlins pried her bonnie mou, 
 Fu' cosie in the neuk for't 
 Unseen that night. 
 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en, 
 
 Stoyte, stoiter, to stagger, 
 stumble, or walk unsteadily ; 
 from the Flemish stooten, to 
 push against, to stumble or 
 cause to stumble. 
 
 When staggirand and swaggirand, 
 They stoyter hame to sleep. 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Vision. 
 
 Blind chance let her snapper and stoyte 
 on the way. 
 —Burns : Contented w£ Little. 
 
 At length wi' drink and courtin' dizzy, 
 He sioitered up and made a face. 
 — Burns : The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 To stoitle over, in consequence of in- 
 firmity, without being much hurt. To 
 tyne or lose the stoyte, is a metaphor for 
 being off the proper line of conduct — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Strae death, straw death, death 
 in bed, natural death. This 
 strong but appropriate expres- 
 sion comes from the Middle 
 Ages, when lawlessness and 
 violence were chronic. 
 
 Strappan or strappin', strong, tall, 
 burly, well-grown ; the English 
 strapping, a strapping youth. 
 
 The miller was strappin, the miller was 
 ruddy. 
 
 —Burns : Meg o' the Mill. 
 
 Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him 
 
 ben, 
 A strappin' youth— he taks the mother's 
 
 eye. 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
Streik — Study, 
 
 219 
 
 This word comes from the 
 Gaelic streap, to climb up, i.e., 
 in stature, to grow tall. 
 
 Stroop, a spout. Stroopie, the 
 spout of a kettle ; also a gutter 
 or watercourse. 
 
 Streik, to stretch ; from the Dutch 
 and Flemish strekken, German 
 strechen, to extend. This word 
 is used in a variety of ways, un- 
 known to or unf requent in Eng- 
 lish ; as, " Tak' your ain streik" 
 take your own course ; streikin, 
 tall and active ; streik, to go 
 quickly, i.e., to stretch out in 
 walking; tight or tightly drawn, 
 i.e., excessively drawn, stretched 
 out, or extended. 
 
 Strone or stroan, a ludicrous word 
 for the habitual urination of 
 dogs when out on their rambles. 
 It is introduced by Burns in his 
 description of the rich man's 
 dog, Caesar, the fine Newfound- 
 land, who was the friend and 
 companion of Luath, the poor 
 man's dog : — 
 
 Though he was of high degree, 
 The fient o' pride, nae pride had he. 
 
 Nae tauted tyke, though e'er sae duddie. 
 But he wad stan't as glad to see him, 
 And stroan t on stanes and hillocks wi' 
 him. 
 
 The word seems to have been 
 originally applied to the action 
 of the dog in first smelling the 
 place where another dog has 
 been before for a similar pur- 
 pose, and to be derived from 
 the Gaelic srone (pronounced 
 strone), a nose ; and sronagaich, 
 to trace by the scent as dogs 
 do. 
 
 Struishle, to struggle pertinaci- 
 ously, and in vain, against con- 
 tinually recurring difficulties ; 
 from the Femish struikelen, to 
 stumble, to fall down. 
 
 A tradesman employed to execute a very 
 difficult piece of carved work, being asked 
 how he was getting on, answered — " I'm 
 struishling awa' like a writer [lawyer] 
 tryin' to be honest ! "—Laird of Logan. 
 
 Strunt, alcoholic liquor of any 
 kind ; a fit of ill-humour ; also, 
 an affront, or a sturdy, arrogant 
 walk. 
 
 Strunt and sturt are birds of ae feather. 
 
 And aft are seen on the wing thegither. 
 
 — Scots Proverb. 
 
 Burns makes the disagreeable 
 insect that he saw on a lady's 
 bonnet at church " strwni rarely 
 over her gauze and lace." The 
 word, in this sense, seems to be 
 a corruption of the English strut. 
 Stront is a low Teutonic word for 
 stereus humanum; but this can 
 scarcely be the root of strunt in 
 any of the senses in which it is 
 used in the Scottish language ; 
 though strunty, an epithet ap- 
 plied to any one in a fit of such 
 ill-humour as to be excessively 
 disagreeable to all around him, 
 may not be without some remote 
 connection with the Teutonic 
 idea. 
 
 Study or brown study. This ex- 
 pression seems to have first 
 appeared in literature in the 
 
220 
 
 Stug^^Sugh. 
 
 " Case Altered " of Ben Jonson, 
 who was of Scottish parentage, 
 though born in London :— 
 
 Faiks ! this brown study suits not with 
 your black ; your habit and your thought 
 are of two colours. 
 
 (See Bkown Study, ante, p. 19.) 
 
 Stug-. This Scottish word is used 
 in a variety of senses— all allied 
 to the idea of stiffness, erect- 
 ness, rigidity, hardness, prickli- 
 ness, &c., as the English stiff, 
 stick, stock, stuck up, and the 
 corresponding verb derived from 
 the noun ; as stug, to stab or stick 
 with a sharp weapon ; stug, the 
 trunk or fragment of a decayed 
 tree projecting above the ground; 
 stug, a hard, masculine woman ; 
 stug, obstinate; stugger, an ob- 
 stinate person; stug, a thorn; 
 stugs, stubble. From the Dutch 
 and Flemish stug, inflexible, stiff, 
 obstinate ; the German stick, to 
 stab, to pierce ; stichdn, to prick, 
 to sting. 
 
 Sturt, strife, contention, disturb- 
 ance ; also, to strive, to con- 
 tend ; a word apparently akin 
 to stour in its poetical sense of 
 confusion. It is akin to, and 
 possibly derived from, the Ger- 
 man sturzen, to disturb, to over- 
 throw. 
 
 And aye the less they hae to siurt them, 
 In like proportion less will hurt them. 
 
 —Burns : Tke Twa Dogs. 
 
 I've lived a life oi sturt and strife, 
 I die by treachery, 
 
 —Macpherson s Farewell. 
 
 Styme, a particle, an iota, an 
 atom; the least possible quantity; 
 a blink, a gleam, a glimpse. 
 
 He held, she drew, fu' steeve that day. 
 Might no man see a styme. 
 
 —Christ's Kirk on tke Green. 
 I've seen me daz't upon a time, 
 I scarce could wink or see a styme. 
 
 —Burns: Naething like 
 Nappy. 
 
 The faintest form of an object ; a glimpse 
 or transitory glance, as, "There's no a 
 styme o' licht here."— Jamieson. 
 
 From styme is formed stymie, 
 one who sees indistinctly ; and 
 stymel, which, according to 
 Jamieson, is a name of reproach 
 given to one who does not per- 
 ceive quickly what another 
 wishes him to see. Jamieson 
 hints, rather than asserts, that 
 stym^ is from the Welsh ystum, 
 form, or figure; but as styme 
 is the absence of form and 
 figure, something faint, indis- 
 tinct, and small, rather than a 
 substantial entity, the etymo- 
 logy is unsatisfactory. The word 
 seems to have some relationship 
 to the Gaelic stim, or st'iom, a 
 slight puff, or wreath of smoke ; 
 and thence to mean anything 
 slight, transitory, and indis- 
 tinct. 
 
 Sugh, or sough, a sigh, a breath. 
 Greek psyche, the breath of life, 
 the soul. To keep a calm sugh, 
 is to be discreetly silent about 
 anything, not to give it breath ; 
 sugh-siller, erroneously printed 
 sow-siller by Jamieson, means 
 hush-money. 
 
Sunkets — Swacken. 
 
 221 
 
 Sunkets, scraps of food, scrans 
 (q. v.). 
 
 In Scotland there lived a humble beggar, 
 He had neither house nor hauld nor 
 hame, 
 But he was weel likit by ilka body, 
 And they gied him sunkets to rax his 
 wame ; 
 A nievefu' o' meal, a handfu' o' groats, 
 
 A daud o' a bannock, or pudding bree, 
 Cauld parritch, or the licking o' plates, 
 Wad mak him as blithe as a body 
 could be. 
 
 — Tea Table Miscellany. 
 
 Sunket-time is meal-time. The ety- 
 mology of sunket is uncertain. Herd de- 
 rived it from something. — Jamieson. 
 
 Whenever an uncertain ety- 
 • mology in English or Lcwland 
 Scotch is avowed, it would be 
 well if the dubious philologists 
 would look into the Gaelic, 
 which they seldom do. In the 
 case of sunket they would have 
 found something better in that 
 language than the English some- 
 thing. ^SanntocA signifies adainty, 
 or something that is desired, 
 coveted, or longed after ; and 
 sanntaichte, that which is desired. 
 This word would be easily con- 
 vertible by the Lowland Scotch 
 into sunket. Halliwell, in his 
 Archaic Dictionary, has sun-cote, 
 a dainty, which he says is a 
 Suffolk word. 
 
 Sumph, a stupid or soft-headed 
 person. Jamieson derives the 
 word from the German sumpf, 
 and Flemish somp, a bog, a marsh, 
 a morass ; a possible but not a 
 convincing etymology. Halli- 
 well has sump, a heavy weight, 
 
 whence he adds, a heavy stupid 
 fellow is so called. 
 
 The soul of life, the heaven below, 
 Is rapture-giving woman ; 
 
 Ye surly sumphs who hate the name, 
 Be mindfu' o' your mither. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Sumph, an admirable word. — Noctes 
 ■A mbrosiante. 
 
 Swack, to deal a heavy blow ; 
 akin to the vulgar English whaclc, 
 to beat severely ; a swashing 
 blow, a heavy blow ; etymology 
 uncertain. The Teutonic schwach^ 
 weak, has an opposite meaning, 
 though there may be some con- 
 nection of idea between a heavy 
 blow and a blow that weakens 
 him on whom it falls. 
 
 When Percy wi' the Douglas met, 
 
 I wat he was fu' fain. 
 They swakkit their swords till sair they 
 swat, 
 And the blood ran doun like rain. 
 
 — Battle of Otterboume. 
 
 In another stanza of this vi- 
 gorous old ballad, occur the 
 lines : — 
 
 Then Percy and Montgomery met. 
 That either of other were fain ; 
 
 They s%vappit swords, and they twa 
 swat. 
 And the blood run doun between. 
 
 Here swappit seems employed 
 in the same sense as swakkit, and 
 is possibly a variation of swoop, 
 to come down with a heavy 
 blow. 
 
 Swacken, to grow weak ; from 
 the German schwach, weak. 
 
 Wi' that her joints began to s^vacken. 
 And she scour'd like ony vtaukin (hare). 
 —George Beattie : John o' Amha\ 
 
222 
 
 Swagers — Swarf. 
 
 Swagers, men married to sisters. 
 Jamieson goes to the Swedish 
 and Icelandic for the derivation 
 of this word, but it is to be 
 found nearer home in the Flem- 
 ish zwager, and the German 
 sekwager, a brother-in-law. 
 
 Swank, active, agile, supple ; 
 swanhie, an active, clever young 
 fellow, fit for his work, and not 
 above it ; from the Flemish and 
 German. Halliwell says that 
 swanky is a northern English 
 word for a strong, strapping 
 fellow; and swanking for big, 
 large. 
 
 Thou ance was in the foremost rank, 
 A filly, buirdly, steeve, and swank. 
 — Burns : The A uld Farmer to his 
 Auld Mare, Maggie. 
 
 At e'en at the gloaming, 
 Nae swankies are roaming, 
 Bout stackin' the lassies at bogle to play. 
 — The Flowers of the Forest. 
 
 The etymological root of 
 swankie is apparently the Teu- 
 tonic schwank, droll ; used in a 
 sense equivalent to the French 
 drdle, which means a funny 
 fellow, a droll fellow, or a fel- 
 low in a contemptuous and de- 
 preciatory sense. Mr. Thomas 
 Wright, in his Archaic Diction- 
 ary of Local and Provincial 
 English, says that swankie is a 
 northern word for a strapping 
 fellow ; and that swamp signifies 
 lean, unthriving, which suggests 
 that possibly swain-pie is a cor- 
 ruption of swankie, with a slight 
 shade of difference in the phrase ; 
 the meaning for "a strapping 
 fellow," though suggestive of 
 
 strength, may be also suggestive 
 of tallness and leanness. The 
 Danish has svang, withered, 
 lean ; but it also has svanger, 
 which means large-bellied, and 
 is apphed to a pregnant woman ; 
 the Flemish and Dutch have 
 swanger with the same meaning. 
 
 Swankies young in braw braid claith, ^ 
 Are springin' owre the gutters. 
 
 — Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Swarf, to faint, to swoon, to 
 stupefy, or be stupefied ; also, a 
 fainting fit, a swoon. 
 
 And monie a huntit poor red coat. 
 For fear amaist did swarf, man ! 
 —Burns : The Battle of Sherriff-Muir. 
 
 He held up an arrow as he passed, me ; 
 and I swarf d awa wi' fright. — Scott: 
 The Monastery, 
 
 Ye hae gar'd the puir wretch speak till 
 she swarfs, and now ye stand as if ye 
 never saw a woman in a dwam before. — 
 Scott : St. Ronan's Well. 
 
 The etymology of swarf is 
 uncertain; the author of "Piers 
 Ploughman " has swowe, to swoon, 
 akin apparently to the Gaelic 
 suain, to fall asleep. By some 
 swarf has been derived from the 
 Teutonic auswerfen, to throw 
 out, or throw off ; and as to fall 
 in a fainting fit is to throw off 
 temporarily the semblance of 
 life, it is probable that the de- 
 rivation is correct. Dwam, in 
 the same sense as used by 
 Sir Walter Scott, was formerly 
 written dualm, and dwalm. These 
 latter words are evidently allied 
 to the old English dwale, one 
 of the popular names of the 
 plant bella donna, or deadly 
 
Swatch — Swtff. 
 
 223 
 
 night-shade ; a word employed 
 by the early poets Gower and 
 Chaucer, and still in use in the 
 Lowlands of Scotland, and the 
 Northern counties of England. 
 
 Swatch, a specimen, a sample. 
 Etymology uncertain. 
 
 On this side sits a chosen swatch, 
 Wi' screwed-up, grace-proud faces. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 ITiat's just a swatch o' Hornbook's way ; 
 Thus goes he on from day to day, 
 Thus does he poison, kill, and slay, 
 
 An's weel paid for't. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Swats, new ale or beer. 
 
 Tarn had got planted unco right 
 Fast by an ingle bleezing finely, 
 Wi' reaming swats that drank divinely. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn o Shanter. 
 I gie them a skelp as they're creeping 
 
 alang, 
 Wi' a cog o' guid swats and an auld 
 Scottish sang. 
 — Burns : Contented wi Little. 
 
 This word seems to be a ludi- 
 crous derivation from the Gaelic 
 iuath, to mix liquids, to rub or 
 press barley; and suaihadh, a 
 mode of threshing barley ; and 
 thence, by extension of mean- 
 ing, the juice of the barley. 
 According to Jamieson, swats, or 
 swaits, signifies new ale only. 
 He derives it from the Anglo- 
 Saxon swate, ale or beer; but 
 the anterior root seems to be 
 the Gaelic siiath. 
 
 Sweer, diflScult, heavy, slow, 
 wearied ; from the German 
 schwer, heavy, hard, difficult. 
 
 Sweer to bed, and sweer up in the morn- 
 ing.— Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Sweere - arse and sweer - tree 
 
 are, according to Jamieson, the 
 names of a sport among Scottish 
 children, in which two of them 
 are seated on the ground, and, 
 holding a stick between them, 
 endeavour each of them to draw 
 the other up from the sitting 
 posture. The heaviest in the 
 posterior wins the game. 
 
 Sweine, a swoon, a trance ; from 
 the Gaelic suain, sleep. 
 
 Sometimes she rade, sometimes she gaed 
 
 As she had done before, O, 
 And aye between she fell in a sweine 
 
 Lang ere she cam to Yarrow. 
 
 — The Dowie Dens 0' Yarrow. 
 
 Swick orswyke, to deceive; also, 
 a trick, a fraud, a deception ; 
 swicky and swickful, deceitful. 
 Apparently from the Danish 
 svige, to deceive, to cheat, to 
 defraud; and svig, fraud, im- 
 posture. 
 
 "He played them a swick; I had nae 
 swick o't," I had no blameableness in it. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Swiff, the English whiff, a puff of 
 smoke, a breath, a short inter- 
 val, as a smff of sleep amid 
 pain, a passing odour ; swiff, the 
 sound of an object passing 
 rapidly by, as of an arrow or 
 bullet in its flight. Whether 
 the English whiff, or the Scot- 
 tish swiff, were the original form , 
 it is hopeless to inquire. The 
 Scottish word seems to be a 
 variety of the old English smppe, 
 which Halli well's Archaic Dic- 
 tionary defines, to move rapidly; 
 and swipper, nimble, quick. 
 
224 
 
 Swine — Syne. 
 
 Swine. * * The swine's gone through 
 it," is a proverbial expression 
 which signifies that a marriage 
 has been postponed or unduly 
 delayed. Why the swine should 
 have anything to do with a mar- 
 riage is so incomprehensible as 
 to suggest that the word does 
 duty for some other, of which 
 it is a corruption. Such a word 
 exists in the Gaelic suain, a 
 sleep, a deep sleep, a lethargy, 
 whence the English swoon. Suain 
 also signifies to entwine, to wrap 
 round, to envelop, to tie up, to 
 twist a cord or rope round any- 
 thing ; and hence may, in the 
 proverbial saying above cited, 
 signify an impediment. Either 
 of the two meanings of suain 
 would meet the sense of the 
 phrase better than swine. 
 
 Swipes, a contemptuous term for 
 small and weak beer ; probably 
 first given to it on account of 
 its thinness, and the difficulty, 
 or impossibility, of getting drunk 
 upon it. From the Flemish 
 zuipen, to drink to excess ; the 
 German saufen, to drink as ani- 
 mals do, who, however, wiser 
 in this respect than men, never 
 drink to excess. Sowf, to drink, 
 to quaff, and souffe, a drunkard, 
 are Scottish words from the 
 same root. 
 
 Die Juden sind narren die fressen kein 
 
 schwein, 
 Die Turken sind narren die saufen kein 
 
 wein. 
 [The Jews are fools, they eat no swine ; 
 The Turks are fools, they s%vite no wine.] 
 — Old German Song; attributed to 
 Martin Luther. 
 
 Swirl, to turn rapidly, to eddy, to 
 curl. 
 
 His tail 
 Hung o'er his hurdles wi' a swirl. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 The mill wheel spun and swirl d. 
 And the mill stream danced in the morning 
 light, 
 And all its eddies curl'd. 
 
 — The Lump of Gold. 
 
 Swither, fear, doubt, perplexity, 
 hesitation, dread. The etymo- 
 logy is doubtful, but is possibly 
 from the German zwischen, be- 
 tween, i.e., between two con- 
 flicting opinions. 
 
 I there wi' something did foregather, 
 That put me in an eerie swither. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Syde, long or low, largely ap- 
 plied to a gown or dress, 
 
 Jeanie she gaed up the gate, 
 Wi' a green gown as syde as her smock, 
 Now, sirs, Jeanie has gotten her Jock. 
 —Chambers's Scottish Songs. 
 
 Syke, a ditch, a northern English 
 word, according to Halliwell, 
 for a gutter; probably a cor- 
 ruption of soak or suck. A sike, 
 according to Jamieson, is g, rill, 
 or a marshy bottom with a small 
 stream in it. 
 
 Through thick and thin they scoured 
 about. 
 Plashing through dubs and sykes. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : Continuation of 
 Christ's Kirk on the Green. 
 
 Syne, since, time past, a time 
 ago. (See Auld Lang Syne, 
 P-3-) 
 
 Here's a health to them that were here 
 short syne, 
 And canna be here the day. 
 
 Johnson's Musical Museum. 
 
Tabean Birben — Tait. 
 
 225 
 
 Tabean birben, a comb ; probably 
 a side-comb for the adornment 
 of a woman's hair. It occurs 
 in the ancient version of the 
 song entitled " Lord Gregory." 
 Jamieson is of opinion that the 
 phrase, a ^^ tabean birben kame" 
 means a comb made at Tabia, in 
 Italy. " Shall we suppose," he 
 adds, "that birben is a corrup- 
 tion of ivour, or ivory-bane (or 
 bone) ? " Shall we not rather 
 suppose, as Tabia was not known 
 as a place of manufacture for 
 combs, that the word is of 
 native Scotch origin, and that, 
 uncouth as it looks, it is re- 
 solvable into the Gaelic taobh, 
 a side ; taobhan, sides ; bior, a 
 pin, a point, a prickle, the 
 tooth of a comb ; and bean, a 
 woman, whence taobhan bior bean 
 (corrupted into tabean birben), 
 the side-comb of a woman ? 
 
 Tack, a lease, a holding; tacks- 
 man, a leaseholder ; from tack, 
 to hold, to fasten. 
 
 Nae man has a tack o' his life, 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scois Proverbs. 
 
 Taigle, to tease, to perplex, to 
 banter; from the Gaelic tea- 
 gamh, doubt, perplexity. 
 
 Two irreverent young fellows determined 
 to taigle the minister. Coming up to him 
 in the High Street of Dumfries, they ac- 
 costed him with much solemnity, " Maister 
 Dunlop, hae ye heard the ne ws ? " "What 
 
 news?" "Oh, the deil's dead!" "Is 
 he ? " replied Mr. Dunlop. " Then I maun 
 pray for twa faitherless bairns." — Dean 
 Ramsay's Reminiscences. 
 
 Taigle, "to tease, perplex, banter." I 
 never heard these meanings ; — teigle is to 
 delay, to hinder— dinna taigle me— I was 
 sair taigled the day. In the quotation 
 from Dean Ramsay, I suspect that taigle 
 is improperly put for tackle, or, as pro- 
 nounced in Scotland, tackle, meaning to 
 seize upon, lay hold on. In a description 
 of a meeting of the U.P, Presbytery of 
 Edinburgh, that had what is called the 
 Dalkeith heresy case before it, it was stated 
 that Dr. Peddie proceeded to tackle Mr. 
 Ferguson upon his heretical views. — R. 
 Drennan. 
 
 Tairge, or targe, to cross-ques- 
 tion severely and rigidly; of 
 uncertain etymology, though 
 possibly connected with the 
 Gaelic tagair, to plead, to argue, 
 to dispute. 
 
 And aye on Sundays daily, nightly, 
 I on the questions tairge them tightly ; 
 Till, fack, wee Davock's grown so gleg. 
 Though scarcely larger than my leg, 
 He'll screed you aff Effectual Calling 
 As fast as ony in the dwalling. 
 
 — Burns : The Inventory. 
 
 I'll gie him a ^a/^«'.— Jamieson. 
 
 Tait, joyous, gay; a word used 
 by the old Scottish poet, 
 Douglas, in his translation of 
 the " Eneid." Jamieson derives 
 it "from the Icelandic teilr^ 
 hilares, exultans ; " but its more 
 obvious source is the Gaelic 
 taite, which has the same mean- 
 P 
 
226 
 
 Taity — Tangle. 
 
 ing. The English exclamation 
 of hoity-toity, or hoite cum toite, 
 the name of a favourite dance 
 in the reign of Charles II., is 
 from the same Gaelic root — 
 aite chum taite — in which aite 
 and taite are almost synonymous, 
 and signify joy, merriment, 
 pleasure. Hoyt, in the sense of 
 revelry, was used by the Eliza- 
 bethan writers, Donne, Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, and others. 
 
 Hoity-toity, whisking, frisking, 
 
 — BiCKERSTAFFE : Lffve in a Village. 
 
 He sings and hoyts and revels among his 
 drunken companions. — Beaumont and 
 Fletcher. 
 
 The modern English slang 
 tight, applied to a person who 
 is joyously intoxicated, or semi- 
 intoxicated, seems to be of the 
 same Gaelic derivation. 
 
 Taity, taitey, matted like hair, 
 entangled. Tait (sometimes 
 written tate and iett), a lock 
 of matted hair. 
 
 At ilka tait o his horse's mane 
 
 There hung a siller bell, 
 The wind was loud, the steed was proud, 
 
 And they gied a sindry knell. 
 
 — Ballad of Young Waters. 
 
 Her skirt was o' the grass-green silk. 
 Her mantle o' the ermine fine, 
 
 At ilka tett d the horse^s mane 
 Hung fifty siller bells and nine. 
 
 — Ballad of True Thomas. 
 
 The etymology of this word 
 is uncertain, unless it is to be 
 found in the Gaelic taod, a 
 rope, a string ; from the ropy, 
 stringy appearance of hair in 
 this condition. There is an old 
 
 Scottish song entitled " Taits o' 
 Woo'." 
 
 Tak' tellin', take telling ; a phrase 
 that implies that a person either 
 requires or is amenable to advice 
 or admonition, or the reverse. 
 
 He wad na tak tellin, he would not be 
 advised. . . . She's a clever servant in a 
 house, but she taks tellin, i.e., she needs 
 to be reminded of what ought to be done. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Tandle {sometimes written tawnle), 
 a bonfire ; from the Gaelic tein, 
 fire, and deal, friendly. From 
 the root of teine comes teind, 
 or tynd, to kindle ; and tin-erjin 
 (sometimes rendered by the Teu- 
 tonic neid-fire), a fire of emer- 
 gency, produced by friction of 
 two pieces of dried wood. Neid- 
 fire also means a beacon ; pos- 
 sibly a misprint for *' need-fire." 
 Jamieson translates tin-egin, a 
 force fire, but gives no etymo- 
 logy. Egin is from the Gaelic 
 ei'jin or eiginn, force, violence, 
 compulsion. See Beltane, ante. 
 
 Tangle, long, tall, and feeble, not 
 well jointed ; from the Gaelic 
 tean, long, thin, drawn out, ex- 
 tended ; and giUe, a lad ; also the 
 popular name of the long sea- 
 weed, tangle, often used in con- 
 junction with dulse, for sea- 
 weed generally. Dean Kamsay 
 quotes the saying of an old 
 Scottish lady, who was lifted 
 from the ground after a fall, 
 happily not severe, by a very 
 tall, young lieutenant, who ad- 
 dressed him when she after- 
 
Tangleness — Tapetlcss. 
 
 227^ 
 
 wards met him— "Eh, but ye're 
 a lang lad 1 " 
 
 The English tangle and en- 
 tangle are words of a different 
 meaning, and probably a cor- 
 ruption of the Gaelic seangal, to 
 tie up, to fasten, to enchain, to 
 fetter. The American phrase 
 applied to whisky or other 
 spirit, when indulged in too 
 freely, of tangle-foot and tangle- 
 footed, unable to walk steadily 
 from intoxication, is both hum- 
 orous and appropriate. 
 
 Tangleness, contradiction, confu- 
 sion, dishonesty, entanglement 
 of truth and falsehood. 
 
 Donald's the callant, that brooks nae 
 tangleness, 
 
 Whiggin' and priggin' and a' new Tangle- 
 ness, 
 
 They maun be gane, he winna be baukit, 
 man, 
 
 He maun hae justice, or faith he will tak 
 it, man. 
 — James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 
 Tanterlick, a severe beating. Pro- 
 bably this word is derivable from 
 the Gaelic deann {teann, see Tan- 
 trum), or dian, fierce, hot. This, 
 combined with lick, the English 
 slang to beat (a good lick- 
 ing, a good beating), and the 
 Gaelic leach, a stone, would sig- 
 nify, in the first instance, a ston- 
 ing, one of the earliest methods 
 adopted in the quarrels of boys 
 for the conquest or punishment 
 of an opponent. 
 
 Tantin', hard pressing, squeez- 
 ing ; rantin'-tantin\ ranting and 
 raving ; or ranting and pressing 
 
 hard upon or against, from the 
 Gaelic teantann, a pressing, a 
 squeezing. A minister in his 
 Sabbath service, asked by his 
 congregation to pray for fine 
 weather during a long continu- 
 ance of rain that threatened to 
 be injurious to the harvest, put 
 up the following prayer : — 
 
 " O Lord, we pray thee to send us wind, 
 no a rantin -tantin, tearin' wind, but a 
 soughin' (sighing), winnin' wind." More 
 expressive words than these could not be 
 found in any language.— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Tantrum. This word, borrowed 
 by the English from the Scotch,, 
 is generally used in the plural ; 
 and the phrase, **to be in the 
 tantrums," most commonly ap- 
 plied to a woman, signifies that 
 she is in a violent fit of ill- 
 temper. Jamieson explains it 
 as "high airs," and derives it 
 from the French tantrans, nick- 
 nacks. This etymology cannot 
 be accepted — firstly, because 
 there is no such word in the 
 French language ; and secondly, 
 because if there were, the mean- 
 ings are not in the slightest 
 degree related. The "English 
 Slang Dictionary" derives it 
 from a dance called, in Italy, 
 the tarantula, because persons 
 in the tantrums dance and caper 
 about 1 The word is composed 
 of the Gaelic deann, haste, vio- 
 lence, hurry; and trom, heavy, 
 whence violent and heavy, ap- 
 plied to a fit of sudden passion. 
 
 Tapetless, heedless, foolish ; pro- 
 bably from the Gaelic tapadh, 
 
228 
 
 Tap-oure-tail — Tapthrawn. 
 
 activity, cleverness ; and ta- 
 paidh, quick, active, manly, 
 bold, with the addition of the 
 English less, want of cleverness 
 or activity. 
 
 The tapetless, ramfeezled hizzie, 
 She's saft at best, and something lazy. 
 — Burns: To John Lapraik. 
 
 Tap-oure-tail, top-over-tail, or 
 topsy-turvy (erroneously printed 
 in Jamieson tap-owr-tail), has 
 the same meaning as tapml- 
 teerie, and the English head-over- 
 heels. 
 
 Tappiloorie, top-heavy ; or tappie- 
 tourie, round at the top. From 
 the Flemish, Dutch, and Eng- 
 lish top; and the Flemish and 
 Dutch loer, French lourd, heavy ; 
 tourie, from the Flemish, toere, 
 round about ; the French tour 
 and autour. 
 
 Tappit-hen, a crested hen, or a 
 hen with a top tuft of feathers ; 
 a phrase applied to a large bottle 
 or jar of wine or spirits. 
 
 Blythe, blythe, and merry was she, 
 Blythe was she but and ben, 
 
 Weel she loo'ed a Hawick gill, 
 And leuch to see a tappit-hen. 
 
 — Tea Table Miscellany : Andrew 
 and his Cuttie Gun. 
 
 Come, bumpers high, express your joy, 
 The bowl we maun renew it, 
 
 The tappit-hen gae bring her ben. 
 To welcome Willie Stewart. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Their hostess appeared with a huge 
 pewter measuring pot, containing at least 
 three English quarts, familiarly termed a 
 tappit-hen. — Scott : Waverley. 
 
 Blithe, blithe, and merry are we. 
 
 Pick and wale o' merry men, 
 What care we though the cock may crow. 
 
 We're masters o' the tappit hen. 
 
 — Charles Gray : Whistle Binkie. 
 
 "This term," says Jamieson, 
 " denoted in Aberdeen a large 
 bottle of claret, holding tlyee 
 magnums or Scots pints ; " but 
 as regards the quantity opinion 
 differs. All agree, however, 
 that a tap-pit-hen held consider- 
 ably more than an ordinary 
 bottle. 
 
 Tapsalteerie, in confusion, up- 
 side down, topsy-turvy. Pos- 
 sibly from the Gaelic toabh, the 
 side ; and saltair, to tread, to 
 trample. Topsy - turvy is ap- 
 parently from the same source, 
 and not from "top-side the 
 t'other way," as some etymolo- 
 gists have suggested. 
 
 Gie me a cannie hour at e'en. 
 My arms about my dearie, O, 
 
 And warldly cares and warldly men 
 May a' gang tapsalteerie, O I 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 In an excellent translation into 
 German of B urns' s " Green grow 
 the rashes, O 1 " appended as a 
 note in Chambers's "Scottish 
 Songs," the two lines in which 
 tapsalteerie occurs are well ren- 
 dered : — 
 
 Mag Erdenvolk and Erdenplag, 
 Kopfuber dann, Kopfunter gehen. 
 
 Tapthrawn, perverse, obstinate, 
 unreasonably argumentative ; 
 from tap, the head or brain, 
 metaphorically the intellect ; 
 and thrawn, twisted wrongly. 
 
Tartar — Tavern Sign of the Dog and Duck. 229 
 
 Tartar. To catch a Tartar, to be 
 overpowered in argument or in 
 fight, by one whose prowess had 
 been denied or unsuspected; 
 to get the worst of it. Tartar, 
 says the Slang Dictionary, is 
 "a savage fellow, an ugly cus- 
 tomer." To " catch a T'artor," 
 is to discover, somewhat un- 
 pleasantly, that a person is by 
 no means so mild or good tem- 
 pered as was supposed. 
 
 This saying originated from the story 
 of an Irish soldier in the imperial service, 
 who, in a battle against the Turks, called 
 out to his comrade that he had caught a 
 Tartar. "Bring him along then," said 
 he. " He won't come," said Paddy. 
 "Then come along yourself," replied his 
 comrade. "Bedad!" said he, "but he 
 won't let me ! " A Tartar is also an adept 
 at any feast or game. " He is quite a 
 tartar at cricket or billiards." — Grose's 
 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar 
 Tongue. 
 
 Grose's story was evidently in- 
 vented. Philology had no need 
 to travel into Tartary to explain 
 the source of a peculiarly British 
 phrase, which has no equivalent 
 in any language but English and 
 Scotch : inasmuch as it is of 
 native origin, from the Gaelic 
 tartar, a great noise, clamour, 
 bustle, confusion ; tartarach, 
 bustling, noisy, uproaring, un- 
 manageable. 
 
 Tartarian is a word used by the 
 dramatists of the Elizabethan 
 era to signify a strong thief, or 
 a noisy blustering villain. 
 
 Tass, a small heap of earth or 
 cluster of flowers ; from the 
 French tas, a parcel or pack. 
 
 There lived a lass in Inverness, 
 She was the pride of a' the toun, 
 
 Blythe as the lark on gowan tass 
 When frae the nest it's newly flown. 
 — Allan Cunningham. 
 
 Tatshie, according to Jamieson, 
 signifies dressed in a slovenly 
 manner ; and tattrel, a rag. 
 
 Tatterdemalion, a ragged, miser- 
 able object. A colloquial word 
 introduced into England by the 
 Scotch ; and supposed by Eng- 
 lish philologists to be from the 
 Icelandic tctur, a torn garment. 
 The roots, however, are de- 
 rivable from the Gaelic ; that of 
 tatter is from dud, a rag ; from 
 whence the provincial English 
 dud, meaning a scarecrow. 
 Motion comes from meall and 
 meallan, a lump, a heap of con- 
 fused objects ; from whence the 
 primary meaning of tatterde- 
 malion would seem to be a 
 *' heap of rags," applied con- 
 temptuously to the wearer of 
 them. Mr. James M'Kie, of 
 Kilmarnock, quotes in his Bib- 
 liography of Burns, " The Jolly 
 Beggars, or Tatterdemalions, a 
 cantata by Robert Burns. Edin- 
 burgh, Oliver & Boyd, 1808." 
 
 Tavern sign of the Dog and 
 Duck. This is usually ex- 
 plained in the English sense of 
 a "Dog" and a " Duck," with 
 a representation on the sign- 
 board of a sportsman shooting 
 wild ducks, followed by a dog 
 ready to spring into the water. 
 It is probable, however, that the 
 sign is of greater antiquity than 
 
230 
 
 Tavey's Locker 
 
 the conquest of England by the 
 Danes and Saxons ; and that it 
 dates from the Celtic period, 
 and was originally Deoch an 
 Diugh, or "Drink to-day," an 
 Invitation to all travellers and 
 passers by to step in and drink ; 
 and that it was not by any 
 means confined to the shooters 
 of ducks, or to the watery dis- 
 tricts in which such sports were 
 possible. The perversions of 
 the word deoch (drink), by the 
 English and Lowland Scotch, are 
 very numerous. One of them 
 in particular deserves to be cited, 
 dog's nose, which is, or used to 
 be, a favourite drink of the 
 populace in London, composed 
 of beerandgin. Charles Dickens, 
 in Pickwick, describes dogs 
 nose as a warm drink ; but the 
 compiler of Hotten's Slang Dic- 
 tionary affirms it to be a cold 
 drink — so called, because it was 
 " as cold as a dog's nose." The 
 true derivation is most probably 
 from the Gaelic deoch and nos, 
 custom ; and nosag, customary, 
 or usual ; and thus signifies the 
 "usual drink." Another com- 
 mon and equally ludicrous per- 
 version of the Gaelic is " Old 
 Tom," which is used by the 
 publicans of London, illustrated 
 by a large tom-cat sitting on a 
 barrel of gin. The origin of the 
 phrase is ol, drink, and taom, to 
 pour out ; whence, to pour out 
 the favourite liquor. 
 
 Tavey's locker, Davy's locker, 
 Davy Jones's locker. These 
 singular phrases, used princi- 
 
 pally among sailors, all signify 
 death simply, or death by drown- 
 ing in the sea. Their origin has 
 never been very satisfactorily ex- 
 plained or accounted for; and 
 no one has yet told the world 
 whether Tavey or Davy was a 
 real or a fabulous person, or 
 who Jones was, and what was 
 signified by his locker. The Teu- 
 tonic roots of the English and 
 Scotch languages fail to give 
 the slightest hint or clue to the 
 etymology of the expression, 
 and thus compel inquirers to 
 look to the Celtic for a possible 
 solution of the mystery. In 
 Gaelic is found taimh {taiv or 
 taif), death ; and tamh {tav), the 
 ocean ; ionadh, a place ; and 
 lochd, sleep, or a closing of 
 the eyes. Taimh or tamh may 
 account for the corruption into 
 Tavey or Davy, ionadh for Jones, 
 and lochd for locker. This ex- 
 planation supplies an intelli- 
 gible and appropriate meaning 
 to Davy Jones's locker, the gro- 
 tesque combination of words in 
 Scotch and English which has 
 become proverbial among sea- 
 faring people. 
 
 According to Wright's "Pro- 
 vincial English Dictionary," 
 David Jones is a name given by 
 sailors to a "sea-devil." But 
 whether the "sea-devil" had 
 or had not a locker we are not 
 informed. Nares, in his Glos- 
 sary, says that one " Davy " was 
 a proficient in sword and buck- 
 ler exercise, celebrated at the 
 close of the sixteenth century. 
 It does not appear, however 
 
Tawdy — Teind. 
 
 231 
 
 that any of these allusions can 
 shed any light on the origin of 
 Davy^s locker. 
 
 Tawdy, a term of contempt for 
 a child ; tawdy-fee, a fine for 
 illegitimacy; also, a deprecia- 
 tory epithet for the podex. The 
 etymology is unknown, but may 
 be connected with the Gaelic 
 todhar, excrement, and, by ex- 
 tension of meaning, to the senses 
 in which it is applied to the 
 podex, or to a child. Todhar 
 also signifies a field manured by 
 folding cattle upon it. Taudis, 
 in French, signifies a miserable 
 and dirty hole or hovel. In Irish 
 Gaelic, tod or todan signifies a 
 lump, a clod, a round mass, 
 which may also have some re- 
 mote connection with the idea 
 of the podex. 
 
 Ta-wie, tame, peaceable, friendly, 
 easily led. Gaelic taobhach {tao- 
 vach), friendly, partial, inclined 
 to kindness ; erroneously derived 
 from tow, a rope, or to be led by 
 a rope. 
 
 Hamely, tawie, quiet, cannie. 
 
 An' unco sonsie. 
 — Burns : Auld Farmers Address. 
 
 Tawpie, a foolish person, especi- 
 ally a foolish girl, 
 
 Gawkies, tawpies, gowks and fools. 
 — Burns : Verses Written at Selkirk. 
 
 This word is usually derived 
 from the French taupe, a mole 
 — erroneously supposed to be 
 blind; but the Gaelic origin is 
 more probable, from iaip, a 
 
 lump, a lumpish or clumsy per- 
 son. 
 
 Dans le royaume des taupes, les borgnes 
 sont xois.— French Proverb. 
 
 Teen, tene, teyne, provocation, 
 anger, wrath, From the Gaelic 
 teine, fire ; teintidh, fiery, angry. 
 
 Last day I grat wi' spite and teen, 
 
 As poet Burns cam' by : 
 That to a bard I should be seen, 
 
 Wi' half my channel dry. 
 —Burns : Humble Petition of Bruar 
 Water. 
 
 Teethie, crabbed, ill-natured, 
 snarling ; applied metaphori- 
 cally from the action of a dog 
 which shows its teeth when 
 threatening to bite. The Eng- 
 lish word toothsome, which has 
 no relation in meaning to teethie^ 
 is often used instead of dainty^ 
 from the erroneous idea that 
 dainty is derived from dens, a 
 tooth. The real derivation of 
 dainty is from the Gaelic deanta, 
 complete, perfect, well formed, 
 and finished. When Shakspeare 
 speaks of his ''dainty Ariel," 
 or a man praises the dainty hand 
 or lips of his beloved, he does 
 not mean that the teeth should 
 be employed upon them, but 
 that they are well-formed, com- 
 plete, or beautifully perfect. 
 
 Teind, a tax, a tribute, a tithe, 
 a tenth ; teind-free, exempt from 
 tithes or taxation. 
 
 But we that live in Fairy Land 
 No sickness know, nor pain, 
 
 I quit my body when I will, 
 And take to it again ; 
 
 And I would never tire, Janet, 
 In Elfin land to dwell : 
 
^32 
 
 Tendal knife — Terihus Ye Teri Odin. 
 
 But aye at every seven years' end, 
 
 They pay the teind to hell ; 
 And I'm sae fat and fair of flesh, 
 I fear 'twill be mysel. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Young 
 Tamlane. 
 
 Tendal knife. Jamieson cites 
 from an inventory, ** two belts, 
 a tendal knife, a horse comb, 
 and a burning' iron ; " and at a 
 loss to account for the word, 
 asks : ** Shall we suppose that 
 knives celebrated for their tem- 
 per had been formerly made 
 somewhere in the dale, or val- 
 ley of Tyne, in England ? It 
 might, however, be the name 
 of the maker ? " These are, no 
 doubt, ingenious suppositions, 
 but both appear to be wrong if 
 tested by the Gaelic, in which 
 tean signifies long and thin ; and 
 tail, or tailc, strong ; whence 
 tendal knife, a knife with a long, 
 thin, strong blade. 
 
 Tent, to take heed, to act 
 cautiously and warily, to be 
 attentive. From the French 
 tenter, to try, to attempt. Ten- 
 tie, cautious, wary ; to tak tent, 
 to take care, to beware ; tentless, 
 careless. 
 
 When the tod preaches tak ient o' the 
 lambs. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : Scois Proverbs, 
 
 But warily tent when ye come to court me, 
 And come na unless the back yett be ajee. 
 Syne up the back stair and let naebody see, 
 And come as ye were na comin' to me. 
 — Burns : Oh Whistle and I'll come to 
 you, my Lad. 
 
 I rede you, honest man, tak tent. 
 
 Ye '11 show your folly. 
 —Burns : Epistle tojatnes Smith. 
 
 The time flew by wi' tentless heed. 
 Till -twixt the late and early, 
 
 Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed 
 To see me through the barley. 
 — Burns : Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs. 
 
 See ye take tent to this ! 
 — Ben Jonson : Sad Shepherdess. 
 
 Teribus ye teri odin, the war cry 
 of the men of Hawick at the 
 battle of Flodden, and still pre- 
 served in the traditions of the 
 town. The full chorus is often 
 sung at festive gatherings, not 
 only in the gallant old border 
 town itself, but in the remotest 
 districts of Canada, the United 
 States, and Australia, wherever 
 Hawick men and natives of the 
 Scottish Border congregate to 
 keep up the remembrance of 
 their native land, and the haunts 
 of their boyhood. 
 
 Teribus ye teri odin, 
 
 Sons of heroes slain at Flodden, 
 
 Imitating Border bowmen, 
 
 Aye defend your rights and common. 
 
 Attempts have been frequently 
 made to connect this Border 
 ballad with the names of the 
 Scandinavian and Norse demi- 
 gods, Thor and Odin ; but these 
 heroes were wholly unknown to 
 the original possessors of the 
 Scottish soil, and but very par- 
 tially known to the Danish and 
 Saxon invaders, who came after 
 them. The ballad, of which these 
 mysterious words form the bur- 
 den, is one of patriotic *' defence 
 and defiance" against the in- 
 vaders of the soil. Terihus ye 
 teri odin is an attempt at a 
 phonetic rendering of the Gaelic 
 
Teth — Thack and Raip. 
 
 233 
 
 Tir a buaidh's, tir a dion, which, 
 translated, means ** Land of 
 victory, and Land of defence." 
 
 Teth, spirit, mettle, humour, tem- 
 per, disposition; usually em- 
 ployed in the sense of high- 
 spirited. The word was Eng- 
 lish in the Elizabethan era, and 
 was pronounced and written 
 tith, from the Gaelic teth, hot. 
 
 She's good mettle, of a good stirring 
 strain, and goes tt'ik. — Beaumont and 
 Fletcher. 
 
 Take a widow— a good staunch wench 
 that's ii'tk. — Idem. 
 
 Ill-tetk'd, ill-humoured. — Jamieson. 
 
 Teuch, a drink, a draught of 
 liquor. This word has been de- 
 rived by Jamieson and others 
 from the Teutonic tog, and 
 ieur/he, to draw or pull. As no 
 such words are to be found in 
 the Teutonic languages, it is 
 possible that Jamieson meant 
 the German zug, the English 
 tug, to pull or draw ; whence, 
 in vulgar language, a long pull 
 at the bottle or tankard, a deep 
 draught. It seems more prob- 
 able, however, that the Lowland 
 Scotch word is a corruption of 
 the Gaelic deoch, a drink, as in 
 the phrase, " deoch an' doruis," 
 a drink at the door, a stirrup 
 cup. (See Deuk, aw<e, p. 42.) 
 
 Tevoo. This nearly obsolete word 
 was formerly used by women 
 in contemptuous depreciation 
 of a male flirt, fond of their 
 society, but who was never seri- 
 ous in his attentions to them. 
 
 It has been supposed to be 
 somehow or other derived from 
 the French, but no word similar 
 to it appears in that language. 
 It is probably from the Gaelic 
 ti, a person, a creature ; and fu, 
 an abbreviation of fuachaidh, a 
 flirt, a jilt, a deceiver. 
 
 Tew is a word of many meanings 
 in Scotland, but most commonly 
 signifies to work hard. It also 
 signifies to struggle, to strive, 
 to fatigue, to overpower, to make 
 tough. ' ' Sair tews " signifies old 
 or sore difficulties or troubles ; 
 teioing on, toiling on; sair tewd, 
 greatly fatigued, are common 
 expressions. Jamieson derives 
 the word from the French ttier, 
 to kill ; Nares cites instances in 
 which it is used in the sense of 
 tow, to pull along by a rope. 
 Possibly, however, it is but a 
 misspelling of the Scottish teuch 
 (with the omission of the 
 guttral j, the English tough, in 
 which the omitted guttral is re- 
 placed by the sound of /, as 
 tuff). The Gaelic tlugh, thick, 
 stiff, strong, is doubtless an 
 allied word. 
 
 Thack and raip, from the thatch 
 of a house ; and rope, the bind- 
 ing or fastening which keeps 
 the thatch in its place. Hence, 
 metaphorically, the phrase ap- 
 plied to the conduct of an un- 
 reasonable and disorderly per- 
 son, that he acts "out of a' 
 tJiacJc and raip,'' as if the roof 
 of his house were uncovered, 
 and let in the wind and weather ; 
 
234 
 
 Thairms — Them^ They, Those, 
 
 or, in vulgar slang, as if he had 
 "a slate or a tile loose." 
 
 Thairms, the strings of a violin, 
 harp, or other instrument for 
 which wire is not used, called 
 in England cat-gut. The word 
 is derived from the German, 
 Dutch, and Flemish darm, gut, 
 intestines ; the German plural 
 ddrme. 
 
 Oh, had M'Lachlan, tIia{rm-\T\?.^\nr\g 
 
 sage. 
 Been there to hear this heavenly band en- 
 gage. 
 
 —Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 Come, screw the pegs wi' tunefu' cheep. 
 And ower the thairms be trying. 
 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 The word, though immediately 
 derived from the Teutonic, may, 
 in the sense of gut or entrails, 
 have some connection with the 
 practice of divination by the 
 ancient Augurs, who studied 
 the intestines of sacrificed birds 
 to foretell future events. But 
 this is a -mere conjecture foun- 
 ded upon the fact, that the 
 Gaelic tairm^ or thairm, signifies 
 divination. 
 
 Fiomthairm, string made from 
 gut, may probably come the 
 Scottish words thrum, to play on 
 a stringed instrument, and, in a 
 contemptuous sense, thrummer, 
 an inferior fiddler. Possibly the 
 English strum is a corruption and 
 euphemism of thrum. 
 
 Thane, a very ancient title of no- 
 bility in Scotland, equivalent in 
 rank to an English earl. Mac- 
 beth, according to Shakspeare, 
 
 was Thane of Cawdor. Jamie- 
 son suggests its derivation from 
 the Anglo-Saxon thegn, a servant ; 
 but as the title was peculiar to 
 the Gael, whoUy unknown to 
 the Saxon, and implied rather 
 mastery and dominion than ser- 
 vitude, a Celtic etymology is 
 most probable ; that etymology 
 is found in tanaistear, a gover- 
 nor, a lord, a prince ; one second 
 in rank to the king or sovereign ; 
 and tanaisteach, governing, act- 
 ing as a thane, or master. 
 
 The noo, or the no'w, a common 
 Scotticism for just now, imme- 
 diately, presently, by and by. 
 
 Theak, theek, to thatch a house. 
 Greek 6r)K7} [theke), a small house, 
 a repository ; German dach, a 
 roof ; old English theccan, to 
 cover; Gaelic tigh and teach, a 
 house. 
 
 Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, 
 They were twa bonnie lasses. 
 
 They biggit a bower on yon burn brae, 
 And theekit it o'er wi' rashes. 
 —Ballad: Bessie Bell and Mary Gray. 
 
 Ye'll sit on his white hause bane, 
 And I'll pike out his bonnie blue een ; 
 Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair 
 We 11 theek our nest when it grows bare. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: 
 The Twa Corbies. 
 The cozy roof theekit wi' moss-covered 
 Strae. 
 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 Them, they, those. These plural 
 pronouns are often used in Scot- 
 land instead of the singular it, 
 especially when applied to oat- 
 meal porridge, brose, hotch- 
 potch, and broth, or soup. The 
 
Then-a- days — Thig, 
 
 235 
 
 idea of plurality seems to be 
 attached to porridge, from the 
 multiplicity of the grains of 
 meal, of which the dish is com- 
 pounded, and to hotch-potch, 
 barley broth, and other soups, 
 for the same reason of their 
 numerous ingredients. 
 
 Why dinna ye sup ye're parritch, Johnnie ? 
 Johnnie — I dinna like them. 
 
 — Galt. 
 
 Once at the annual dinner to his tenants, 
 given by the Duke of Buccleuch, the 
 Duchess pressed a burly old farmer, to 
 whom she wished to show attention, to 
 partake of some pea-soup. " Muckle 
 obleeged to your Grace," said the farmer, 
 " but I downa tak' them. They're owre 
 wundy ! " — The Ettrick Shepherd. 
 
 Each true-hearted Scotsman, by nature 
 
 jocose. 
 Can cheerfully dine on a dishfu' o' brose, 
 And the grace be a wish to get plenty of 
 
 those ; 
 And it's O for the kail brose o' Scotland, 
 And O for the Scottish kail brose. 
 
 — Alexander Watson : Old Song. 
 
 Then-a-days, in former time, as 
 opposed to the English and 
 Scottish phrase, now-a-days, in 
 the present time. 
 
 Thepes, gooseberries, or more 
 properly gorse or thorn berries ; 
 in Dutch and Flemish doom, or 
 thorn-berries. Mr. Halliwell, in 
 his Archaic Dictionary, cites 
 thepes as an Eastern Counties 
 word, used in Sir Thomas 
 Brown's works. It is also cur- 
 rent in the Lowlands of Scot- 
 land. The derivation is un- 
 known. 
 
 Thetes, traces or harness of a 
 horse drawing a vehicle. To 
 
 be " out of the traces," is to 
 be out of rule, governance, or 
 control. 
 
 To be quite out of the thetes, i.e., to be 
 disorderly in one's conduct. ... To be 
 out of thete is a phrase applied to one who 
 is rusted as to any art or science from want 
 of practice. — Jamieson. 
 
 The word is derived by Jamie- 
 son from the Icelandic thatCr, a 
 cord, a small rope ; but is more 
 probably from the Gaelic taod ; 
 aspirated thoad, a rope. 
 
 Thief - like, ugly, disagreeable. 
 This Scottish phrase does not 
 signify dishonest-looking, but 
 simply repulsive, or disagree- 
 able ; possibly because the Low- 
 land Scotch who made use of 
 it suffered but too often from 
 the incursions of the Highland 
 cattle-stealers into the pastures 
 and sheep-folds, associated in 
 their minds with all that was 
 most offensive, morally and phy- 
 sically. 
 
 That's a thief-like mutch ye have on, 
 i.e., that's an ugly cap you have on. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Thief-like occurs in two common pro- 
 verbial phrases — the thiefer-like the better 
 soldier ; the aulder the thiefer-like. Ye're 
 like the horse's bains, the aulder ye grow 
 the thiefer-like.— ] AMiESOii. 
 
 Thig, to beg or borrow; some- 
 times written thigger. 
 
 The father buys, the son biggs (builds), 
 The oye (grandson) sells, and his son 
 
 thigs. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 And if the wives and dirty brats, 
 E'en thigger at your doors an' yetts. 
 —Burns : Address of Beelzebub. 
 
 or T 
 
 ^^"VeRs|Ty 
 
 OF 
 
236 
 
 Thtnk-lang — Thrang. 
 
 Think-lang, to grow weary, to be 
 impatient of another's absence ; 
 to think the time long. 
 
 But think na' lang, lassie, tho' I gang awa', 
 The summer is comin', cauld winter's 
 
 awa', 
 And I'll come back and see thee in spite 
 
 o' them a'. 
 
 — Song : Logic o' Buchan. 
 
 Thistlecock or thrustlecock, the 
 thrush, more poetically called 
 the mavis, both in Old English 
 and Scottish poetry. 
 
 The primrose is the fairest flower 
 
 That springs on muir or dale ; 
 An' the thistlecock is the bonniest bird 
 That sings on the evening gale. 
 
 — Ballad of Proud Lady 
 Margaret. 
 
 Thivel, a cudgel, a large shil- 
 lelagh. Etymology unknown. 
 
 An' for a thivel they did use 
 A sturdy stump o' knotty spruce, 
 — John o' A mho!. 
 
 Tholeable, tholesome, tolerable, 
 that may be endured ; tlwlance, 
 sufferance, endurance. Thole is 
 doubtless from the same root 
 as the Latin tolerare, and the 
 Gaelic dolas, sufferance, dolour, 
 pain. 
 
 Thowless. Perhaps a corruption 
 of thewless, weak ; without thews 
 and sinews. Gaelic tiugh, thick, 
 strong ; whence thotcless, with- 
 out strength or thickness. 
 
 For fortune aye favours the active and 
 
 bauld, 
 But ruins the wooer that's thozvless and 
 
 cauld. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Her dowflF excuses pat me mad, 
 Conscience — saj's I, ye thowless jad, 
 I'll write, and that a hearty blaud 
 This very night. 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 Thraine. According to Jamieson, 
 this word signifies to be con- 
 stantly harping on one subject, 
 and is derived from the Teu- 
 tonic or Swedish traegen, assi- 
 duous. He is of opinion also that 
 rane, to cry the same thing over 
 and over again, is synonymous, 
 and of the same origin. But 
 more probably, in the sense of 
 harping continually on one sub- 
 ject, of complaint, thraine is 
 from the Greek threnos, a lamen- 
 tation. Jiane is probably from 
 the Gaelic ran, to roar. 
 
 Thram, to thrive, to prosper. 
 Etymology uncertain. Jamieson 
 supposes it to be from the Ice- 
 landic. 
 
 Well wat your honour, thram for that, 
 quo' she. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Can you expect to thram. 
 That hae been guilty o' so great a wrang ? 
 —Ibid. 
 
 Thrang-, busy, crowded with work 
 or occupation ; from the Eng- 
 lish throng, to crowd, and the 
 German drang, pressure, drdn- 
 gen, to press, and the Flemish 
 dringen, to press, to squeeze. 
 
 Upon a bonnie day in June, 
 When wearin' through the afternoon, 
 Twa dogs that were nae thrang at hame, 
 Foregathered ance upon a time. 
 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
Thrapple — Through. 
 
 237 
 
 The deil sat grim amang the reek, 
 Thrang bundling brimstone matches ! 
 —Jacobite Song : Aiva\ye IVhigs, 
 Atvct. 
 
 Thrapple, the throat ; akin to the 
 English throttle. 
 
 As murder at his thrapple shored ; 
 And hell mixed in the brulzie [broil]. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Robert Graham. 
 
 When we had a Scots Parliament, — deil 
 rax their thrapples that reft us o't. 
 
 Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Thraw, a twist, a fit of ill- 
 humour ; thrawn, twisted, con- 
 torted. Thrawn-gabbit, with a 
 twisted or contorted gab, or 
 mouth; and, metaphorically, a 
 cantankerous, morose person 
 who is always grumbling. Gab- 
 bit is from the Gaelic gab, a 
 mouth ; . whence the English 
 slang, "the gift of the gab,'' 
 the gift of eloquence, or power 
 of much speaking. Thrawarty 
 perverse, obstinate ; thraw, to 
 contradict ; thraws, throes, twists 
 or contortions of pain ; also, a 
 little while, or a turn of time, a 
 twist. 
 
 She turns the key wi' cannie thraw. 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 When I a little thraw had made ray moan. 
 Bewailing mine misfortune and mischance. 
 — The King's Quair. 
 
 There are twa hens into the crib, 
 Have fed this month and mair; 
 Make haste and thraw their necks about, 
 That Colin weel may fare. 
 — MiCKLE : There's nae Luck About the 
 House. 
 
 He's easy wi' a' body that's easy wi' 
 him ; but if ye thraw him, ye had better 
 thraw the deevil. — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Thraw seems akin to the Eng- 
 lish throe, a throb, a twist of 
 pain, and is probably from the 
 Teutonic. 
 
 Threpe, or threap, to argue, to 
 contend pertinaciously in argu- 
 ment, to assert obstinately in 
 spite of reason ; from the Gaelic 
 drip, or trip, to contend, to 
 fight. 
 
 It's not for a man with a woman to threep. 
 
 Unless he first give owre the plea : 
 As we began we'll now leave off— 
 I'll tak my auld cloak about me. 
 — Old Ballad, quoted by Shakspeare. 
 
 Some herds, weel learned upon the beuk. 
 Wad threap auld folk the thing mistook. 
 —Burns: Epistle to Simpson. 
 Threapins no' provin'. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 This is na threapin ware \i.e., this is 
 genuine ware, not to be argued about].— 
 Allan Ramsav. 
 
 Thrimle, thrimmel, to press, to 
 squeeze ; thrimp, thrump, to press 
 as in a crowd, to push. Ety- 
 mology uncertain, but possibly 
 from the Flemish drempel, an 
 entrance — whence to force an 
 entrance, to press through, to 
 push through. 
 
 Through. This word, the Gaelic 
 troiinh, the Kymric t7'io, and 
 the Teutonic durch, enters more 
 largely into its structure of 
 Scottish compound terms and 
 phrases, than was ever the case 
 in England. Thus the Scotch 
 have through-gang, perseverance ; 
 through-gaun, and through-gang- 
 ing, persevering, also waste- 
 ful, prodigal, going through 
 
238 
 
 Throwther — Tift. 
 
 one's means ; through-pit, acti- 
 vity, energy, that puts a thing 
 through; through-fare, or through- 
 gang, a thoroughfare; through- 
 ither, confused ; through- stone, 
 a stone as thick as the wall ; 
 through-pittin, or through-hearin', 
 a bare subsistence, enough to 
 get through the world with ; 
 and the verb to through, or thruch, 
 to penetrate, to go through. 
 Sir Walter Scott uses through- 
 gaun in Rob Roy, in the sense 
 of a severe exposure of one's 
 life and conduct, during a rigid 
 cross-examination^ 
 
 Throwther, higgledy - piggledy, 
 helter - skelter, in confusion ; 
 possibly a corruption of through- 
 ither, or through-each-other. 
 
 Till— skelp— a shot ! they're aff a' 
 throwther, 
 To save their skin. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Thrum, a musical sound, also 
 a thread. Gray thrums, the 
 popular phrase in Scotland for 
 the purring of a cat, the sound 
 of a spinning-wheel, the thread 
 remaining at the end of a web ; 
 apparently derived from the 
 Gaelic troimh, through. 
 Come out wi' your moolins, come out wi' 
 
 your crumbs, 
 And keep in slee baudrons [the cat] to 
 
 sing ye gray thrums. 
 — James Ballantine: A Voice from the 
 Woods. 
 
 Thud, a dull, heavy blow: ety- 
 mology unknown. Lord Neaves 
 considered it a comic word, 
 though it is difficult to see 
 
 why, especially when such 
 serious use of it was made 
 by Gawin Douglas and Allan 
 Ramsay : — 
 
 The fearful thuds of the tempestuous tide. 
 — Gawin Douglas : Translation of 
 the Enid. 
 
 The air grew rough with boisterous thuds. 
 Allan Ramsay : The Vision. 
 
 Swith on a hardened clay he fell, 
 Right far was heard the thud. 
 
 — Hardyknute. 
 
 Tid, tid-bit, tydy. All these 
 words, like the Enghsh tide, are 
 derivable from the idea of time, 
 the German zeit, the Dutch 
 and Flemish tijd. Tid, in the 
 Scottish language, signifies sea- 
 son ; the English tid-bit is a 
 seasonable bit. Bit is from 
 the Gaelic biadh, food, and not 
 from the Enghsh bite, or that 
 which is bitten. The French 
 morceau, the English morsel, is 
 unquestionably derived from 
 mordre, to bite. Tydy, season- 
 able ; " a tydy bride " is a phrase 
 applied to an unmarried girl who 
 is about to become a mother, 
 and in that state is married and 
 taken home to her bridegroom's 
 house, in order that the coming 
 child may be born after wed- 
 lock, and thus become legiti- 
 mised. 
 
 Tift, English tiff, a slight quar- 
 rel, a fit of ill-humour ; tip, a 
 slang word for money given to 
 a servant as a small gratuity 
 to procure drink or otherwise ; 
 called by the French a pour 
 boire, and by the Germans trink- 
 
Tig — Timmer. 
 
 239 
 
 geld. No English or Scottish 
 etymologist has succeeded in 
 tracing these words to their 
 sources. Jamieson derives tift 
 from the Icelandic tyfla, to 
 chastise ; Johnson declares tiff, a 
 quarrel, to be " a low word, with- 
 out etymology;" Richardson has 
 tiff, a drink, which he thinks a 
 corruption of ti'p^le, an allied 
 word ; Ash defines tiff to be a 
 corruption of the Teutonic te^d, 
 a dug or teat, while the ancient 
 author of "Gazophylacium Angli- 
 canum " surpasses all his prede- 
 cessors and successors in in- 
 genuity by deriving tijisy and 
 ti'p^ple from the Latin tipula, a 
 water-spider, because that in- 
 sect is always drinking ! Mr. 
 Halliwell, without entering on 
 the etymological question, says 
 that in English provincial dia- 
 lects tiff has three meanings — 
 small beer, a draught of any 
 liquor, and to fall headlong from 
 the effects of drink. 
 
 There are several derivatives 
 in the Scottish language from 
 tift, a quarrel, viz., tij'ty, quarrel- 
 some, apt to take offence ; tift- 
 ing, an angry scolding ; and "to 
 be in a tifter," i.e., in a difficult 
 and disagreeable position where 
 one is likely to be severely repri- 
 manded. Possibly the Scottish 
 tift (a quarrel), the English tiff 
 (a fit of ill -humour), are as 
 closely allied in meaning as they 
 are in sound. 
 
 Tig, a twitch, a touch, a sharp 
 stroke; also a slight fit of ill- 
 temper ; possibly, in both senses, 
 
 derived from the Gaelic taoig, 
 anger, and taoigeach, angry, and 
 as such disposed to strike a 
 blow. 
 
 A game among children. He who in 
 this game gives the stroke, says to the 
 person to whom he has given it, " Ye bear 
 my //]?-."— Jamieson. 
 
 Tillie-soul. According to Jamie- 
 son, this word signifies " a place 
 to which a gentleman sends the 
 horses and servants of his guests, 
 when he does not choose to en- 
 tertain them at his own ex- 
 pense." He derives it from the 
 French tillet, a ticket ; and solde, 
 pay. There is, however, no 
 such word as tillet, a ticket, in 
 the French language. There is 
 tiller, which means, "detacher 
 avec la main les filaments du 
 chanvre," i.e., to remove with 
 the hand the filaments of hemp. 
 But this operation has certainly 
 nothing to do with the ex- 
 planation given to tillie-soul. 
 The true derivation appears to 
 be from the Gaelic till, to turn 
 away ; and suit, feeding, fatness, 
 good bodily entertainment ; 
 whence tillie-soul or till suit, to 
 turn away for entertainment 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Timmer, timber; from the 
 Flemish timmer. This word is 
 used not alone as signifying 
 wood, but in the sense of build- 
 ing or constructing out of wood ; 
 and, by extension of meaning, 
 into constructing or fashioning 
 generally; and, by still wider 
 extension, into doing or per- 
 
240 
 
 Tine — Tinsel. 
 
 forming. "To give one a tim- 
 merin' " signifies to beat one 
 with a stick (or piece of timber). 
 Timmer-'bveQks, and iimmer-sark 
 were ludicrous terms for a coffin. 
 Timmerman, in the Flemish, and 
 Zimmerman, in the German, 
 signified a carpenter, an artificer 
 in wood, and also a woodmonger, 
 or woodman. 
 
 Tinuner up the flail, i.e., to wield the 
 flail ; timmerM^ the floor with a dishclout, 
 i.e., to clean it. . . . To timmer up the 
 lesson, i.e., to be busily employed in learn- 
 it. . . . Oh, as he timmers up the Latin ! 
 i.e., what a deal of Latin he employs. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 And who in singing could excel 
 Famed Douglas, Bishop of Dunkel' ; 
 He timmer d up, though it be lang, 
 In gude braid Scots a Virgil's sang. 
 — Ingram's Poems. 
 
 Tine, to lose; tint, lost. This 
 ancient English word has long 
 been confined to Scottish litera- 
 ture and parlance. 
 
 What was tint through tree. 
 Tree shall it win. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 He never tint a cow that grat for a 
 needle. 
 
 Where there is nothing the king tines his 
 right. 
 
 All's not tint that's in danger. 
 
 Better spoil your joke than tine your 
 friend. 
 
 Tine heart — all's gone. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Next my heart I'll wear her, 
 For fear my jewel tine. — Burns. 
 
 Tinkle - sweetie. According to 
 Jamieson, tinkle-sweetie was a 
 
 name formerly given in Edin- 
 burgh to a bell that was rung 
 at eight o'clock in the even- 
 ing. A previous bell, which 
 was rung at two in the after- 
 noon, was called the " kail bell," 
 i.e., the dinner bell. Tinkle- 
 sweetie was superseded as a 
 phrase by the " aucht hour bell." 
 Jamieson, at a loss for the ety- 
 mology, says "it was thus de- 
 nominated because the sound 
 of it was siveet to the ears of 
 apprentices and shopmen, be- 
 cause they were then at liberty 
 to shut up for the night." The 
 conjecture is no doubt ingeni- 
 ous ; but it maybe asked whether 
 the kail or dinner bell might 
 not have been as justly entitled 
 to be called sweet as the bell 
 that announced the cessation of 
 labour ? The word is apparently 
 a relic of the very old time when 
 the kings and nobles of Scot- 
 land and the merchants of Edin- 
 burgh all spoke or understood 
 Gaelic. In that language diun 
 (d pronounced as t) signified to 
 shut up, to close ; glaodh (pro- 
 nounced glao) signified a cry, a 
 call ; and suaiteachd, labour, 
 work, toil ; whence duinglao 
 {tuinglao, quasi tinkle) and suai- 
 teachd corrupted into sweetie. 
 Thus the phrase would mean a 
 call or summons, to cease from 
 labour, or, in modern parlance, 
 " to shut up shop." 
 
 Tinsel, loss ; from tine, to lose. 
 
 My profit is not your tinsel. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
Tippenny — Tittie'billie. 
 
 241 
 
 Tippenny, from twopence ; whence 
 tippenny, at the price of two 
 pence ; twopenny ale. 
 
 Wt' tippenny we'll fear nae evil, 
 Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil. 
 — Burns : Tarn o Shunter. 
 
 Mr. Lo^ve Weimaurs, a once 
 noted French author, who tran- 
 slated or paraphrased Burns 
 into French, rendered the first 
 of these lines by "Avec deux 
 sous, nous ne craindrons rien," 
 with twopence we'll fear no- 
 thing, thus leaving the ale out 
 of the question. 
 
 Tirl, to turn the knob, the pin, or 
 other fastening of a door. The 
 word is of constant occurrence 
 in the ballad poetry of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 Oh he's gone round and round about 
 And tirled at the pin. 
 
 — Willie and May Margaret. 
 
 Tirl, to spin round as in a 
 whirlwind, to unroof with a 
 high wind. 
 
 Whyles, on the strong-winged tempest 
 flying, 
 
 Tirling the kirks. 
 
 — Burns : Address to the Dei I. 
 
 This word has been supposed 
 to be a corruption of the English 
 twirl, to turn round ; and, by 
 extension of meaning, ''tirling 
 the roof of the kirk," i.e., send- 
 ing the materials whirling or 
 twirling in the storm. To tiii 
 the pin or knob of a door, is 
 doubtless from twirl, in the 
 English sense; but to tirl the 
 roof of a kirk, as in the line of 
 
 Burns, is more probably from 
 the Gaelic tuirl, and tuirlin, to 
 rush rapidly with a great noise. 
 
 Tirlie-wirlie, intricate or trifling 
 ornaments. 
 
 Queer, tirlie-wirlie holes that gang out 
 to the open air, and keep the air as caller 
 as a kail-blade. — Scott : The Antiquary. 
 
 It was in and through the window broads 
 
 And a' the tirlie-wirlies o't. 
 
 The sweetest kiss that e'er I got 
 
 Was frae my Dainty Davie. 
 
 — Herd's Collection : Dainty 
 Davie. 
 
 From the English twirl and 
 whirl, though Jamieson goes to 
 the Swedish in search of the 
 etymology. 
 
 Tirr, a fractious child ; tirran, 
 one of a perverse and complain- 
 ing humour ; tirrie, querulous, 
 peevish. These words seem all to 
 be derived from the Gaelic tuir, 
 to moan, to lament, to weep ; 
 and tuireadh, moaning, com- 
 plaining, lamentation. Jamie- 
 son, however, derives tirr from 
 the Greek tyrannos, a tyrant, or 
 the Teutonic terghen, to irritate ; 
 though the latter word is not to 
 be found in German or in any 
 of its dialects. Tire lire is often 
 used in French poetry for the 
 song or lament of the nightin- 
 gale. 
 
 Tittie, a sister. 
 
 He had a wee tittie that loved na me 
 Because I was true and trim as she 
 
 — LadyGrizzel Baillie. 
 
 Tittie-billie, according to Jamie- 
 son, who denounces it as vulgar. 
 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 Tocher — Tod. 
 
 This phrase signifies an equal, a 
 match, as in the proverbial say- 
 ing which he quotes, *' Tarn's a 
 great thief, but Willie's tittie- 
 billie wi' him ; " and derives it 
 from tittie, a sister ; and billie, a 
 brother. The true meaning of 
 billie is a fellow ; from the 
 Gaelic balaoch, a mate, or close 
 companion ; and tittie, in all pro- 
 bability, is a corruption of taite, 
 joyousness, jolliness. Tittie-bilUe 
 would thus be synonymous with 
 the English phrase, " a jolly 
 good fellow." (See Billies, ante, 
 page 8.) 
 
 Tocher, a dowry, but principally 
 used as applicable to the for- 
 tunes of persons in the middle 
 and lower ranks of life, who are 
 too poor to give their daughters 
 dowries. A tocher may be either 
 a large or a small one. There 
 is no other Scotch word for a 
 daughter's portion. TocheiiesSj 
 fortuneless. 
 
 A cow and a calf, 
 An ox and a half, 
 Forty good shillings and three ; 
 Is not that enough tocher 
 For a shoemaker's daughter ? 
 — J. O. Halliwell : Nursery 
 Rhymes of England. 
 
 The bonnie lass tocherless has mair 
 wooers than chances of a husband. 
 
 The greatest tochers make not ever the 
 greatest testaments. 
 
 Marry a beggar and get a louse for your 
 tocher. 
 
 Maidens' tochers and ministers' stipends 
 are aye less than they are ca'd. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Oh meikle thinks my love o' my beauty, 
 And meikle thinks my love o' my kin, 
 
 But little thinks my love I ken brawly, 
 My tochers the jewel has charms for him. 
 — Burns. 
 
 Philologists are at variance 
 as to the origin of tocher, which 
 is purely Scottish, and has no 
 relation to any similar word 
 in the Teutonic or in the Ro- 
 mance languages of Europe. 
 The French has dot, the German 
 braut-schdtz (bridal treasure), 
 and the Dutch and Flemish 
 bruid schat. Dr. Adolphus Wag- 
 ner, editor of a German edition 
 of Burns (Leipzig, 1825), sug- 
 gests " the Icelandic tochar," 
 which he thinks is either cor- 
 rupted from the Latin douarium, 
 or from daughter, the German 
 tochter, or the Greek dvyar-qp. 
 The real root of the word is the 
 Gaelic tacar or tocar, provision 
 or store, a marriage portion ; 
 tocharachd, well or plentifully 
 dowered ; toic, wealth, fortune ; 
 toic ard, high fortune ; and toic- 
 each, rich. 
 
 Tod, usually considered to signify 
 a bush ; ivy tod, a bush or bunch 
 of ivy. The derivation seems 
 to be from the Dutch and Fle- 
 mish tod, a rag, a fringe ; and 
 the Gaelic dud, a rag ; or taod, a 
 string ; from the string-like and 
 ragged appearance of ivy when 
 it has grown as high as possible 
 on the supporting tree or wall, 
 and has then fallen downwards. 
 Tod also signifies a fox; tod- 
 Laurie is a jocose word for the 
 same animal 
 
 Ye're like the tod; ye grow grey before 
 you grow guid. 
 
Toddy — Toman. 
 
 243 
 
 The tod ne'er sped better than when he 
 gaed on his ain errand. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The King rose up, wiped his eyes, and 
 calling, " Todlaurie, come out o' your 
 den [Fox, come out of your hole]," he pro- 
 duced from behind the arras the length of 
 Richie Moniplies, still laughing in unre- 
 strained mirth. — Scott : Fortunes of 
 Nigel. 
 
 Toddy, a mixture of whisky with 
 hot water and sugar. It has 
 been generally supposed that 
 the name was introduced into 
 Scotland by some retired East 
 Indian, from toddy, a juice ex- 
 tracted from various species of 
 palm trees, especially from the 
 cocos nocifera, which, when fer- 
 mented and distilled, was known 
 as arrack. But this is doubtful. 
 In Allan Kamsay's poem of 
 " The Morning Interview," pub- 
 lished in 1 72 1, occurs a de- 
 scription of a sumptuous en- 
 tertainment or tea-party, in 
 which it is said "that all the 
 rich requisites are brought from 
 far ; the table from Japan, the 
 tea from China, the sugar from 
 Amazonia, or the West Indies j 
 but that 
 
 Scotia does no such costly tribute bring. 
 Only some kettles full of Todian spring." 
 
 To this passage Allan Ramsay 
 himself appended the note — 
 "The Todian spring, i.e.. Tod's 
 well, which supplies Edinburgh 
 with water." Tod's well and 
 St. Anthony's well, on the side 
 of Arthur's seat, were two of the 
 weUs which very scantily sup- 
 plied the wants of Edinburgh ; 
 
 and when it is borne in mind 
 that whiskey (see that word) 
 derives its name from water, it 
 is highly probable that Toddy 
 in like manner was a facetious 
 term for the pure element. The 
 late Robert Chambers, when 
 this etymology was first pro- 
 pounded to him by the present 
 writer, rejected the idea, but 
 afterwards adopted it on the 
 strength of Allan Ramsay's 
 poem. 
 
 Tol-lol, a slang expression, com- 
 mon to Scotland and England, 
 as a reply to an inquiry after 
 one's health. " How are you ? " 
 "Oh, tol-lol!" i.e., pretty well. 
 The word is usually supposed to 
 be a corruption of tolerable, or 
 tolerably well. Perhaps it comes 
 more probably from the Gaelic 
 toUeil, substantial, solid, sound, 
 in good condition. 
 
 Toman or tommack, a small 
 hill, a hillock, a mound of earth ; 
 from the Gaelic torn, a hiU. This 
 primitive monosyllable is widely 
 spread over all the languages of 
 Western Europe, and enters into 
 the composition of numberless 
 words that imply the sense of 
 swelling above the surface; as 
 in the Latin tumulus, a mound 
 of earth that marks a grave ; 
 the English tomb, the French 
 tombeau, the Keltic and Kymric 
 tom^ a mound, a heap; the Latin 
 tumor, tumefaction, a pimple, a 
 swelling of the flesh ; tumescere, 
 to swell up; the English and 
 French dome, the Italian duomo, 
 
244 
 
 Tongue-ferdy — Toot 
 
 the German, Dutch, 'andFlemish 
 dom, the Latin and Greek doma, 
 the rounded roof or cupola, 
 swelling over a church or ca- 
 thedral, and also the cathedral 
 itself; as "il dwowo" at Milan, 
 and the ' ' Doni kirke " at Cologne. 
 Tom, in the secondary sense, 
 signifies large, from the primary 
 idea of that which is swollen ; a 
 torn cat is a large cat ; torn noddy 
 is a great noddy or simpleton ; 
 torn fool is a great fool ; and Cow- 
 boy, when applied as a reproach 
 to a romping or noisy girl, sig- 
 nifies that she acts more like a 
 great boy than like a girl. 
 
 Singing a song to the Queen o' the 
 Fairies, among the tomans d the ancient 
 woods. — Nodes Arnbrosiance. 
 
 Tongue-ferdy, glib of tongue, 
 loquacious, over ready of speech. 
 From the German zung, Flemish 
 and Dutch long, the tongue ; and 
 fertig, ready. 
 
 Tongue-tack it, tongue-tied, 
 either from natural impediment, 
 or from nervous timidity and 
 inability to speak when there is 
 occasion to declare one's self ; 
 also, undue reticence, when 
 there is a necessity for speaking 
 out. 
 
 Toora or tume, empty, poured 
 out ; from the Gaelic taom, to 
 pour out, the English teem, to 
 produce, to pour out progeny. 
 Toom - handit, empty - handed ; 
 <oowi-headit, brainless, empty- 
 headed ; a too7n pock, an empty 
 purse. The word is used in 
 
 Lancashire, according to Tim 
 Bobbin's Glossary. 
 
 Better a toom house than an ill tenant. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Scotland greetin' owre her thrissle. 
 Her mutchkin stoup as toom's a whistle. 
 — Burns : Earnest Cry and Prayer. 
 
 Mr. Clark of Dalreoch, whose head was 
 vastly disproportioned to his body, met 
 Mr. Dunlop one day. " Weel, Mr. Clark, 
 that's a great head o' yours." "Indeed, 
 it is, Mr. Dunlop ; I could contain yours 
 inside o' my own." "Just so," echoed 
 Mr. Dunlop, "I was e'en thinking it was 
 gey an toom." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 On being called upon to give his vote 
 in the choice of a chaplain to the prison 
 of Dunfermline, David Dewar signified 
 his assent to the election of the candidate 
 recommended by the Board, by saying, 
 " Weel, I've no objection to the man, for 
 I understand that he has preached a kirk 
 toom already ; and if he be as successful 
 in the jail, he'll maybe preach it vacant as 
 weel." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 A toom pouch maks a sair heart. But 
 why should it? Surely a heart's worth 
 mair than a pouch, whether it's toom or 
 brimming ower ?— Donald Cargill. 
 " Set on them, lads ! " quo' Willie, then, 
 
 " Fie, lads ! set on them cruellie, 
 For ere they win to the Ritterford 
 
 Mony a toojn saddle there sail be." 
 
 — James Telfer : Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 Toot, or tout, to noise a thing 
 abroad, to spread a rumour or 
 a scandal ; also, to blow a horn. 
 
 It was tootit through a' the country. 
 . . . The kintra claiks were tootit far and 
 wide. — Jamieson. 
 
 But now the Lord's ain trumpet touts. 
 Till a' the hills are rairin'. 
 
 — Burns : Jhe Holy Fair. 
 
 An auld tout in a new horn. 
 Every man can tout best on his ain horn. 
 It's ill making a touting horn of a tod's 
 tail. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
Tooth ills — Totum. 
 
 245 
 
 In English slang, a tout is one 
 stationed outside of a shop or 
 place of amusement, to entice 
 people to enter ; metaphorical 
 for blowing the trumpet, i.e., 
 praising the goods, or entertain- 
 ment, to be had within. From 
 the Gaelic dud, a trumpet ; 
 dudair, a trumpeter. The Ger- 
 mans call the bagpipe a ditdd- 
 sacJc, i.e., a trumpet sack. 
 
 Toothills — or hills where in early- 
 times a horn was blown to give 
 warning of danger — are fre- 
 quently mentioned in old re- 
 cords, and the name still sub- 
 sists. TothiU or Toothia Fields 
 in London was so called from 
 an eminence of the kind in the 
 borough of Southwark. 
 
 Tory, a word of contemptuous 
 anger for a child, equivalent 
 to hrat. Jamieson cites it as 
 an Ayrshire expression — '* Get 
 out of my sight, ye vile little 
 tory." It is obvious that the 
 word has no political origin, 
 and is possibly from the Gaelic 
 torrach, pregnant, and toradh {dh 
 silent), the fruit or produce of 
 pregnancy, i.e., a child. 
 
 Tosh, neat, trim, cozy, comfort- 
 able ; toshach, a neat, tidy-look- 
 ing girl ; tossie, warm and snug, 
 — almost synonymous with cozie. 
 Of uncertain etymology. Jamie- 
 son derives it from the Flemish 
 dossen, to dress, to adorn ; but 
 the Gaelic offers dos, a bush, a 
 thicket, a bield, a shelter, which 
 has become slang among Eng- 
 
 lish tramps and vagrants, to 
 signify a lodging. It is possible 
 that the idea of comfortable 
 shelter, in the sense of the pro- 
 verb, "Better a wee bush than 
 nae bield," lies at the root of tosh 
 and tozie. 
 
 She works her ain stockings, and spins her 
 
 ain cleedin', 
 And keeps herself iosh frae the tap to the 
 
 tae, 
 —James Ballantine : Auld Janet. 
 
 Tot, a fondling name for a child 
 that is learning to walk ; from 
 whence tottle, and toddle, to walk 
 with slow, feeble, and uncertain 
 step. From the Gaelic tuxJt, to 
 falL (SeeToTDM.) 
 
 Tottie, warm, snug, comfortable. 
 From the Gaelic teih, warmth ; 
 teodh, to warm ; and teodhaichte, 
 warmed ; whence also totUe, to 
 boil, or the bubbling noise made 
 by boiling liquids. 
 
 Totum, a term of affection for a 
 child just beginning to walk, 
 and sometimes falling in the 
 process ; from the Gaelic tuit, 
 to fall. From the same root 
 comes the name of the spinning 
 and falling toy, the teetotum; 
 and English tot, a child. 
 
 Twa-three toddlin' weans they hae, 
 
 The pride o' a' Strabogie ; 
 Whene'er the totums cry for meat, 
 She curses aye his cogie. 
 —Song : There's Cauld Kail in A berdeen. 
 
 The Scotch have carried the 
 word totum with them to the 
 United States. It occurs in a 
 
246 
 
 ToufUs Bairn — Towdy. 
 
 ridiculous rhyme concerning the 
 negroes — 
 
 De Lord He lub de nigger well, 
 He know de nigger by um smell ; 
 And when de nigger totums cry, 
 De Lord He gib 'em possum pie. 
 
 The English word teetotum, is 
 a child's toy, or kind of top to 
 be twisted round by the fingers 
 and spun on a table. Stor- 
 month's Dictionary defines it, 
 in addition to its ordinary use 
 as a toy, to mean " any small 
 thing in contempt," and sug- 
 gests that the word is probably 
 imitative of its unsteady move- 
 ments when nearly spent. Tee- 
 totum is an amplification of the 
 Gaelic, from its tendency to 
 fall ; tuiteam, let me fall. 
 
 Toun's Bairn, a name affection- 
 ately applied to the native of a 
 town or city, after he has risen 
 to distinction and established a 
 claim to the respect of the in- 
 habitants. 
 
 Toustie, quarrelsome, irascible, 
 contentious, twisty. From the 
 Gaelic tuas, and tuasaid, a quar- 
 rel ; tuasaideach, quarrelsome. 
 
 Mr, Treddles was a wee toustie, when 
 you rubbed him against the hair, but a 
 kind, weel-meaning man, — Scott : Chro- 
 nicles of the Canongate. 
 
 Touttie, totey, irritable, irascible, 
 of capricious and uncertain tem- 
 per. Derived by Jamieson from 
 the Flemish tog tig, windy, a word 
 which is not to be found in the 
 Dutch or Flemish dictionaries. 
 
 Tove, to associate kindly as 
 friends or lovers ; to " tove and 
 crack," to hold amorous or 
 friendly discourse. Tovie, com- 
 fortable ; a tovie fire, a snug, 
 cozy, or comfortable fire. From 
 the Gaelic taobh (pronounced 
 taov), a side, a liking, partial- 
 ity, friendship ; taobhach, kindly, 
 friendly. Tovie is an epithet 
 sometimes used to signify that 
 a man is garrulously drunk. 
 
 Tow, a rope, also the hemp of 
 which ropes are made ; to pull 
 by a rope. Towing-path by a 
 canal, the path by which men 
 or horses tow or pull the vessels 
 through the water. To wallop 
 in a toiv, to dangle from the gal- 
 lows. 
 
 And ere I wed another jade, 
 I'll wallop in a tow. 
 —Burns : The Weary Fund 
 o Tow. 
 
 I hae another toiv on my rock [I have 
 other business to attend to], — Scots Pro- 
 verb. 
 
 Jamieson derives tow from 
 the Swedish tog, the substance 
 of which ropes are made. It 
 is more likely from the Gaelic 
 taod, a rope, a string, a halter. 
 
 Towdy, a jocular term for the 
 breech, fundament, podex, or 
 doup, especially when abnor- 
 mally large. From this word 
 comes the EngUsh dowdy, ap- 
 plied to an ill-dressed and un- 
 shapely woman, large in the 
 hips. The derivation is possibly 
 from the Gaelic doideach, fleshy, 
 muscular. 
 
Towhead — Trattle. 
 
 247 
 
 Towhead, a head with flaxen or 
 very light - coloured hair. A 
 term used in America, accord- 
 ing to Bartlett's Dictionary of 
 Americanisms, for "a flaxen- 
 headed urchin." 
 
 Towmond, a twelvemonth. 
 
 How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was 
 i' the bell. 
 
 — Burns : Cotters Saturday 
 
 Night. 
 
 Surrounded wi' peat an' wi' heather, 
 
 Where muircocks and plovers were rife, 
 For mony a long towmond together 
 There lived an auld man an' his wife. 
 — Andrew Scott : Symon and 
 Janet. 
 
 Towzie, rough, hairy, shaggy; 
 whence towzer, the name some- 
 times applied in England to a 
 terrier. 
 
 His touzie back 
 Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large. 
 To gie them music was his charge. 
 
 — Burns : Tajn d Shanter. 
 
 Toy, a woman's cap. This word 
 is probably from the Gaelic toil, 
 pleasure, applied to the finery 
 with which it is the ^pleasure, 
 and often the toil, of women to 
 adorn or attire themselves, and 
 was originally given to the ordi- 
 nary match or indoor head-dress 
 when bedizened with ribbons. 
 
 Toyte, to dawdle, to take things 
 easily ; from the Gaelic taite, 
 ease, pleasure. 
 
 We've won to crazy years thegither, 
 We'll toyte about wi' ane anither, 
 Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether 
 
 To some hain'd rig. 
 Where ye may doucely rax your leather 
 Wi' sma' fatigue. 
 —Burns : Auld Farmer to his Auld 
 Mare, Maggie. 
 
 Traik, to lounge, to gad about, to 
 follow idly after women ; from 
 the Flemish trekken, to walk, to 
 draw or pull along. 
 
 There is not a huzzy on this side of thirty 
 that ye can bring within your doors, but 
 there will be chiels, writer lads, 'prentice 
 lads, and what not, come traiking after 
 them for their destruction. — Scott : Heart 
 of Midlothian. 
 
 Trattle. The resemblance of this 
 word to prattle, from prate, has 
 led Jamieson and others to sup- 
 pose that its meaning is identi- 
 cal. But it is by no means clear 
 that the supposition is well 
 founded, or that trattle, prattle, 
 and rattle are related in mean- 
 ing, notwithstanding the simil- 
 arity of sound. The word seems 
 to be akin to, or to be derived 
 from, the German trotzen, the 
 Flemish trots, to dare, to defy, 
 to be arrogant or presumptuous ; 
 trotzig, violent. 
 
 Oh better I'll keep my green cleiding 
 
 Frae gude Earl Richard's bluid, 
 Than thou canst keep thy clattering tongue 
 That trattles in thy head. 
 
 —Earl Richard : Border 
 Minstrelsy. 
 
 Against the proud Scots clattering 
 That never will leave their trattling. 
 — Skelton : Against the Scottis, 
 quoted by Sir Walter Scott 
 in Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 The German and Flemish trot- 
 zen would more fully meet the 
 meaning and spirit of the 
 
248 
 
 Treacherous as Garrick — Trolollay. 
 
 epithet than any derivation from 
 •prattle could pretend to. 
 
 Treacherous as Garrick, false 
 as Garrick, deep as Garrick. 
 
 These phrases are current in 
 England as well as in Scotland, 
 and can have no possible con- 
 nection with the name of Gar- 
 rick, or to the renowned actor 
 who bore it in the last century. 
 The true origin is unknown. 
 It is possible, however, that 
 treacherous as Garrick may 
 mean treacherous as a caolreayh 
 (or caoireach), Gaelic for a 
 blazing fire. This suggestion is 
 ofleied f ante de mieux. A High- 
 lander, however, is of opinion 
 that Garrick is a corruption of 
 coruisg, a deep, gloomy, and 
 treacherous loch in the island 
 of Skye. "Who shall decide 
 when doctors disagree ? " 
 
 T r i £•, neat, clean, attractive ; 
 usually derived from the Eng- 
 lish trick or tricky, which has 
 not the same meaning. Also, 
 a fop, or a person giving too 
 much attention to his personal 
 appearance. 
 
 It is my humour : you are a pimp and a 
 
 trig, 
 An Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote. 
 
 — Ben Jonson : The Alchemist. 
 
 And you among them a', John, 
 Sae trig from top to toe. 
 
 — Burns : John Anderson. 
 
 The word seems to be derived 
 from the Dutch and Flemish 
 trek, to attract. Though Jamie- 
 son derives it from the English 
 trick, or trick out, to dress 
 
 gaudily or finely, it is possibly 
 either from the Welsh or Kym- 
 ric trig, firm-set, or the Gaelic 
 triathach {th silent, triac), splen- 
 did. 
 
 Trimmer, trimmie, disrespectful 
 terms applied to a scolding or 
 irascible woman. From the 
 Gaelic dream, or tream, to snarl, 
 to grin angrily ; dreamach, mo- 
 rose, peevish, ill-natured ; drea- 
 mag, or dreimeag, a vixen, a 
 shrew. 
 
 Trog'gin, wares exchanged with 
 servant girls for the odds and 
 ends of a household by travel- 
 ling pedlars ; trog, old clothes ; 
 trogger, or trocker, a pedlar, one 
 who deals in old clothes. It is 
 doubtful whether these words 
 are from the French troquer, to 
 barter, the English truck, or 
 from the Dutch and Flemish 
 troggden, to beg under pretence 
 of selling trifles that nobody 
 requires. The word appears as 
 troke in HalliweU's Archaic Dic- 
 tionary. 
 
 Buy braw troggin, 
 
 Frae the banks o' Dee ; 
 Wha' wants troggin. 
 
 Let him come to me. 
 —Burns : An Election Song. 
 
 Trolollay, a term which, accord- 
 ing to Jamieson, occurs in a 
 rhyme sung by young people in 
 Scotland at Hogmanay, the last 
 day of the old year, and the 
 morning of the new. " It has," 
 he says, •' been viewed as a cor- 
 ruption of the French trois rois 
 
Tron — Tryste. 
 
 249 
 
 aUais, three kings are come 1 " 
 In this sentence the word aUais 
 is ungrammatical and incorrect, 
 for trois rois sont venus. But in- 
 dependently of the bad French, 
 the etymology is entirely wrong. 
 The word, or words, are part of 
 a very ancient Druidical chorus, 
 sung two thousand years ago 
 at the dawning of the day, in 
 honour of the sunrise : trd, let Id ! 
 From the Gaelic trdth {tra), 
 early ; and Icl, day, signifying 
 not "the three kings are come," 
 but " Day ! early day ! " equi- 
 valent to the " Hail, early 
 morn ! " of a well-known modern 
 song. 
 
 Tron. There is a Tron Church 
 in Edinburgh and another in 
 Glasgow ; but the Scottish Glos- 
 saries and Jamieson's " Scottish 
 Dictionary " make no mention of 
 the word. It would appear from 
 a passage in Hone's " E very-day 
 Book " that Tron signified a pub- 
 lic weighing-machine, or scale 
 in a market-place, where pur- 
 chasers of commodities might, 
 without fee, satisfy themselves 
 that the weight of their pur- 
 chase was correct. Hence a 
 " Tron Church" was a church 
 in the market-place near which 
 the public weighing-machine 
 was established. The word is 
 derived from the Gaelic trom, 
 heavy, or a weight. 
 
 Tronic, a tedious story that has 
 been often repeated, and that 
 causes a sense of weariness in 
 
 the person condemned to listen 
 to it. From the Gaelic trom 
 or tron, heavy, tedious. The 
 same epithet is applied to a 
 boy who is unable to learn his 
 lessons. 
 
 Trow or drow, the evil one. 
 From the Gaelic droch, evil, 
 bad, wicked. Sea trowes, evil 
 spirits of the sea; to trow, or 
 drow, to wish evil, to impre- 
 cate. 
 
 Trullion, a low, base, dirty fellow. 
 The English has trull, the femi- 
 nine of this word, applied to an 
 immoral woman of the lowest 
 class. The origin is the Gaelic 
 truaill, to pollute, to debase ; 
 and truilleach, a base, dirty per- 
 son. 
 
 Tryste, an appointed place of 
 meeting, a rendezvous ; of the 
 same origin as trust, or confi- 
 dence, from the idea that he 
 who appoints a tryste with an- 
 other trusts that the other 
 will keep or be faithful to it. 
 The word occurs in Chaucer, 
 and in several old English MSS. 
 of his period; but is not used 
 by Spenser, Shakspeare, or later 
 writers. " To bide tryste,'' to be 
 true to time and place of meet- 
 ing. 
 
 "You walk late, sir," said I. "I bide 
 tryste," was the reply, "and so I think do 
 you, Mr. Osbaldistone ? "— Sir Walter 
 Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 The tenderest-hearted maid 
 That ever bided tryste at village stile. 
 —Tennyson. 
 
250 
 
 Tuath de Danaan — Tulcan. 
 
 By the wine-god he swore it, and named 
 the trysting-ddiy. 
 
 — Lord Macaulav. 
 No maidens with blue eyes 
 Dream of the trysting hour 
 Or bridal's happier time. 
 
 — Under Green Leaves. 
 When I came to Ardgour I wrote to 
 Lochiel to tryste me where to meet him.— 
 Hogg's Jacobite Relics : Letter frotn Rob 
 Roy to General Gordon. 
 
 Tuath de Danaan. This name 
 has been given to a colony of 
 northmen who early settled in 
 Ireland, and afterwards passed 
 into Argyllshire. From tuath, 
 north ; tuathach, northern ; and 
 dan, bold, warlike ; and danfher, 
 (dan-er), a warrior, a bold man ; 
 and also a Dane. Tuath de Da- 
 naan is a corruption, in which 
 the second word de ought to 
 have no place of tuathaich and 
 dan or dana. The Very Kev. 
 Canon Bourke, in his work on 
 the Aryan origin of the Gaelic 
 language, says ' ' The Tuath de 
 Danaans were a large, fair- 
 complexioned, and very remark- 
 able race, warlike, energetic, 
 progressive, musical, poetical, 
 skilled in Druidism," &c. Mr. 
 Pym Yeatman, in "The Origin 
 of the Nations of Europe," who 
 quotes these and other passages, 
 is of opinion that the Tuath de 
 Danaans were Scandinavians, a 
 supposition which their Gaelic 
 designation fully corroborates. 
 Of course they brought with 
 them their own language, many 
 of the words of which were in 
 course of time incorporated 
 with the speech of the people 
 with whom they amalgamated. 
 
 This accounts for the many 
 Danish words both in modern 
 Gaelic and in Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Tuilyie or toolzie, a broil, a 
 struggle, a quarrel ; tuUiesome, 
 quarrelsome ; tuilzeour, a quar- 
 relsome person, a wrangler. 
 Though Jamieson derives tuilzie 
 from the French fowiVZer— a word 
 which is not to be found in the 
 French dictionaries — to stir or 
 agitate water, it is probably de- 
 rived from the same source as 
 the quasi-synonymous English 
 tussle, and akin to the Gaelic 
 tuisleach, a tumult, a quarrel 
 among several persons ; and 
 tuileas, riot ; whence, also, towzle, 
 to pull about roughly, to dis- 
 hevel or disorder. 
 
 A toolying {toolzieing) tyke comes limp- 
 ing hame, — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 The toolzie s teugh 'tween Pitt and Fox, 
 And our gude wife's wee birdie cocks. 
 Burns : Elegy on the Year 1788. 
 
 But though dull prose folk Latin splatter 
 In logic tulzie, 
 I hope we bardies ken some better 
 Than mind sic brulzie. 
 — Burns : To William Simpson. 
 
 What verse can sing, what prose recite, 
 The butcher deeds of bloody fate 
 Amid this mighty tulzie. 
 —Burns : Epistle to Robert Graham. 
 
 Tulcan. Mr. Gladstone, during 
 his electioneering raid into Mid- 
 lothian, in November 1879, ex- 
 plained at Dalkeith the meaning 
 of tulcan. 
 
 My noble friend, Lord Rosebery, speak- 
 ing to me of the law of hypothec, said that 
 the bill of Mr. Vans Agnew on hj-pothec 
 is a Tulcan Bill. A tulcan, l, believe, is 
 
Tumbler — Tunag. 
 
 251 
 
 a figure of a calf stuffed with straw, and 
 it is, you know, an old Scottish custom 
 among farmers to place the tulcan calf 
 under a cow to induce her to give milk. 
 
 Jamieson writes the word 
 tulchanCy and cites the phrase 
 a tulchane bishop, as the desig- 
 nation of one who received the 
 episcopate on condition of as- 
 signing the temporalities to a 
 secular person. In some parts 
 of Scotland the people say a 
 tourkin calf, instead of a tul- 
 can calf, and it is difficult to 
 say which of the two words 
 is the more correct, or in 
 what direction we must look for 
 the etymology. Tulcan, in the 
 Gaelic, signifies a hollow or 
 empty head, that of the mocked 
 calf stuffed with straw, from 
 toll, hoUow, and cean, a head ; 
 while tourkin would seem to be 
 derived from tU7', to invent, 
 and cean, a head; therefore 
 signifying a head invented for 
 the occasion, to deceive the 
 mother. 
 
 A tourkin calf, or lamb, is one that 
 wears a skin not its own. A tourkin lamb 
 is one taken from its dam, and given to 
 another ewe that has lost her own. In this 
 case, the shepherd takes the skin of the 
 dead lamb, and puts it on the back of the 
 living one, and thus so deceives the ewe 
 that she allows the stranger to suck. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Tumbler, a drinking-glass of a 
 larger size than is ordinarily 
 used for wine. The derivation 
 may be from tumble, to fall over ; 
 as in the deep drinking days, 
 happily passed away, glasses 
 were round at the base, without 
 
 stems, and a drinker who held 
 one full in his hand had to 
 drink off the contents, before 
 he could set it down, without 
 spilhng the liquor. "Tak' a 
 tumbler," i.e., take a glass of 
 toddy, is a common invita- 
 tion to convivial intercourse, 
 "Three tumblers and an eke" 
 were once considered a fair 
 allowance for a man after din- 
 ner, or before retiring to rest. 
 A Highland writer once sug- 
 gested that the derivation was 
 from taom, pour out or empty, 
 and leor, enough. This was 
 apt, and may perhaps be the 
 true etymology. Jamieson has 
 tumbler, the French tombHl, a 
 cart ; but this can have no re- 
 lation to the convivial glass. 
 
 Tum-deif. Jamieson suggests 
 that perhaps this word means 
 swooning, and refers it to the 
 Icelandic tumba, the English 
 tumble, to fall to the ground. 
 It seems, however, to be no 
 other than a mis-spelling of 
 dumb-deaf, or deaf and dumb. 
 
 Tumph, a blockhead. From the 
 German dumm, stupid, the Dutch 
 and Flemish dom. Tumfie, or 
 tumphie, is diminutive of tumph. 
 
 Lang Jamie was employed in trifling 
 jobs on market days, especially in holding 
 horses for the farmers. He was asked his 
 charge by a stranger to the town. *' Hoot ! 
 I hae nae charge ; sometimes a tumph 
 offers me twa bawbees, but a gentleman 
 like you always gies me a saxpence ! " — 
 Laird of Logan. 
 
 Tunagf, a kind of jacket worn 
 by women in the Highlands 
 
252 
 
 Turnimspike — Tuttiy tatie. 
 
 of Scotland and in Ireland, 
 and covering the shoulders, 
 back, and hips ; a tunic. " If 
 not derived from the Latin 
 tunica," says Jamieson, " it may 
 he from, the same root." It is 
 from the same root in a lan- 
 guage much older than the Latin 
 — the Celtic and Gaelic ton, the 
 posterior, the hips. The Greeks 
 called that part of the body 
 TTvyT}, whence, in the learned 
 slang of the English universities, 
 the coat-tails were called "py- 
 gastoles," and by some irreve- 
 rent undergraduates, " bum 
 curtains." The word in Scottish 
 Gaelic is tonag, and in Irish 
 Gaelic tonach. 
 
 Turnimspike, a name given by the 
 Highlanders to a high road or 
 turnpike road when first made 
 to the north of Inverness. Great 
 consternation is said to have 
 been excited in Koss-shire when 
 a sheriff's officer and a toll- 
 collector first appeared in Tain. 
 "Lord preserve us 1 " said one 
 townsman to his neighbour, 
 " what'U come next ? The law 
 has reached Tain I " 
 
 Another law came after this, 
 She never saw the like, man, 
 
 They mak a lang road on the crund 
 
 (the ground) 
 An' ca' him tumhnsptke, man. 
 
 But she'll awa to Highland hills 
 Where deil a ane can turn her, 
 
 And no come near to tumhnspike. 
 Unless it be to burn her. 
 
 — Jacobite Songs and Ballads. 
 
 Tutti, tatie, according to Jamie- 
 son, is an interjection equiva- 
 
 lent to the English psJiaw ! But 
 Hey ! tuttie tatie is the name of 
 an old Scottish martial air, to 
 which Burns adapted his noble 
 song of " Scots wha hae wi' 
 Wallace bled." To this spirited 
 melody, according to tradition, 
 the troops of King Robert Bruce 
 marched to the great victory of 
 Bannockburn. The words are 
 derived from the Gaelic, familiar 
 to the soldiers of Bruce, aite 
 dudach taite ! from dudach, to 
 sound the trumpet, and taite, 
 joy, and may be freely trans- 
 lated, " Let the joyous trumpets 
 sound ! " The battle of Ban- 
 nockburn was fought in an age 
 when the bagpipe had not be- 
 come common in Scotland, and 
 when the harp was pre-emi- 
 nently the national instrument 
 in peace as the trumpet was in 
 war. Jamieson, not quite sure 
 of Pshaw as an interpretation, 
 adds that " the words may have 
 been meant as imitative of the 
 sound of the trumpet in giving 
 the charge." 
 
 It may be remarked that pos- 
 sibly there may be a remote 
 connection between Jamieson's 
 idea of Pshaw and that of the 
 blast of trumpets. Fanfare in 
 French signifies a blast on a 
 trumpet, and a fanfaron is a 
 braggadocio, a vain boaster, a 
 braggart, or one who blows the 
 trumpet of his own praises. 
 For such a one in the full flow 
 of his self-laudation, the im- 
 patient interjection. Pshaw ! 
 would be equally appropriate 
 and well-merited. 
 
Tut^mute — Tyke. 
 
 253 
 
 When you hear the trumpet sound 
 
 Tutti tatti to the drum, 
 Up your sword, and down your gun, 
 And to the loons again 1 
 
 —Jacobite Relics : Wheatley's 
 Reduplicated Words in the 
 English Language. 
 
 Tut-mute and tuilzie mulzie, de- 
 scribed in Wheatley's Dictionary 
 of Reduplicated Words " as a 
 muttering or grumbling between 
 parties that has not yet assumed 
 the form of a broil." This odd 
 phrase, signifying a fierce quarrel 
 that had but slight beginning, 
 is presented in the proverb— 
 
 It began in a laigh tute-mute, 
 An' it rose to a wild tuilzie mulzie. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Tut is the Gaelic dud, the sound 
 or toot upon a wind instrument, 
 a horn, a flute, a whistle or a 
 trumpet — and mute is a corrup- 
 tion of maoth, soft, gentle. Tuil- 
 zie is a brawl, a scuffle, a fight, 
 from the Gaelic tuaileas, riot, 
 disorder, conflict, tumult ; tuail- 
 easag, a quarrelsome, foul- 
 mouthed woman ; a scold, and 
 mileadh, battle. The proverb 
 expresses a meaning similar to 
 that in Allan Ramsay — " It be- 
 gan wi' needles and pins, and 
 ended wi' horned nowte." 
 
 Twasome, threesome, foursome. 
 
 The numerals two, three, and 
 four, with the addition of the 
 syllable some, are used in a sense 
 of which they are not suscep- 
 tible in English. A twasome 
 walk, or a twasome interview, 
 is often rendered in English by 
 the French phrase tite-d-tSte. 
 
 Threesome and foursome reels, 
 dances in which three or four 
 persons participate. 
 
 There's threesome reels z.nd/oursome reels, 
 There's hornpipes and strathpeys, man, 
 But the best dance in a' the toun 
 , Is the Deil's awa' wi' the Exciseman. 
 —Burns. 
 
 Tway, a pair, a couple, the 
 English twain; two, sometimes 
 written twa. 
 
 Every knight had a lady bright, 
 
 And every squire a May ; 
 Her own self chose Lord Livingstone — 
 
 They were a lovely tway. 
 
 —Bvchan's Ancient Ballads : Lord 
 Livingstone. 
 
 Twime and thrime, a couplet and 
 a triplet. These are words that 
 have not yet been admitted into 
 the dictionaries. 
 
 Twine, to rob, to deprive ; to 
 part with, to relinquish. Ety- 
 mology uncertain ; supposed to 
 be from the English twain, two, 
 thence to separate into two. 
 
 The fish shall swim the flood nae mair. 
 Nor the corn grow through the day, 
 
 Ere the fiercest fire that ever was kindled 
 Twine me and Rothiemay. 
 —Ballad of the Fire of Frendraught. 
 
 My duddie is a cankert carle 
 Will no twine wi' his gear. 
 
 — James Carnegie. 
 
 Brandy . . . 
 Twines many a poor, doylt, drucken hash 
 Of half his days. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Tyke, a mongrel, a rough dog ; 
 originally a house dog ; from 
 the Gaelic tigh, or taigh, a 
 house. The word is common 
 
254 
 
 Tyke-iyrit — Unco. 
 
 in Yorkshire, and in all the 
 Northern Counties of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Tyke-tjrrit or tired. Tired or 
 wearied, as a dog or tyke after 
 a long chase. 
 
 Base tyke, call'st thou me host ? 
 
 — Shakspeare : Henry V, 
 
 Nae tawted (uncombed) tyke. 
 
 —Burns : Tfu Twa Dogs. 
 
 He was a gash and faithful tyke. 
 
 — Idem. 
 
 I'm as tired of it as a tyke of lang kail. 
 
 You have lost your own stomach and 
 found a tyke's, 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 U 
 
 Ug, ugg, to feel extreme loath- 
 ing or disgust. Ugsome, fright- 
 ful ; ugsomeness, frightfulness, 
 horror. 
 
 They would ug a body at them. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Ugsome to hear was her wild eldrich shriek. 
 
 The ugsomeness and silence of the night. 
 —Douglas : Translation of the Enid. 
 
 Who dang us and flang us into this ugsome 
 mire. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay : The Vision. 
 
 This word seems to be akin 
 to the English ugly, which all 
 the philologists who ignore the 
 Gaehc as one of the sources 
 of the English language, derive 
 either from the Danish huggern, 
 to shiver, or from other equally- 
 improbable Teutonic roots. In 
 Gaelic aog (quasi ug), signifies 
 death, a ghost, a skeleton, and 
 aogaii, ghastly, deathlike, ugly. 
 
 Ultimus eekibus, the very last 
 glass of whisky toddy, or eke, 
 one drop more at a convivial 
 gathering before parting for the 
 night J the last of the ekes. 
 
 Umbersorrow, hardy, rough, 
 rude, uncultivated. This cor- 
 rupt word, of which Jamieson 
 cites a still corrupter, " a num- 
 ber sorrow" is clearly derived 
 from the Flemish and Teutonic 
 unbesorgt, uncared for, wild, 
 neglected, growing in the 
 strength of nature without hu- 
 man assistance. Jamieson cites 
 its use in the Lothians in the 
 sense of " rugged, of a surly 
 disposition," applied to one 
 whose education has been ne- 
 glected, and who is without 
 good manners. 
 
 Umquhile or umwhile, at one 
 time, formerly ; used also in the 
 sense of departed or late, in 
 such phrases as, " my late hus- 
 band," " my departed wife," 
 my umquhile husband, my um- 
 quhile wife ; from the Flemish 
 om, past, and wijl, a short time, 
 the same as the English while, 
 a short time past, a short while 
 ago. 
 
 Unco, strange, unknown, a won- 
 der, a strange thing ; an abbre- 
 
Unfurthersome — Uisg. 
 
 255 
 
 viation of uncouth. Unco guid, 
 extremely good, very good. 
 
 The unco guid, and the rigidly righteous. 
 — Burns. 
 An unco cockernony. — Galt. 
 Nae safe wading in unco waters. 
 Like a cow in an unco loan. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. 
 — Burns : Cotter's Saturday Night. 
 
 Unfurthersome, unpropitious; ap- 
 plied to the weather, if too cold, 
 or too rainy, and preventing the 
 due ripening of the crops. 
 
 Ungainly, awkward, uncouth, in- 
 sufficient, clumsy ; gaivly, plea- 
 sant, fit, proper, pleased ; gane, 
 to serve, to suffice, to fit, to be 
 appropriate ; unganed, inappro- 
 priate. Oainly and ungainly 
 are not exactly synonymous in 
 Scottish parlance with the Eng- 
 lish word. Oainly is nearly 
 obsolete in England ; and un- 
 gainly merely signifies awkward, 
 clumsy. The root of the words 
 in the Scottish sense is the Gae- 
 lic gean, good-humour, fitness, 
 comeliness ; geanail, comely, fit, 
 proper, pleasant, serviceable. 
 In the following quotation gane 
 means to serve or suffice : — 
 
 But there is neither bread nor kale 
 
 To gane my men and me. 
 —Battle o/Otterboume, Old Version. 
 
 Unkensome, not to be known or 
 recognised, not to be traced. 
 
 A smith ! a smith ! Dickie, he cries, 
 
 A smith, a smith right speedilie ! 
 To turn back the caukers o' our horses' 
 shoon 
 For its unkensome we wad be. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Archie 0' Ca'Jield. 
 
 Unmackly, mis-shapen, deformed. 
 
 Up then sterts the stranger knight, 
 Said Ladye be not thou afraid, 
 
 I fight for thee with this grim Soldan 
 Though he's sair unmackly made. 
 —Ballad oj Sir Cauline. 
 
 Untholeable, intolerable, unen- 
 durable, insufferable ; from thole, 
 to endure. 
 
 He got untholeably divertin', and folk 
 complained o' pains in their sides wi 
 laughin'. — Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 Updorrock, worn out, bankrupt. 
 According to Jamieson, a Shet- 
 land word, which he derives 
 from " Icelandic opp and throka, 
 also thruTca, urgere, primere." 
 It seems to be rather from the 
 Flemish op di'ogen, dried up, 
 exhausted. 
 
 Uppil, to clear up ; applied to the 
 weather. 
 
 When the weather at any time has been 
 wet, and ceases to be so, we say it is uppled. 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 From the Teutonic aufhellen — 
 auf, up ; hellen, to become clear, 
 to clear up. 
 
 Upon luck's head, by chance. 
 " I got it on luck's head," I got 
 it by chance. 
 
 Urisk, according to Jamieson, 
 was a name given in the High- 
 lands of Scotland to a satyr. It 
 was in reality the name given 
 to a Brownie or Puck, the Robin 
 Goodfellow of Englith fairy my- 
 thology ; from the Gaelic uirisy, 
 a goblin. (See Wirey-cow. 
 
256 
 
 Vanquish — Wabster. 
 
 Vanquish, a disease among sheep 
 and lambs, caused by their eating 
 a certain unwholesome grass. 
 Jamieson says the disease is so 
 called because it vanquishes the 
 sheep I He might as well account 
 for the name of Kilmarnock, by 
 stating that one Marnock was 
 killed there. Vanquish is a cor- 
 ruption of the Gaelic uain, pale 
 green, and cuiseach or cuiscag, a 
 species of rank grass with a 
 long stalk that grows on wet 
 soil and is deleterious to cattle, 
 and especially to sheep. Cuiseach 
 is possibly the same as coixch 
 grass, described in Halliwell's 
 Archaic and Provincial Dic- 
 tionary as a kind of coarse 
 grass that grows very quickly, 
 and is sometimes called twitch 
 grass. 
 
 Vaudy or vaudie, gay, showy ; 
 a corruption of the English 
 gaudy. 
 
 Our land shall be glad, but the Whigs 
 
 shall be sorry 
 When the King gets his ain, and heaven 
 
 gets the glory ; 
 
 The rogues shall be sad, but the honest man 
 
 vaudie 
 When the throne is possessed by our ain 
 bonnie laddie. 
 
 —Jacobite Relics of Scotland. 
 
 Vauntie, proud, vain, also a brag- 
 gart ; from the French vantcr^ to 
 
 boast. 
 
 Her cutty sark 
 In longitude though sorely scanty, 
 It was her best, and she was vauntie. 
 — Burns : Tarn d Shanter. 
 
 Vir, force, vigour. Sometimes 
 written hir, a vein; from the 
 Latin vis, vires. Possibly the 
 English hurly^ strong, is of kin- 
 dred origin. 
 
 Swith with vir he whirled her round. 
 — George Beattie : John d Amha. 
 
 Wi'vengefulz'/r,and Norland twang Ibid. 
 
 Vlonk, or Wlonk, splendidly 
 dressed, richly attired ; from 
 the "Anglo Saxon" or old Eng- 
 lish vlonke, which has the same 
 meaning. Possibly this may be 
 the origin of the modern word 
 ■flunlcey, in contemptuous allu- 
 sion to the grayish colours of 
 the liveries of male servants in 
 great ostentatious families. (See 
 Flunkey, ante, p. 60). 
 
 W 
 
 Wa', abbreviation of wall. " His 
 back is at the toa'," i.e., he is 
 driven into a corner ; his back 
 is at the wall, fighting against 
 opposing enemies or creditors. 
 
 Wabster, a weaver ; from weave 
 and web. 
 
 Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, 
 
 The spot they ca'd it Linkum-doddie, 
 Willie was a wabster gude. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 An honest wabster to his trade. 
 Whose wife's twa nieves were scarce weel 
 bred. 
 
 ■-Burns : Death and Dr. 
 Hornbook. 
 
Wad— Waff, 
 
 257 
 
 Wad, to wager, to bet ; from the 
 Flemish wedden, which has the 
 same meaning. Wads also sig- 
 nify forfeits ; a game at wads, a 
 game at forfeits ; wad-set, a 
 mortgage ; wad, a pledge. 
 
 The gray was a mare and a right good 
 mare, 
 But when she saw the Annan water, 
 She could not hae ridden a furlong mair, 
 Had a thousand merks been wadded at 
 her. 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: 
 Annan Water, 
 
 Wads are nae arguments. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 My Sunday's coat she has laid it in ivad. 
 And the best blue bonnet e'er was on my 
 
 head; 
 At kirk or at market I'm covered but 
 
 barely, 
 Oh that my wife would drink hooly and 
 
 fairly. 
 
 — Herd's Collection : The Drucken 
 Wife o' Galloway. 
 
 Waddie, vigorous, willing, alert, 
 ready to do. 
 
 What fee will you give me for now and 
 
 for aye — 
 Was e'er a young laddie sae waddie as I. 
 
 — Buchan's Ancient Ballads : The 
 Rigwoodie Carlin'. 
 
 Wae's I woe is ; unlucky, unhappy, 
 in ill plight. 
 
 Woes the wife that wants the tongue, 
 but wee's the man that gets her. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 And aye the o'erword o' his sang 
 Was — wae's me for Prince Charlie. 
 —Jacobite Song. 
 
 Waesuck I wae's-heart I wae's- 
 me! Interjections or expres- 
 sions of surprise or sorrow, like 
 alas I 
 
 Waesuck I for him that gets nae lass, 
 Or lasses that hae naething. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 The derivation of wae's-heart 
 and wae's-me, from wae, sorrow, 
 is obvious ; that of waesuck is 
 not so clear. It is probably 
 from the Flemish wee, sorrow or 
 love, and sugt or zucht, a sigh. 
 Jamieson derives it from the 
 Danish usig, woe to us ; vae no- 
 bis, woe to us. The word, how- 
 ever, is not to be found in Dan- 
 ish dictionaries. 
 
 Waff, wauf, waft. A freak, a 
 whiff, a wave of sound or of 
 wind, a sudden and slight im- 
 pression upon the senses, a tran- 
 sient glance, a glimpse, a passing 
 odour. ''A waff o' cauld" is a 
 slight attack of cold. "I had 
 a waff o' him i' the street ; " I 
 had a glimpse of him. *' There 
 was a 2vaff 0' roses ; " there was 
 a sudden odour of roses. The 
 primitive idea at the root of the 
 word is sudden and of short 
 duration, rising and subsiding 
 like a wave. 
 
 Waff, worthless, or shabby in 
 appearance and conduct ; idle, 
 dissipated ; waffe, a loafer, an 
 idler, a vagrant, a vagabond ; 
 waff-like, resembling a vaga- 
 bond in manners and appear- 
 ance ; waffinger, a confirmed va- 
 grant and idler. These words 
 are of uncertain etymologj-, 
 though it is probable that they 
 are all from the same root as 
 the English waif, a stray, a 
 vagrant, one who, like the 
 S, 
 
258 
 
 Wa^gang — Waith. 
 
 Italian traviato and traviata, has 
 gone astray from the right and 
 respectable path, and formed 
 on the same principle from way 
 off, or off the way. Another 
 possible root is the Flemish 
 zwtrfen (with the elision of the 
 initial z), to go astray, to vaga- 
 bondise. 
 
 Wa'gang or awa'-gang, depar- 
 ture ; ganging awa\ going away ; 
 an escape. 
 
 Winter's ivdgang. 
 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 A wa'gang crop is the last crop gathered 
 before a tenant quits his farm ; also the 
 name given to the canal, through which 
 the water escapes from the mill wheel. — 
 Jamieson. 
 
 Its dowie in the end o' hairst, 
 
 At the wa'gang o' the swallow, 
 When the wind grows cauld and the burn 
 grows bauld, 
 And the weeds are hanging yellow ; 
 But oh, it's dowier far to see 
 The wa'gang o' her that the heart gangs 
 wi'. 
 
 — Hew Ainslie. 
 
 Waghorn. In the North of Scot- 
 land it is a proverbial phrase 
 to say of a great liar that " he 
 lies like Waghorn," or is " waur 
 than Waghorn, ^^ that "he is as 
 false as Waghorn, and Waghorn 
 was nineteen times falser than 
 the devil." Jamieson records 
 that ** Waghorn is a fabulous 
 personage, who being a greater 
 liar than the devil, was crowned 
 King of Liars." Why the name 
 of Waghorn, any more than that 
 of Wagstaffe, both respectable 
 patronymics, should be selected 
 to adorn or to disfigure the 
 
 proverb is not easy to explain, 
 except on the supposition that 
 the traditionary " waghorn " is a 
 corruption of a word that has 
 a more rational as well as a 
 more definite meaning. And 
 such it is found to be. In 
 Gaelic uaigh (quasi wag) signifies 
 the grave, the pit, and iutharn 
 {iuarn, quasi horn) signifies hell, 
 whence he lies like Waghorn, 
 would signify he " lies like 
 heU " or like the " pit of hell," 
 consequently worse than the 
 devil, who is supposed to be but 
 one, while the other devils in 
 the pit are supposed to be 
 multitudinous. 
 
 Waif, a derelict, a wanderling ; 
 one found by accident after 
 having been lost or gone astray. 
 The word in this sense has 
 lately been adopted into Eng- 
 lish literature as a noun ; but 
 in Scotland it is employed both 
 as a noun and an adjective. 
 
 Wi' her I will get gowd and gear, 
 Wi' thee, I sail get nane ; 
 
 Ye cam to me as a wa^ woman, 
 I'll leave thee as the same. 
 — Herd's Collection: Fair Annie. 
 
 This word, sometimes written 
 and pronounced waff, waffle, and 
 waffinger, signifies a wanderer, 
 a strolling vagabond, lost to 
 civilised life and society; waff- 
 like, of vagabond and disreput- 
 able appearance. 
 
 Waith, to wander, a wandering 
 and straying. The English waif, 
 waifs and strays, things or per- 
 sons that have wandered or gone 
 
Wale— Wallop. 
 
 259 
 
 astray. The etymology is doubt- 
 ful; perhaps from waft, to be 
 blown about by the wind, or 
 carried by the waters. 
 
 Wale, to choose, to select, a 
 choice ; waly, choice. From the 
 German wahlen, to choose. 
 
 Scones, the Tvale o* food. 
 
 —Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 There's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon 
 
 glen, 
 He's the king o' guid fellows and ivale 
 
 o' auld men. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 The Laird of Balnamon, after dinner at 
 a friend's house, had cherry brandy put 
 before him in mistake for port. He liked 
 the liquor, and drank freely of it. His 
 servant Harry or "Hairy" was to drive 
 him home in a gig. On crossing the moor, 
 whether from greater exposure to the blast, 
 or from the Laird's tmsteadiness of head, 
 his hat and wig fell to the ground. Harry 
 got off to pick them up and restore them 
 to his master. The Laird was satisfied 
 with the hat, but demurred to the wig. 
 "It's no my wig, Harry lad ; it's no my 
 wig." "Ye'd better tak it, sir," said 
 Harry; "for there's nae wale o wigs on 
 the moor." — Dean Ramsay's Reminis- 
 cences. 
 
 He wales a portion wi' judicious care, 
 And let us worship God, he says, wi' 
 solemn air. 
 —Burns : Cotters Saturday Night. 
 
 Wallageous. This obsolete word 
 is used by the ancient Scottish 
 poet, Barbour, in the sense of 
 sportive, wanton, lustful. It is 
 evidently a corruption of the 
 Gaelic uudlach, which has the 
 same meaning ; uallacMs, cheer- 
 fulness, gaiety, frolicksomeness, 
 conceitedness, wantonness ; ual- 
 lachag, a coquette. 
 
 Wallle, a toy ; a bonnie wallie, a 
 pretty toy ; from rvale, choice ; 
 from the Teutonic wahlen. 
 
 Walloch, a name applied in the 
 Lowlands to the Highland fling, 
 or other dance, and not to the 
 reel, which is less active and 
 boisterous. The word also means 
 a frisk or kich The word seems 
 to be derived from the Gaelic 
 uallach, joyous, frisky. 
 
 I wat she was a cantie quean, 
 And weel could dance the Highland 
 walloch. 
 —Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch. 
 Auld Roy look'd as he gaed by, 
 
 And oh ! he gaed an unco walloch; 
 And after them he soon did hie, 
 And followed through the braes of 
 
 Balloch. 
 — Buchan's Collection of Old Scottish 
 Ballads. 
 
 The word is sometimes written 
 waUop, as in the favourite song 
 of " Maggie Lauder " : — 
 
 Meg up and wallop' d o'er the green. 
 For brawly she could frisk it. 
 
 Walloch-goul, an abusive epithet 
 applied to a wanton or arrogant 
 blusterer ; from the Gaelic ual- 
 lach, and guil, to cry out. (See 
 Yowl.) 
 
 Wallop, to dangle, to hang, to 
 sway about with quick motion, 
 to swing. 
 
 Now let us lay our heads thegither. 
 
 In love fraternal ; 
 May Envy wallop in a tether, 
 
 Black fiend, infernal ! 
 
 —Burns: To Lapraik, 
 
260 
 
 Wallow — Wame. 
 
 Wallo-w, to fade away ; wallowed, 
 faded, withered by cold, blight, 
 or natural decay ; the etymon 
 doubtless of the word wilt, in 
 common use in America, and in 
 some parts of England, of which 
 a ludicrous example is given by 
 the humorist, Artemus Ward : 
 *' I said to her, wilt thou? and 
 she wilted" The derivation is 
 uncertain, though probably from 
 the Teutonic wdken. 
 
 The last time that I saw her face 
 
 She ruddy was and red, 
 But now, alas ! and woe is me, 
 She's wallowed like a weed. 
 —Scott's Border Minstrelsy : Ballad 
 of the Gay Goss-Hawk. 
 
 Waly! waly! an interjection of 
 sorrow ; alas ! or, woe is me ! 
 Derived from wail, to lament, 
 or wail ye ! lament ye ; the 
 Teutonic weh, woe, and wehlich, 
 woful. 
 
 Oh waly ! waly ! but love is bonnie, 
 
 A little time while it is new ; 
 But when it's auld it waxes cauld, 
 And fades'awa' like morning dew. 
 — Ballad of the Marchioness of 
 Doitglas. 
 
 Oh waly! waly I up the bank. 
 And %valy ! waly ! down the brae, 
 
 And waly ! waly ! yon burn side, 
 Where I and my love wont to gae. 
 • — Lady Anne BothwelFs Lament. 
 
 Wame, the belly ; also the Eng- 
 lish word womb, which is from 
 the same etymological root. The 
 Scottish derivatives of wame are 
 numerous ; among others, wamie, 
 having much wame, i.e., cor- 
 pulent ; wamieness, corpulency ; 
 wamyt, pregnant ; wame-tow, a 
 belly-band or girth, from wame, 
 
 the belly, and tow (the Gaelic 
 taod), a rope, a band ; wamefu\ 
 a bellyfull. 
 
 I never liked water in my shoon ; and 
 my wavies made o' better leather. 
 
 Wae to the wame that has a wilfu 
 master. 
 
 — ^Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Food fills the wavie, and keeps us livin'. 
 Though life's a gift no worth receivin', 
 When heavy dragged wi' pine and 
 grievin'. 
 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 A wamefu is a wamefu', whether it 
 be of barley-meal or bran. — ScOTT : St. 
 Ronan's Well. 
 
 Wame has disappeared from 
 English literature, but still sur- 
 vives in the current speech of 
 the northern counties. Womb, in 
 English, was formerly applied 
 to the male sex, in the sense 
 of the Scottish wame, or belly, 
 as appears from Piers Plough- 
 man : — 
 
 Paul, after his preaching, 
 Paniers he made, 
 And wan with his handes 
 What his wombe needed. 
 
 (Gained with his hands what 
 his belly needed.) In recent 
 times the word is restricted in 
 its meaning to the female sex, 
 though used metaphorically and 
 poetically in such phrases as 
 the ''wcmh of Time." 
 
 The earth was formed, but in the womb 
 
 as yet 
 Of waters, embryon immature. 
 
 — Paradise Lost. 
 
 Caves and womby vaultages of France 
 Shall chide your trespass. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Henry V. 
 
 Among the three interpreta- 
 tions of the word, as given by 
 
Wan — Wanchancie. 
 
 2l6l 
 
 Johnson, the last is " a cavity." 
 The only traces of anything like 
 wame, or womh, that appears in 
 any of the Teutonic languages, 
 or in high or low Dutch, is the 
 Swedish warn, signifying tripe. 
 Though Johnson derives womb 
 from the Anglo-Saxon and from 
 Icelandic, it may be suggested 
 that the more ancient Celtic and 
 Gaelic provides the true root of 
 both wame and womb in uaimh 
 and uamh, a cavity, a cave, a 
 hollow place. The Shakspearean 
 adjective womby finds its syno- 
 nym in the Gaelic uamhach^ 
 abounding in cavities or hollows. 
 
 Wan, pale green, as applied to 
 the colour of a river in certain 
 states of the water and the 
 atmosphere. Many philologists 
 have been of opinion that 
 wcm, both in English and 
 Scotch, always signifies pale. 
 Jamieson, however, thought dif- 
 ferently, and translated wan as 
 ' ' black, gloomy, dark-coloured, 
 or rather filthy," not reflecting, 
 however, that these epithets, 
 especially the last, were hardly 
 consistent with the spirit or 
 dignity of the tender or tra- 
 gical ballads in which wan oc- 
 curred. The etymology of the 
 English wan has been traced 
 to wane, to decrease in health 
 and strength, as well as in 
 size, whence wan, the pallor of 
 countenance that attends failing 
 health. That of the Scottish 
 wan, as applied to the colour of 
 the streams, was for the first 
 time suggested in "The Gaelic 
 
 Etymology of the Languages of 
 Western Europe." It is from 
 the Gaelic uaine, a pale blue, 
 inclining to green. This is the 
 usual colour of the beautiful 
 streams of the Highlands, when 
 not rendered ** drumlie " or 
 muddy by the storms that wash 
 down sand and earth from the 
 banks. 
 
 On they rade, and on they rade, 
 And a' by the light o' the moon, 
 
 Until they came to the wan water, 
 And then they lighted down. 
 
 — TAe Douglas 'Iragedy. 
 
 Deep into the "wan water 
 There stands a muckle stane. 
 
 — Earl Richard. 
 The ane has ta'en him by the head. 
 
 The ither by the feet, 
 And thrown him in the wan water 
 That ran baith wide and deep. 
 
 — Lord William. 
 There's no a bird in a' this forest 
 
 Will do as muckle for me 
 As dip its wing in the wan water, 
 And straik it ower my e'e bree. 
 
 — Johfinie o' Bradislee. 
 
 In English, warn, is never used 
 as an epithet except when ap- 
 plied to the countenance, as in 
 such phrases—*' His face was 
 pale and wan'' and occasionally 
 by poetic license, to the face of 
 the moon, as in the beautiful 
 sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 With how sad steps, oh moon ! thou 
 
 climb 'st the sky, 
 How silently, and with how wan a 
 
 face. 
 
 Wanchancie, unlucky, mischance- 
 ful. 
 
 Wae worth the man wha first did shape 
 That vile wanchancie thing— a rape. 
 
 —Burns : Poor Mailies Elegy, 
 
262 
 
 Wandought — Ware. 
 
 Wandought, weak, deficient in 
 power ; from dow, to be able ; 
 doughty, brave ; and wan, or un, 
 the privative particle. Wan- 
 docht, a weak, silly creature. 
 
 By this time Lindy is right well shot out 
 'Twixt nine and ten, I think, or thereabout, 
 Nae bursen-bailch, nae wandought or mis- 
 grown. 
 But plump and swack, and like an apple 
 roun'. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Wanhope, despair. Jamieson in- 
 correctly renders it " delusive 
 hope." This is an old English 
 word which is nearly obsolete, 
 but still survives in Scotland. 
 
 I sterve in wanhope and distress,— 
 Farewell, my life, my lust and my 
 
 gladnesse. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Knight's Tale. 
 
 Good Hope that helpe shulde 
 . To wanhope turneth. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Some philologists, misled by 
 the prefix wan, have imagined 
 that the word was synonymous 
 with wane, and have interpreted 
 wanhope as the " waning of 
 hope." But wan is the Dutch 
 and Flemish negative prefix, 
 equivalent to the English and 
 German un. Among other beau- 
 tiful Scottish words which follow 
 the Flemish in the use of the 
 negative prefix, are wanearthlie, 
 preternatural or unearthly ; 
 wanfortune, ill-luck ; wangrace, 
 wickedness, ungraciousness ; 
 wanrest, inquietude ; wanworth, 
 useless, valueless ; wanthrift, 
 prodigality, extravagance ; wan- 
 use, abuse; wanwit or wanwith, 
 ignorance. 
 
 An' may they never learn the gaets (ways) 
 Of ither vile wanrestful pets. 
 
 — Burns: Poor Mailie. 
 
 Wanwierd, misfortune, ill-luck, 
 calamity. 
 
 Nor wit, nor power, put off the hour 
 For his wanwierd decreed. 
 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Water 
 Kelpie. 
 
 Wap, in England written wad, a 
 bundle of straw, a wisp, used in 
 the Scottish sense in the North 
 of England; from the Flemish 
 ^0023, a bundle, a pile of hay or 
 straw. To be in the wap or wad, 
 to lie in the straw. 
 
 Moll i' the wap and I fell out, 
 I'll tell ye what 'twas a' about,— 
 She had siller and I had nane. 
 That was the gait the steer began. 
 — Gipsy Song. 
 
 The English version among 
 the gipsies is — 
 
 Moll i' the wad and I fell out, 
 She had money and I had none, 
 That was the way the row began. 
 
 Ware, to spend, to guide, to con- 
 trol or guide one's expense dis- 
 creetly. 
 
 My heart's blood for her I would freely 
 
 ware, 
 Sae be I could relieve her of her care. 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 But aiblins, honest Master Heron 
 Had at the time some dainty fair one, 
 To ware his theologic care on. 
 
 —Burns : To Dr. Blacklock. 
 
 This word is most probably a 
 corruption of the Teutonic /iiA- 
 ren, the Flemish voerm, to lead 
 or guide. 
 
Warkltke — Warlock. 
 
 263 
 
 Ill-won gear is aye ill wared. 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 [Ill-acquired money is always ill guided 
 or spent.] 
 
 The best o' chiels are whyles in want, 
 While cuifs on countless thousands rant, 
 And ken na how to ware't. 
 
 Burns : Epistle to Davie. 
 
 Warklike, Warkrife, industrious, 
 fond of work. 
 
 Warklume, a tool, a working tool. 
 The second syllable of this word 
 remains in the English loom, 
 part of the working apparatus 
 of the weaver. In Scotland 
 lume signifies any kind of tool 
 or implement with which work 
 can be done. Burns uses it in 
 a very ludicrous sense in the 
 "Address to the Deil." 
 
 Thence mystic knots mak great abuse 
 On young gudemen fond, keen, and crouse, 
 When the best ivarklutne i' the house 
 
 By cantrip wit. 
 Is instant made na worth a louse 
 
 Just at the bit. 
 
 This peculiar superstition 
 prevails among all the Celtic 
 peoples of Europe, and is thought 
 to be the favourite and most 
 malignant diversion of the devil 
 and his instruments, the wizards 
 and witches, to prevent the con- 
 summation of marriage on the 
 bridal night. A full account of 
 the alleged practices of several 
 sorcerers who were burnt at the 
 stake in France in the Middle 
 Ages, for their supposed com- 
 plicity in this crime, appears 
 in the "History of Magic in 
 France," by Jules Garinet, Paris, 
 
 1 8 1 8. The name given in France 
 to the *' cantrip " mentioned by 
 Burns was nouer Vaiguillette, or, 
 tie the little knot. One unhappy 
 Vidal de la Porte, accused of 
 being a noueur d'aiguillette by 
 repute and wont, was in the 
 year 1597 sentenced to be hung 
 and burned to ashes for having 
 bewitched in this fashion seve- 
 ral young bridegrooms. The 
 sentence was duly executed, 
 amid the applause of the whole 
 community. 
 
 Warld's gear, worldly wealth ; a 
 word used for any valuable 
 article of whatever kind, as in 
 the phrases " I have nae warld's 
 gear," I have no property what- 
 ever; "there's nae warld's gear 
 in the glass but cauld water," 
 nothing more costly than cold 
 water. 
 
 But luarlds gear ne'er fashes me, — 
 My thocht is a' my Nannie, O. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Warlock, a wizard. The Scottish 
 word, though admitted into the 
 English dictionaries, is not com- 
 mon either in English conversa- 
 tion or literature. 
 
 She prophesied that late or soon 
 
 Thou would be found deep drowned in 
 
 Doon, 
 Or catch'd by warlocks in the mirk, 
 By AUoway's auld haunted kirk. 
 
 — Burns : Tarn o' Hhanter. 
 
 In the ancient time of Druid- 
 ism, a wizard, an augur, a pro- 
 phet, or fortune-teller, was called 
 a Druid, a name that is still re- 
 tained in modern Gaelic. The 
 Lowland Scotch warlock is de- 
 
264 
 
 Warple — Wath . 
 
 rived, according to Jamieson, 
 from the Icelandic vardlokr, a 
 magic song or incantation for 
 calling up evil spirits. Mr. Stor- 
 month, in his Etymological Dic- 
 tionary, refers the word to the 
 Anglo-Saxon waer, wary, andZo^ti, 
 a liar. It is more probable, how- 
 ever, that the word had not this 
 uncomplimentary meaning ; and 
 that as %oizard is derived from the 
 German iceise or wise, warlock has 
 its root in a similar idea, and may 
 come from the Gaelic geui\ sharp, 
 acute, cunning ; and luchd, folk. 
 It was not customary in the days 
 when witches and fairies were 
 commonly believed in, to speak 
 disrespectfully of them. The 
 fairies were "the good folk," 
 the wizard was " the wise man," 
 and the witch, in Irish parlance, 
 was the Banshee (Bean-sith), or 
 woman of peace ; and warlock, 
 in like manner, was an epithet 
 implying the sagacity rather 
 than the wickedness of the folk 
 so designated. The change of 
 the syllable geur into war is 
 easily accounted for. The French 
 guerre becomes war in English 
 by the change — not uncommon 
 — of g into w, as in wasp, from 
 the French guespe or guSpe. 
 Another possible derivation is 
 suggested in the "Gaelic Ety- 
 mology of the Languages of 
 Western Europe," from barr, 
 head, top, chief; and loguid, 
 a rascal ; but the first is pre- 
 ferable. 
 
 2varp, to twist or turn aside, as 
 in the phrase, " His judgment 
 is warped.^' The root of both 
 the Scottish and English is the 
 Flemish weo'wele, to turn, or turn 
 aside. 
 
 That yam's sae warplit that I canna get 
 it redd. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Warsle, to wrestle, to contend, 
 also to tumble violently after a 
 struggle to keep the feet. 
 
 Upon her cloot (hooQ she coost (cast) a 
 
 hitch 
 And ower she warsled in the ditch. 
 
 — Burns : Poor Mailie. 
 
 Wast, west ; often used in the 
 north-east of Scotland for be- 
 yond, further off. 
 
 Sir Robert Liston, British Ambassador at 
 Constantinople, found two of his country- 
 men who had been especially recommended 
 to him in a barber's shop, waiting to be 
 shaved in turn. One of them came in 
 rather late, and seeing he had scarcely 
 room at the end of the seat, addressed the 
 other — " Neebour, wad ye sit a wee bit 
 ■wast ? " What associations must have been 
 called up in his mind by hearing, in a dis- 
 tant land, such an expression in Scottish 
 tones ! "—Dean Ra.msav. 
 
 Wat, to know, to wit. Obsolete 
 English wot ; Dutch and Flem- 
 ish weten. Watna, wits not, 
 knows not. 
 
 Little 7uais the ill-willy wife what a 
 dinner may baud in't. 
 
 Dame ! deem warily ; ye watna wha 
 wytes yoursel. 
 
 Mickle water runs by that the miller 
 wats na of. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Warple, to entangle, to intertwine Wath, 
 wrongly. From the English the 
 
 a ford ; a shallow part of 
 river that may be waded 
 
Waiter — Wa ught. 
 
 265 
 
 across. Either from the Flem- 
 ish waad, or the Gaelic aihy a 
 ford, ^cotis-wath is the name 
 given to the upper part of 
 the Solway Firth, where, in cer- 
 tain states of the tide, people 
 from the English side can wade 
 across to Scotland. 
 
 Watter, water. The word is used 
 in Scotland in the sense of a 
 stream, a brook, a river ; as in 
 the phrase, "the water of Leith," 
 and the Glasgow phrase, " Down 
 the water," signifying down the 
 Clyde. It is recorded of the 
 noted Edinburgh advocate, John 
 Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldin, 
 that, in arguing a case of water 
 privilege in Scotland before Lord 
 Chancellor Eldon, he annoyed 
 his lordship by constantly re- 
 peating the word ivatter with a 
 strong Scottish accent. "Mr. 
 Clerk," inquired his lordship, 
 '* is it the custom in your coun- 
 try to spell water with two t^s ? " 
 "No, my lord," replied Clerk; 
 ** but it's the fashion in my 
 country to spell manners wi' 
 twa w's." 
 
 Wattie - wagtail. From Walter 
 Wagtail, a name given to the 
 beautiful little bird, the hoche- 
 queue of the French ; the mota- 
 cilla yarreUie of the naturalists. 
 The English have corrupted the 
 word, not knowing its Scottish 
 origin, into ^^ water-waytaiL." Wat- 
 ter, or Wattie, is a fond allitera- 
 tion formed on the same prin- 
 ciple as that of Robin Redbreast. 
 Water-waytail is an appellation 
 
 given by the English to the 
 pretty little creature, founded 
 on the erroneous notion that it 
 is an aquatic bird, or that it fre- 
 quents the water more than it 
 does the land. It comes with 
 the flies and departs with the 
 flies, which are its only food, 
 and, unlike many other attrac- 
 tive birds, does no harm to 
 fruit, blossoms, seeds, or any 
 kind of vegetation. In some 
 parts of Scotland it is called 
 " WuUiet" or " WiMe-wagtaiV 
 
 Wauchle, to weary; also, to puzzle, 
 to sway from side to side ; Eng- 
 lish, to waggle; Flemish wag- 
 gtlen, to vacillate, to stagger. 
 
 The road •wauchlit him sair (made him 
 stagger with fatigue). 
 
 That question wauchlit him (staggered 
 him. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Waught, a large deep draught of 
 liquor. The etymology is un- 
 certain. In most of the glos- 
 saries to Bums' Poems the 
 word is erroneously joined with 
 "willy," and converted into 
 " willy-waw^/i«," and described 
 as meaning " a hearty draught." 
 The line in " Auld Lang Syne," 
 usually printed — 
 
 We'll drink a right gude wC^y-waught , 
 
 should be 
 We'll drink a right gude-willie waught : 
 
 i.e., we'll drink with right good 
 will a deep or hearty xoaught or 
 draught. 
 
 Dean Ramsay, whose un- 
 doubted knowledge and appre 
 
266 
 
 Wauk — WaulUes. 
 
 elation of the Scottish lan- 
 guage should have taught him 
 better, has fallen into the mis- 
 take of quoting wiUie - waught 
 as one word in the following 
 lines: — 
 
 Gude e'en to you a', and tak your nappy, 
 A ^^ willywaught" a gude night cappy. 
 
 The word is introduced with 
 fine effect in a translation from 
 the Gaelic, by the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd, of the Jacobite Ballad, 
 " The Frasers in the Correi : " — 
 
 Spier na at me I 
 Gae spier at the maiden that sits by the 
 
 sea, 
 The red coats were here, and it was na for 
 
 good, 
 And the ravens are hoarse in ' * the waught- 
 
 ing" o' blood. 
 
 And meantime gies a waught o' caller 
 
 whey. 
 The day's been hot, and we are wondrous 
 
 dry. 
 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 I'm sure 'twill do us meikle guid, a ivaucht 
 
 o' caller air, 
 A caller douk, a caller breeze, and caller 
 
 fish and fare. 
 — Whistle Binkie : Doun the Water, 
 
 Wauk, to render the palm of the 
 hand hard, callous, or homy, 
 by severe toil. 
 
 I held on high my waukit loof, 
 To swear by a' yon starry roof, 
 That henceforth I wad be rhyme proof. 
 Till my last breath. 
 
 — Burns : The Vision. 
 
 Waukrife, watchful, wakeful, un- 
 able to sleep ; the suffix Hfe, 
 as in cauldr^/e, very cold, is used 
 as an intensitive, so that wauk- 
 rife signifies not only unable 
 
 to sleep, but unable in an intense 
 degree. 
 
 What time the moon, wi' silent glower, 
 
 Sets up her horn, 
 Wail through the dreary midnight hour. 
 
 Till waukrife morn. 
 — Burns : Elegy on Captain Matthew 
 
 Henderson. 
 
 'Tis hopeless love an' dark despair. 
 Cast by the glamour o' thine e'e, 
 
 That clouds my waukrife dreams wi' care, 
 An' maks the daylight dark to me. 
 
 —James Ballantinb. 
 
 Waullies or waulies. Jamieson 
 defines waUies as meaning the 
 intestines. The word is not to 
 be confounded with waly or 
 wcdie, choice, large, ample, as 
 Burns uses it. 
 
 But mark the rustic haggis-fed, 
 The trembling earth resounds his tread ; 
 Clap in his walie nieve a blade, 
 He'll mak it whistle. 
 
 — To a Haggis. 
 
 In " Jacob and Rachel," a song 
 attributed to Burns, published 
 in an anonymous London edition 
 of his songs, dated 1825, the 
 word occurs in the following 
 stanza : — 
 
 Then Rachel, calm as ony lamb. 
 She claps him on the waulies^ 
 Quo' she, '* ne'er fash a woman's clash." 
 
 In this song, omitted on ac- 
 count of its grossness from 
 nearly all editions of his works, 
 the word is not susceptible of 
 the meaning attributed to it by 
 Jamieson, nor of that in the 
 poem in praise of "The Haggis." 
 Jamieson has the obsolete word 
 wally, a billow, a wave, which 
 affords a clue to its derivation. 
 
Waur — Wean. 
 
 267 
 
 The name of waulie was given 
 to the hips or posteriors on ac- 
 count of their round and wavy- 
 form, as appears from the 
 synonymous words in Gaelic — 
 tonrif a wave, and ton, the 
 breech. The idea is involved 
 in the words, now seldom used, 
 which are cited by Jamieson, 
 wallie-drag, and wallie-dragglie, 
 signifying a woman who is cor- 
 pulent and heavy behind, and 
 makes but slow progress in 
 walking. The connection with 
 wallies, intestines, as rendered 
 by Jamieson, is exceedingly 
 doubtful. 
 
 Waur, worse. To waur, or warr, 
 to conquer, to give an enemy 
 the worst of the conflict ; from 
 worst, to put a person in the 
 wrong, or in a worse position. 
 
 Up and waur them a', Willie. 
 
 —Jacobite Ballad. 
 
 An advocate was complaining to his 
 friend, an eminent legal functionary of the 
 last century, that his claims to a judgeship 
 had been overlooked, adding acrimoniously, 
 " And I can tell you, they might have got 
 a waur" to which the only answer was a 
 grave ^^whaur?"—DKA.ii Ramsay. 
 
 Sax thousand years are near hand fled. 
 
 Sin I was to the butcherin' bred, 
 
 And mony a scheme in vain's been laid 
 
 To stop or scaur me. 
 Till ane Hornbook's ta'en up the trade, 
 
 An faith he'll waur me. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 Want o' wit is wa»r than want o' wealth. 
 
 In his case, the water will never waur 
 the widdie. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 (i.c., in his case the water will 
 never get the better of the gal- 
 
 lows ; equivalent to the English 
 saying, "He that's born to be 
 hanged will never be drowned"). 
 
 Wax, to grow, or increase ; the 
 reverse of wane, to decrease. 
 Wax is almost obsolete ; but 
 wane survives, both in Scotland 
 and England, as in the phrases : 
 * * the waning moon," ' * the waning 
 year," " his waning fortunes." 
 Wax remains as a Biblical word, 
 in the noble translations of the 
 Old Testament by Wickliffe and 
 the learned divines of the reign 
 of James I., which has preserved 
 to this age so many emphatic 
 words of ancient English, which 
 might otherwise have perished. 
 It is derived from the German 
 wachsen ; the Flemish wassen, to 
 grow. 
 
 The man woo: well nigh wud for ire. 
 — Chaucer. 
 
 And changing empires wane and wax. 
 Are founded, flourish and decay. 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Translation 
 of Dies I roe. 
 
 Wazie, jolly, brisk ; probably a 
 variation for gaucie (q.v.), with 
 the common change of g into w, 
 as in wai' for guerre, &c. 
 
 Right wazie wax'd an' fou' o' fun, 
 They whistled down the setting sun. 
 — Beattie : /ohn o' AmAa'. 
 
 Wean, a little child ; a weanie, a 
 very little child— from "wee 
 ane," little one. This word has 
 not yet been admitted to the 
 dictionaries, though becoming 
 common in English parlance. 
 
268 
 
 WearirC awd! — Weeder-dips. 
 
 A smytrie o' wee duddie weans 
 (a lot of little ragged children). 
 —Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 When skirlin' weanies see the light. 
 —Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 Wearin' awa', decaying gra- 
 dually. 
 
 I'm Tvearin' awa*, Jean, 
 Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean, 
 I'm wearin' awa' 
 To the Land o' the Leal. 
 
 — Lady Nairne. 
 
 Hope's star will rise when 
 
 Life's welkin grows grey, 
 We feel that within us which ne'er can 
 decay, 
 P nd Death brings us Life as the 
 Night brings the Daw' [dawn], 
 Though we're wearin' awa', an' 
 we're wearin awa'. 
 
 — James Ballantine. 
 
 Weatherie, stormy or showery 
 weather ; a word formed on the 
 same principle as the Teutonic 
 ungeioitter, very bad weather. 
 Weather gleam, a streak of light 
 on the horizon in cloudy weather. 
 
 Wee, little, diminutive, very little ; 
 generally supposed to be derived 
 from the first syllable of the 
 German wenig. This word 
 occurs in Shakspeare, and is 
 common in colloquial and fami- 
 liar English, though not in lite- 
 rary composition. It is often 
 used as an intensification of lit- 
 tleness, as "a little wee child," 
 *' a little wee bit." 
 
 A wee house well filled, 
 
 A 2uee farm well tilled, 
 
 A wee wife well willed, 
 
 Mak' a happy man. 
 
 A wee mouse can creep under a great 
 haystack. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Weed or weeds, dress, attire, 
 clothing. The only remnant of 
 this word remaining in modem 
 English is the phrase, a 
 " widow's weeds," the funeral 
 attire of a recently bereaved 
 widow. 
 
 They saw their bodies bare. 
 Anon they pass'd with all their speed. 
 Of beaver to mak themselves a weed. 
 
 To cleith (clothe) them was their care. 
 — On the Creation and Parody ce Lost, 
 by Sir Richard Maitland, in 
 Allan Ramsay's Evergreen. 
 
 Weed is in many Etymological 
 Dictionaries said to be derived 
 from weave, the Teutonic weben. 
 Possibly it comes from the 
 Gaelic or eudadh, a dress or 
 garment, also the armour of a 
 knight. The author of the 
 Scottish poem of " Paradyce 
 Lost," which appears in the 
 " Evergreen," was born in 1496, 
 and died in 1586, at the ad- 
 vanced age of 90, and was 
 consequently long anterior to 
 Milton, who afterwards adopted 
 the same title, and rendered it 
 as enduring as the English lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Weeder-clips, shears for clipping 
 weeds. 
 
 The rough burr thistle spreading wide 
 
 Among the bearded bear, 
 I turned the weeder-clips aside 
 
 And spared the symbol dear. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 The patriotic poet turned the 
 clips aside in order that he might 
 
Weeks — Weird, 
 
 269 
 
 not cut down a thistle, the floral 
 badge of his country. 
 
 Weeks or weiks of the eye or 
 mouth signify, according to 
 Jamieson, the corners of the 
 mouth or eyes. To hang by the 
 weeks of his mouth, is to keep 
 hold of a thing or purpose to 
 the utmost, to the last gasp ; 
 an exaggerated phrase similar 
 to that in Holy Writ to " escape 
 by the skin of the teeth." Week 
 or weih is a corruption of the 
 Gaelic uig, a corner. The word 
 occurs in Tim Bobbin's York- 
 shire Glossary. 
 
 Weigh-bauk, the cross beam of 
 a balance. 
 
 Come like a weigh- bauk, Donald 
 MacGilHvray, 
 
 Come like a weigh -bauk, Donald 
 MacGilHvray, 
 
 Balance them fairly, balance them 
 cleverly, 
 
 Off wi' the counterfeit, Donald Mac- 
 GilHvray. 
 —James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. 
 
 Weil or wele, an eddy in the 
 water ; a whirlpool. 
 
 Weil-head, the centre of an eddy. 
 These words appear to be a 
 corruption of whed or whirl, 
 having a circular motion, and 
 to have no connection with weU, 
 a spring of water. 
 
 They doukit in at a weil-head. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Earl Richard. 
 
 Weill, good fortune, the English 
 weal, as in the phrase, '* Come 
 weal, come woe." 
 
 He is na worth the weill that canna 
 thole the WM.—Old Proverb. 
 
 Weir, war ; witrtnan, a soldier, a 
 man of war, a combatant ; wier- 
 like, warlike ; weirif/Uls, quarrels ; 
 wedded weirigills, disputes be- 
 tween husband and wife ; from 
 the French guerre, the Italian 
 guerra, with the change of the 
 gu into w. The primary root 
 seems to be the Flemish weeren, 
 to defend ; the English be ware ! 
 i.e., be ready to defend your- 
 self ; — a noble origin for resist- 
 ance to oppressive and defensive 
 war, that does not apply to of- 
 fensive war — the "bella, horrida 
 bella," of the Latin, and the 
 krieg of the Teutonic, which 
 signify war generally, whether 
 offensive or defensive ; — the first 
 a crime, the second a virtue. 
 
 Weir or wear, to guard, to watch 
 over, to protect, to gather in 
 with caution, as a shepherd 
 conducts his flock to the fold. 
 
 Erlinton had a fair daughter ; 
 
 I wat he wiered her in a great sin. 
 And he has built a high bower, 
 
 And a' to put that lady in. 
 
 — Ballad of Erlinton. 
 
 Motherwell translates ^'wiered 
 her in a great sin," placed her 
 in danger of committing a great 
 sin, which is clearly not the 
 meaning. But the whole ballad 
 is hopelessly corrupt in his ver- 
 sion. 
 
 Weird or wierd. Most English 
 dictionaries misdefine this word, 
 which has two different signifi- 
 cations : one as a noun, the other 
 as an adjective. In English 
 literature, from Shakspeare's 
 
270 
 
 Wetse. 
 
 time downwards, it exists as 
 an adjective only, and is held 
 to mean unearthly, ghastly, or 
 witch-like. Before Shakspeare's 
 time, and in Scottish poetry and 
 parlance to the present day, the 
 word is a noun, and signifies 
 "fate" or "destiny" — derived 
 from the Teutonic werden, to be- 
 come, or that which shall be. 
 Chaucer, in " Troilus and Cres- 
 sida," has the line— 
 
 O Fortune ! executrice of wierdes ! 
 
 and Gower, in a manuscript in 
 the possession of the Society of 
 Antiquaries, says — 
 
 It were a wondrous ivierde 
 To see a king become a herde. 
 
 In this sense the word continues 
 to be used in Scotland : 
 
 A man may woo where he will, but he 
 maun wed where his wierd is. 
 
 She is a wise wife that kens her ain 
 wierd. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 Betide me weel, betide me woe, 
 That ivierd shall never danton me. 
 —Ballad of True Thomas. 
 The wierd her dearest bairn befel 
 By the bonnie mill-dams o' Binnorie. 
 — Scott's Minstrelsy of the Border. 
 
 Shakspeare seems to have been 
 the first to employ the word as 
 an adjective, and to have given 
 it the meaning of unearthly, 
 though pertaining to the idea 
 of the Fates : — 
 
 The ivierd sisters, hand in hand, 
 Posters of the sea and land. 
 
 — Macbeth. 
 Thane of Cawdor ! by which title these 
 •wierd sisters saluted me. — Idem. 
 
 When we sat by her flickering fire at 
 night she was most ivierd. — Charles 
 Dickens : Great Expectations. 
 
 No spot more fit than ivierd, lawless 
 Winchelsea, for a plot such as he had 
 conceived. — All the Year Round, April 
 2, 1870. 
 
 It opened its great aisles to him, full of 
 whispering stillness, full of ivierd efiects 
 of light. — Blackwoods Magazine, April 
 1870. 
 
 Jasper surveyed his companion as though 
 he were getting imbued with a romantic 
 interest in his ivierd life. — Charles 
 Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. 
 
 She turned to make her way from the 
 wierd spot as fast as her feeble limbs would 
 let [permit] her.— T. A. Trollope : The 
 Dream Nu7nbers. 
 
 Wierd is sometimes (but rarely) 
 used as a verb, signifying to 
 doom. 
 
 I wierd ye to a fiery beast. 
 And relieved sail ye never be. 
 Border Minstrelsy : Kempion. 
 
 Weise, to direct, to guide, to 
 draw or lead on in the way 
 desired. This word is akin to 
 the English wise, a way or 
 manner, as in the phrase, " Do 
 in that wise,'^ and in the word 
 likewise, in a like manner, and is 
 derived from the French viser 
 and the Dutch and Flemish 
 wijzen or wyzen, to indicate, to 
 show or point the way. 
 
 Every miller wad weise the water to his 
 ain mill. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 Weise also signifies to use policy for 
 attaining any object, to turn to art rather 
 than by strength, to draw or let out any- 
 thing cautiously so as to prevent it from 
 breaking, as in making a rope of tow or 
 straw one is said to weise out the tow or 
 straw. — Jamieson. 
 
 The wean saw something like a white 
 leddy that weised by the gate. — Scott : 
 The Monastery. 
 
Went — Whang, 
 
 271 
 
 Wem, a scar ; wemmit, scarred, 
 wemless, unscarred ; and, meta- 
 phorically, blameless or imma- 
 culate. Probably from the 
 Flemish and English wen, a 
 tumour or swelling on the skin. 
 
 Wersh, insipid, tasteless; from 
 the Gaelic uiris, poor, worthless, 
 trashy. 
 
 A kiss and a drink o' water are but a 
 wersh disjune. — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Why do ye no sup your parritch ? I 
 dinna like them ; they're unco wersh. 
 Gie me a wee pickle saut 1 — Jamieson; 
 
 That auld Duke James lost his heart 
 before he lost his head, and the Worcester 
 man was but wersh parritch, neither gude 
 to fry, boil, nor keep cauld. — Scott : Old 
 Mortality. 
 
 The word was English in the 
 seventeenth century, but is now 
 obsolete, except in some of the 
 Northern Counties, where it 
 survives, according to Brocket's 
 Glossary, in the corrupted form 
 of wdsh. 
 
 Her pleasures wersh, and her amours 
 tasteless. — Translation of Montaigne, 
 1613. 
 
 Helicon's wersh well. — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Wet one's whistle. Wkistle is a 
 ludicrous name for the throat, 
 whence to '''wet on^s whistle" 
 signifies to moisten the throat 
 or take a drink. 
 
 But till we meet and weet our whistle, 
 Tak' this excuse for nae epistle. 
 
 —Burns: To Hugh Parker. 
 
 Whalp, to bring forth young 
 dogs or whelps. Burns says of 
 Caesar, the Newfoundland dog 
 
 in his well-known poem of the 
 " Twa Dogs " that he was — 
 
 Whalpit some place far abroad, 
 Where sailors gang to fish for cod. 
 
 The Jacobite ballad-singers 
 and popular poets of the '45 , when 
 Prince Charles Edward made 
 his forlorn but gallant attempt 
 to regain the throne of his 
 ancestors, made frequent de- 
 rogatory and contemptuous al- 
 lusions to the family name of 
 the House of Hanover, which 
 they persisted in calling Whdp 
 instead of Gudph. 
 
 Now our good king abroad is gone, 
 A German whelp now fills the throne, 
 Whelps that are desired by none, 
 They're brutes compared wi' Charlie. 
 
 Oh, Charlie, come an' lead the way, 
 No German whelp shall bear the sway ; 
 Though ilka dog maun hae his day, 
 The right belongs to Charlie. 
 —Peter Buchan's Prince Charlie 
 and Flora Macdonald. 
 
 Whalpit is the past tense of 
 the verb to whelp, or bring forth 
 whelps or young dogs. In Dutch 
 and Flemish, welp signifies the 
 cub of the lion or the bear, but 
 in Scotch and English the word, 
 though formerly applied to the 
 progeny of the wolf and the 
 fox, is now almost exclusively 
 confined to that of the dog. 
 Dr. Wagner, in his Glossary to 
 the German edition of Burns, 
 conjectures that the word is 
 derivable from the Latin vulpes. 
 
 Whang, a large slice, also a 
 thong of leather, and by ex- 
 tension of meaning, to beat with 
 
 OF THf "^ X 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
 .. r 
 
 At irc 
 
 F / 
 
2/2 
 
 What Ails Ye at ?—Wheen. 
 
 a strap or thong, or to beat 
 generally. 
 
 Wi' sweet-milk cheese i' mony a whang. 
 And farlies baked wi' butter. 
 
 — Burns : Holy Fair. 
 
 Ye cut large whangs out of other folk's 
 leather. —Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 Whang, in the sense of to beat 
 with a strap, is local in Eng- 
 land, but in the sense of a large 
 slice, or anything large, it is 
 peculiar to Scotland; and in 
 one odd phrase, that of zlang- 
 whanger, to the United States 
 of America. According to Bart- 
 lett's " Dictionary of American- 
 isms " it signifies political vitu- 
 peration largely intermingled 
 with slang words. It appears, 
 however, in Hood's "Ode to 
 Rae Wilson : "— 
 
 No part I take in party fray 
 With tropes from Billingsgate's slang- 
 whanging Tartars. 
 
 To which Mr. Bartlett appends 
 the note, " If the word, as is 
 supposed, be of American ori- 
 gin, it has been adopted in 
 the mother country." 
 
 This day the Kirk kicks up a stour, 
 
 Nae mair the knaves shall wrang her ; 
 For Heresy is in her power, 
 And gloriously she'll whang her, 
 Wi' pith this day. 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 The Glossaries translate 
 whang, by beat, belabour ; but 
 it is probably derived from the 
 Teutonic wanJce, the Flemish 
 ivankelen, to shake, to totter, to 
 stagger, or cause to shake and 
 stagger. 
 
 What ails ye at ? This question 
 signifies, what is the matter with 
 a thing named ? What dislike 
 have you to it ? as to a child 
 that does not eat its breakfast, 
 ** What ails ye at your parritch ? " 
 
 Lord Rutherford having, when on a 
 ramble on the Pentlands, complained to a 
 shepherd of the mist, which prevented him 
 from enjoying the scenery, the shepherd, 
 a tall grim figure, turned sharply round 
 upon him. " What ails yc at the mist, sir ? 
 It weets the sod, slockens the yowes, and " 
 — adding with more solemnity — " it is 
 God's wull." — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 An old servant who took charge of every- 
 thing in the family, having observed that 
 his master thought that he had drank wine 
 with every lady at the table, but had over- 
 looked one, jogged his memory with the 
 question, " WJiat ails ye at her wi' the 
 green gown?"— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Whaup, a curlew. 
 
 The wild land-fowls are plovers, pigeons, 
 curlews, commonly called whaups. — ^S'^^- 
 tistical Account of Scotland, article 
 Orkney. 
 
 Whaup-nebbit, having a nose like 
 the neb or bill of a curlew. 
 
 Wheen, a lot, a small quantity. 
 
 What better could be expected o' a 
 wheen pock-pudding English folk?— 
 Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 A young girl (say at St. Andrews) sat 
 upon the cutty stool for breach of the 
 seventh commandment, which applies to 
 adultery as well as to the minor, but still 
 heinous, offence of illicit love, was asked 
 who was the father of her child? " How 
 can I tell," she replied artlessly, "among 
 a wheen o' divinity students?" — Dean 
 Ramsay. 
 
 But in my bower there is a wake, 
 
 And at the wake there is a wane ; 
 But I'll come to the green wood ere mom. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Erlinion. 
 
Wheep—Whtd. 
 
 273 
 
 Wane means a number of people, a luheen 
 folk. — Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 The derivation, which has 
 been much disputed, seems fairly 
 traceable to the Teutonic weniy, 
 little or few. 
 
 Wheep, a sharp, shrill cry or 
 whistle. Penny-ioheep, a con- 
 temptuous designation for sour, 
 weak, small beer, sold at a penny 
 per quart or pint, and dear at the 
 money ; so called, it is supposed, 
 from its acidity, causing the per- 
 son who swallows it, thinking it 
 better than it is, to make a kind 
 of whistling sound, expressive of 
 his surprise and disgust. Formed 
 on the same principle as the 
 modern word " penny dreadful," 
 applied to a certain description 
 of cheap and offensive literature. 
 Wheep seems to be akin to whoops 
 a shrill cry, and whaup, the cry 
 of the curlew or plover. 
 
 Be't whisky gill or penny-zvhee/, 
 
 Or ony stronger potion. 
 It never fails, on drinking deep, 
 
 To kittle up our notion. 
 
 —Burns : The Holy Fair. 
 
 Wheeple, the cheep or low cry 
 of a bird ; also, metaphorically, 
 the ineffectual attempt of a man 
 to whistle loudly. 
 
 A Scottish gentleman, who visited Eng- 
 land for the first time, and ardently de- 
 sired to return home to his native hills 
 and moors, was asked by his English host 
 to come out into the garden at night to 
 hear the song of the nightingale, a bird 
 unknown in Scotland. His mind was full 
 of home, and he exclaimed, " Na, na ! I 
 wadna gie the wheedle o a whaup (cur- 
 lew) for a' the nightingales that ever 
 sang."-~Staiisiicai Account 0/ Scotland. 
 
 Wheericken or queerikens, a 
 ludicrous term applied to chil- 
 dren who are threatened with 
 punishment, signifying the two 
 sides of the breech or podex, 
 the soft place appropriate for 
 ** skelping." Apparently de- 
 rived from the Gaelic ciurr^ to 
 hurt, to cause pain. 
 
 Whid or whud, an untruth, a 
 falsehood, a lie ; usually applied 
 to a departure from veracity 
 which is the result of sudden 
 invention or caprice, rather than 
 of malicious premeditation. 
 
 Even ministers they hae been kenn'd, 
 
 In holy rapture, 
 A rousin' whid at times to vend, 
 
 An' nail't wi' Scripture. 
 — Burns : Death and Dr. Hornbook. 
 
 In the first edition of Burns 
 the word whid did not appear, 
 but instead of it — 
 
 Even ministers they hae been kenn'd, 
 
 In holy rapture. 
 Great lies and nonsense baith to vend, 
 
 And nail't wi' Scripture. 
 
 This was ungrammatical, as 
 Burns himself recognised it to 
 be, and amended the line by the 
 more emphatic form in which it 
 now appears. 
 
 The word whid seems, in its 
 primary meaning, to be applied 
 to any sudden and rapid move- 
 ment, or to a deviation from 
 the straight line. It is akin to 
 the English scud. According to 
 Jamieson, to yed is to fib, to 
 magnify in narration. This word 
 is probably a variety or hetero- 
 S 
 
274 
 
 Wh igmaleeries. 
 
 graphy of uhid, and has the 
 same meaning. 
 
 An arrow rvhidderan ! 
 
 — The Song oftke Outlaw 
 Murray, 
 
 Paitricks scraichin' loud at e'en, 
 An' mornin' poussie whiddin seen. 
 [Partridges screeching, and the early hare 
 scudding along.] 
 
 — Burns : To Lapraik. 
 
 Connected with the idea of 
 rapidity of motion are the words 
 whidder, a gust of wind ; whiddie, 
 a hare ; whiddy, unsteady, shift- 
 ing, unstable ; to whiddie, to 
 move rapidly and lightly; to 
 twidder the thumbs, in English 
 twiddle the thumbs. The deri- 
 vation is uncertain, but is pro- 
 bably from the Teutonic weit, 
 the English wide, in which sense 
 whid, a falsehood, would signify 
 something wide of the truth, and 
 would also apply in the sense of 
 rapid motion through the wide- 
 ness of space. 
 
 Whid, a lie. Bailey has " whids, many 
 words " — a cant word, he says. Does not 
 Burns speak of amorous whids, meaning, 
 or rather I should say referring to, the 
 quick rapid jumpings about of rabbits ? 
 Whid certainly has in Scotch the meaning 
 of frisking about; and applied to state- 
 ments, it is obvious how whid could come 
 to mean a lie. — R. Drennan. 
 
 WhigmaJeeries, whims, caprices, 
 crotchets, idle fancies ; also fan- 
 ciful articles of jewellery and 
 personal adornment, toys and 
 trifles of any kind. 
 
 There'll be, if that day come, 
 
 I'll wad a boddle, 
 Some fewer whiginaleeries in your noddle. 
 —Burns : The Brigs of Ayr. 
 
 I met ane very fain, honest, fair-spoken, 
 weel-put-on gentleman, or rather burgher, 
 as I think, that was in the whigmaleerie 
 man's back-shop. — Scott: Fortunes of 
 Nigel, 
 
 The etymology of this word, 
 which is peculiar to Scotland, 
 is not to be found in any of the 
 current languages of Europe. 
 It is probably from the Gaelic 
 uige, a jewel, a precious stone ; 
 from whence uigheam, adorn- 
 ment, decoration ; uigheach, 
 abounding in precious stones; 
 and uigheamaich, to adorn. 
 These words are the roots of 
 the obsolete English word owche, 
 a jewel, used by Shakspeare, 
 Beaumont and Fletcher ; and 
 which also occurs in the autho- 
 rised version of the Bible : — 
 
 Your brooches, pearls, and owches. 
 Henry IV., Part II. 
 
 Pearls, bracelets, rings, or owches. 
 Or what she can desire. 
 
 —Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The last two syllables of whig- 
 maleerie are traceable to leor 
 or leoir, sufllcient, plenty. The 
 quotation from the " Fortunes 
 of Nigel" refers to the jewels 
 in George Heriot's shop. The 
 connection of ideas between the 
 fanciful articles in a jeweller's 
 shop and the fancies or con- 
 ceits of a capricious mind is 
 sufficiently obvious. 
 
 Jamieson notices a game called 
 tvhigmaleeries, * * formerly played 
 at drinking-clubs in Angus, at 
 which the losing player was 
 obliged to drink off a glass. 
 Perhaps," he adds, ** the game 
 
Whilte — WhiUie-whallie. 
 
 275 
 
 was so denominated out of con- 
 tempt for the severe austerity 
 attributed to the Whigs ! " 
 
 "This etymology," says Dr. 
 Adolphus Wagner, *' is very 
 doubtful and difficult." Con- 
 fused by the word Whig, and 
 unaware of the Gaelic uige, and 
 believing in the drinking bouts 
 alluded to by Jamieson, he en- 
 deavours to account for the final 
 syllable, eerie, by citing from 
 Ben Jonson, " a leer horse," 
 a led horse, as applicable to a 
 drunkard being led in the train 
 of another I The Gaelic deriva- 
 tion makes an end of the ab- 
 surdities both of Jamieson and 
 the erudite foreign critic. 
 
 Whilie, a little while ; pronounced 
 fylie in Aberdeenshire. A wee 
 whilie, a very little while ; whiles, 
 at times. 
 
 On the Bishop (Skinner) making his ap- 
 pearance, the honest man (a crofter) in the 
 gladness of his heart stepped briskly for- 
 ward to welcome his pastor, but in his 
 haste stepped upon the rim of the iron 
 riddle, which rebounded with great force 
 against one of his shins. The accident 
 made him suddenly pull up, and instead 
 of completing the reception, he stood 
 vigorously rubbing the injured limb, and, 
 not daring in such a venerable presence to 
 give vent to the customary strong ejacula- 
 tions, kept twisting his face into all sorts 
 of grimaces. As was natural, the Bishop 
 went forward, uttering the usual formulas 
 of condolence and sympathy, the patient 
 meanwhile continuing his rubbings and his 
 silent but expressive contortions. At last 
 his wife, Janet, came to the rescue, and 
 clapping the Bishop coaxingly on the back, 
 said, " Noo, Bishop, just gang ben to the 
 house, and we'll follow when he's had time 
 to curse 2^ fylie; and then, I'se warrant, 
 he'll be weel eneuch."— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Whyles she sank, and ivhyles she swam, 
 
 Binnorie, O Binnorie ! 
 Until she cam to the miller's dam, 
 By the bonnie mill-dam o' Binnorie. 
 —Border Minstrelsy : The Cruel 
 Sister. 
 
 Whillie-lu, a threnody, a lament, 
 a prolonged strain of melan- 
 choly music ; but, according to 
 Jamieson, "a dull or flat air." 
 He derives the word from the 
 Icelandic hvdla, to sound ; and 
 111, lassitude. It seems, how- 
 ever, to be a corruption of wcdy! 
 an exclamation of sorrow ; as in 
 the beautiful ballad — 
 
 O waly ! waly ! up the bank. 
 And waly ! waly ! down the brae ; 
 
 which, conjoined with the Gae- 
 lic luaidh {dh silent), a beloved 
 object, makes whillie-lu, or waly 
 lu. The final syllable lu enters 
 into the composition of the 
 English lullaby, a cradle-song, 
 from lu-lu ! beloved one, and 
 haigh, sleep, which thus signi- 
 fies " Sleep, beloved one ! " or 
 " Sleep, darling ! " 
 
 Whillie - wa', to procrastinate ; 
 apparently from while away 
 the time. 
 
 Whillie-Tvhallie, sometimes ab- 
 breviated into whillie-wha\ This 
 word in all its variations signi- 
 fies any thing or person con- 
 nected with cheaters, cajolers, 
 or false pretenders. Jamieson 
 has whilly or whuUy, to cheat, 
 to gull ; whillie-whallie, to coax, 
 to wheedle ; whillie-wha, one not 
 to be depended upon; whillie- 
 
276 
 
 Whilper — Whinger. 
 
 wa, or whillie-whal, one who 
 deals in ambiguous promises. 
 In a South Sea song which ap- 
 pears in Allan Ramsay's " Tea- 
 Table Miscellany" occur the 
 lines — 
 If ye gang near the South Sea House, 
 The whilly-whas will grip your gear ! 
 
 The etymology of all these 
 words is uncertain. The Eng- 
 lish wheedle has been suggested, 
 but does not meet the neces- 
 sities, while wheedle itself re- 
 quires explanation. Whillie- 
 whallie, which appears to be the 
 original form of the word, is 
 probably the Gaelic uUleadh, 
 oily, and, metaphorically, spe- 
 cious, as in the English phrase, 
 an oily hypocrite, applied to a 
 man with a smooth or specious 
 tongue, which he uses to cajole 
 and deceive, and halaoch, in the 
 aspirated form, bhalaoch, a fel- 
 low. From thence whillie-whallie, 
 a specious, cajoling, hypocritical 
 person. 
 
 Burns, in "The Whistle,y 
 speaks of one of the personages 
 of the ballad as — 
 
 Craigdarroch began with a tongue 
 
 smooth as oil, 
 Desiring Glenriddel to yield up the 
 
 spoil. 
 
 Whilper or whulper, any indivi- 
 dual or thing of unusual size ; 
 akin to the English whopper and 
 whopping, of which it may pos- 
 sibly be a corruption. 
 
 The late Rev. Rowland Hill, preaching 
 a charity sermon in Wapping, appealed to 
 the congregation to contribute liberally. 
 His text was, "Charity covereth a multi- 
 tude of sins." "I preach," he said, "to 
 
 great sinners, to mighty sinners, — ay, and 
 to whapping sinners!" — Joe Miller's 
 Jest Book. 
 
 What a whilper of a trout I hae gotten ! 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Whinge, to whine ; from the 
 Teutonic winseln, to whimper. 
 
 If ony Whiggish luhingin sot 
 To blame poor Matthew dare, man, 
 
 May dool and sorrow be his lot, 
 For Matthew was a rare man. 
 
 —Burns : Elegy on Captain Matthew 
 Henderson. 
 
 Whinger, a knife worn on the 
 person, and serviceable as a 
 sword or dagger in a sudden 
 broil or emergency. Jamieson 
 derives it from the Icelandic 
 hwin, fununculus, and gird^ 
 actio ; and queries whether it 
 may not mean an escape for 
 secret deeds. The Gaelic uinich 
 signifies haste, and geur, sharp, 
 whence uin geur or uinich geur, 
 a sharp weapon for haste. The 
 word is sometimes written whin- 
 yard, and is so used in the Eng- 
 lish poem of "Hudibras," and 
 explained by the commentators 
 as a hanger or hanging sword. 
 It is, of course, open to doubt 
 whether whinger is not the same 
 as hanger, but the Gaelic deriva- 
 tion seems preferable, as expres- 
 sive of a definite idea, while 
 hanger admits of a multiplicity 
 of meanings. 
 
 And whingers now in friendship bare, 
 The social meal to part and share, 
 Had found a bloody sheath. 
 —Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 Mony tyne the half-mark whinger for 
 the halfpennie whang. [Many lose the 
 sixpenny knife for sake of the halfpenny 
 slice.]— Ferguson's Scots Proverbs. 
 
Whinner — Whisky. 
 
 277 
 
 Joctdeg was another name 
 for a whinger, which, though 
 susceptible of a Gaelic inter- 
 pretation (see ante), perhaps 
 only signified a hunting-knife 
 or dagger, from the Flemish 
 jacht, the chase or hunt, and 
 dolk, a dagger, pronounced in 
 two syllables, dol-ok, a hunting- 
 knife or dagger, a jacht-dolok or 
 jocteleg. But whether the Gaelic 
 or the Flemish origin of the 
 word be correct, it is clear that 
 Jamieson's derivation from the 
 imaginary cutler, Jacques de 
 Liege, is untenable. 
 
 Whinner, to dry up, like vegeta- 
 tion in a long-protracted drought. 
 The derivation is uncertain ; 
 probably a corruption of the 
 English winnow. 
 
 A whinnerin drouth. The word is 
 applied to anything so much dried up, in 
 consequence of extreme drought, as to 
 rustle to the touch. The corn's a whin- 
 nerin. — Jamieson. 
 
 Whinner, to snort like a horse, 
 to whinney ; French hennir, to 
 neigh. 
 
 An' goblins whinnered through the air 
 Wi' whorled chaps (distorted faces or 
 
 jaws). 
 —George Beattie : John 6" Arnha. 
 
 Whipper-snapper, a contemp- 
 tuous term for a little, presump- 
 tuous person, who gives himself 
 airs of importance and talks 
 too much. Jamieson says it 
 "might be deduced from the 
 Icelandic hwipp, saltus, celer 
 cursus, and snapa, captare 
 escam, as originally denoting 
 
 one who manifested the greatest 
 alacrity in snatching at a mor- 
 sel ! " The true derivation seems 
 to be from the Flemish wippen, 
 to move about rapidly and rest- 
 lessly, and snapper, to prate, to 
 gabble, to be unnecessarily lo- 
 quacious. 
 
 Whippert, hasty, irascible, im- 
 patient ; whippert-like, inclining 
 to be ill-tempered without ade- 
 quate provocation. Jamieson 
 thinks the root of whippert is 
 either the Icelandic whopa, light- 
 ness, inconstancy, or the English 
 whip. He does not cite the 
 Flemish wip, to shake in the 
 balance, and loippen, to move 
 lightly and rapidly as the scales 
 do on the slightest excess of 
 weight over the even balance. 
 Thus wippert-like would signify 
 one easily provoked to lose the 
 balance of his temper. 
 
 He also cites whipper tooties, 
 as siUy scruples about doing 
 anything, and derives it from 
 the French aprcs tout, after all. 
 This derivation is worse than 
 puerile. The first word is evi- 
 dently from the Flemish root ; 
 the second, tooties, is not so 
 easily to be accounted for. 
 
 Whish, "whist, silence, or to keep 
 silence ; whence the name of 
 the well-known game at cards, 
 formerly called quadrille. 
 
 Hand your whish {i.e., keep silence, or 
 hold your tongue). — Scott : Rob Roy. 
 
 Whisky, whusky, a well-known 
 alcoholic drink, of which the 
 
278 
 
 Wh isky Tackets — Wh ttter. 
 
 name is derived from the Gaelic 
 uisge, water. The liquor is 
 sometimes called in the High- 
 lands uisge beatha, the water of 
 life ; in Irish Gaelic written 
 uisque baugh. The French pay 
 the same complement to brandy, 
 when they call it eau de vie. 
 
 Whisky tackets, pimples pro- 
 duced on the face by the ex- 
 cessive use of whisky or other 
 spirituous liquors ; from tacJcet, 
 a smaU nail. 
 
 Whistle binkie, a musician, har- 
 per, fiddler, or piper who played 
 at penny weddings or other 
 social gatherings, and trusted 
 for his remuneration to the 
 generosity of the company. A 
 whistle is a somewhat irreve- 
 lant name for a pipe, or for 
 music generally, and binkie is a 
 bench, a bunker, or seat. It has 
 been supposed that these two 
 words were the etymological 
 roots of the phrase, but this 
 derivation is open to doubt. 
 Uasal, the Gaelic for gentle or 
 noble, and binkie, a bunker, a 
 seat, was the seat reserved at 
 the weddings of the peasantry 
 for the chief or landlord, who 
 graced the ceremony by his pre- 
 sence when any of his tenants 
 were married, and the place 
 of honour thus appropriated to 
 him was called the uasal (cor- 
 rupted into whistle) binkie, and 
 the epithet was thence trans- 
 ferred to the hired musician 
 who stepped into it after the 
 
 laird's departure. The late 
 David Robertson of Glasgow 
 published, in 1847 and 1853, a 
 collection of Scottish songs by 
 then living Scottish poets under 
 this title, of which the contents 
 proved what was previously 
 known, that the genius of Scots- 
 men, even among the humblest 
 classes, is pre-eminently lyrical, 
 and produces many effusions of 
 great poetical beauty. 
 
 Whistle kirk, a term of con- 
 tempt applied by bigoted Cal- 
 vinists and Puritans, who object 
 to all music in churches except 
 the human voice, to Episco- 
 palian and other Protestant 
 churches who make use of or- 
 gans. That noble instrument 
 is a far greater incentive to de- 
 votional feeling than the un- 
 trained singing, which is often 
 little better than howling or 
 braying of a miscellaneous con- 
 gregation of old and young 
 people who know nothing of 
 music and have never been 
 taught to sing in unison. A 
 whistle -kirk minister is a con- 
 temptuous epithet for an Epis- 
 copalian clergyman. 
 
 Whitter, to move quickly, to talk 
 quickly, to drink quickly a 
 hearty draught. The etymology 
 is uncertain, but is possibly 
 allied to the English whet, the 
 Dutch and Flemish wetten, the 
 German wetzen, to sharpen. 
 
 Whitterin down the stair. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
Whittle — Whyles. 
 
 279 
 
 Syne we'll sit down and tak' our whitter 
 
 To cheer our heart, 
 And faith we'll be acquainted better 
 
 Before we part. 
 
 —Burns : Epistle to Lapraik. 
 
 Whittle, a clasp-knife ; to whittle, 
 to chip or carve a stick. 
 
 A Sheffield tkunttle bare he in his hose. 
 —Chaucer : The Reeves Tale. 
 
 Gudeman, quoth he, put up your whittle, 
 
 I'm no designed to try its mettle. 
 
 , — Burns : Death and Doctor Hornbook. 
 
 The word is common in 
 the United States, and was 
 scarcely understood in Eng- 
 land until its introduction into 
 humorous literature by Judge 
 Haliburton of Nova Scotia, in 
 the inimitable "Sam Slick, the 
 Clockmaker." According to a 
 ballad quoted by Mr. Bartlett, 
 in his Dictionary of American- 
 isms, the " Yankie or New Eng- 
 lander will whittle or cut his 
 way through the world by some 
 'cute device or other, in spite of 
 diflSculties. " 
 
 Dexterity with the pocket-knife is part 
 of a Nantucket education. I am inclined 
 to think the propensity is national. Ameri- 
 cans must and will whittle." — N. P. 
 Willis. 
 
 Whommle, to turn over clumsily 
 and suddenly, and with a loud 
 noise ; transposition of whelm. 
 
 Coming to the lire with the said pan 
 and water therein, and casting the water 
 therefrom, and whommeling the pan upon 
 the fire, with the pronouncing of these 
 fearful words, " Bones to the fire and soul 
 to the devil ! " which accomplished the 
 curt. — Trial 0/ Alison Nisbet for Witch- 
 craft, 1632. 
 
 Whommle means something different 
 from whelm. Whelm means to cover over, 
 to immerse ; neither does whommle mean 
 to turn over clumsily and suddenly with 
 a loud noise. Not one of these ideas is 
 conveyed by the word itself; it means 
 literally and really nothing more than to 
 turn upside down. — R. Drennan. 
 
 Whully, to wheedle, to endeavour, 
 to circumvent by fair words and 
 flattery; in modern English 
 slang to carny. Wully-wha-ing, 
 insincere flattery. 
 
 My life precious ! exclaimed Meg Dods, 
 nane o' your wully-wha-ing, Mr. Bind- 
 loose. Diel ane wad miss the auld giming 
 ale wife, Mr. Bindloose, unless it were 
 here and there a poor body, and may be 
 the auld house tyke that wadna be sae 
 weel guided, puir fallow. — Scott : St. 
 Ronans Well. 
 
 Whulte, a blow or hurt from a 
 fall ; Gaelic huailte (aspirated 
 hhuailte or vuailte), preterite of 
 buaU, to strike a blow. 
 
 Whuppie, a term of angry con- 
 tumely applied to a girl or 
 woman, signifying that she 
 deserves whipping. 
 
 Whurlie-burlie. This Scottish 
 word seems to be the original of 
 the English hurly-burly, and 
 signifies rapid circular motion ; 
 from whorl, a small wheel; whirl, 
 to spin round ; world, the earth 
 that rotates or whirls in space 
 around the sun. 
 
 Whyles, sometimes, occasionally, 
 now and then. 
 
 How best o' chiels are whyles in want. 
 While coofs in countless thousands rai!t. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Davie, a Brother 
 Poet. 
 
280 
 
 Why lock — Wtddy. 
 
 Whyles crooning o'er some auld Scotch 
 sonnet. 
 
 — Tarn o Shanter. 
 
 I took his body on my back, 
 And -whiles I gaed, and ivhiles I sat. 
 — Lament of the Border Widow. 
 
 A lady, visiting the poor, in the West 
 Port, Edinburgh, not far from the church 
 established by Dr. Chalmers, asked a poor 
 woman if she ever attended divine service 
 tliere. She replied, " Ou ay I there's a 
 man ca'd Chalmers preaches there, and I 
 ivhiles gang in to hear him, just to encour- 
 age him — puir body ! " — Dean Ramsay. 
 
 Whylock, or a wee while, a little 
 while. 
 
 Wi' a blush, as she keepit lookin' roun' 
 an' roun' for a whyleock. — Noctes Antbro- 
 siarue. 
 
 Widdie, angry contention ; wid- 
 diefu\ cross-grained, ill-tem- 
 pered, half-crazy, cantankerous, 
 angry without cause. 
 
 The miller was strappin', the miller was 
 
 ruddy, 
 A heart like a lord, and a hue like a lady ; 
 The laird v/assLwiddie/u , bleerit knurl, — 
 She's left the gude fellow and taken the 
 
 churl. 
 
 —Burns : Mego' the Mill. 
 
 Misled by the meaning of wid- 
 die, the rope, or gallows, Jamie- 
 son says that, properly widdie- 
 fu', or widdie-foio, signifies one 
 who deserves to fill a halter. 
 But as a man may be peevish, 
 morose, irascible, contentious, 
 and unreasonable without de- 
 serving the gallows, the etymo- 
 logy is not satisfactory. The 
 true root seems to be the 
 Flemish woede, the German 
 wuth, the old English wode, 
 the Scottish vmd — all signifying 
 mad, crazy, unreasonable. 
 
 Widdie, to turn, to wheel, to 
 wriggle ; and metaphorically, to 
 struggle ; akin to the English 
 twiddle, to turn the thumbs 
 round each other in idle move- 
 ment. Widdie is from the Gae- 
 lic cuidhil, a wheel. 
 
 Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle, 
 Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle 
 To cheer you through the weary widdie 
 O' worldly cares. 
 — Burns : Epistle to Davie. 
 
 Widdy (sometimes written woodie 
 and wuddie), the gaUows. 
 
 The water will nae wrang the widdy, 
 
 [The English have another ver- 
 sion of this proverb — 
 
 He who's born to be hanged will never 
 be drowned.] 
 
 It's nae laughing to gim in a widdy. 
 
 It's ill speaking o' the widdy in the 
 house o' a man who was hangit. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 The French have a similar pro- 
 verb — "II ne faut pas parler 
 de corde dans la maison d'un 
 pendu." 
 
 He'll wintle in a widdie yet [he'll wrig- 
 gle in a rope yet, i.e., he'll be hanged]. — 
 Jamieson : Scots Proverb. 
 
 Her Joe had been a Highland laddie. 
 But weary fa' the waefu' woodie. 
 
 — Burns: The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 On Donald Caird the doom was stern, 
 Craig to tether, leg to airn, 
 But Donald Caird wi' muckle study 
 Caught the gift to cheat the wuddie. 
 Rings o' airn an' bolts o' steel 
 Fell like ice frae hand and heel, 
 Watch the sheep in fauld and glen, 
 Donald Caird's come again. 
 
 —Sir Walter Scott. 
 
Wight— Wilt 
 
 281 
 
 In very primitive times in 
 Scotland the ropes used for 
 hanging those who had offended 
 the chief, or who had rendered 
 themselves amenable to the 
 death penalty, were formed of 
 twisted willow withes — whence 
 vMhy, or widdy, afterwards came 
 to signify a rope, or, by exten- 
 sion of meaning, the gallows. 
 
 Wight, wicht, wichtly, wichty, 
 wichtness. Wight remains an 
 English word in mock heroic 
 composition, and means a man, 
 a fellow; originally, a strong 
 or brave man, a sturdy fellow. 
 The Dutch and Flemish wicht 
 means a child or a little fellow. 
 Wight, in the epithet "Wallace 
 wight" given in Scottish poetry 
 and tradition to the great 
 national hero, means "brave 
 Wallace," and was a kind of 
 title of nobility bestowed on him 
 for his prowess, and the patriotic 
 use he made of it. 
 
 A wight man never wanted a weapon. 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Wilie-wa*, to cajole, to flatter, 
 possibly from wile away; from 
 wikf to trick, to beguile. 
 
 Willie. This suffix answers in 
 meaning to the Latin vdens, or 
 volent in the English words be- 
 nevolent and malevolent. The 
 Scotch renders the former word 
 by guid - willie, or well - willie ; 
 from the Flemish goed wiUvj ; 
 and the latter by ill-wiUie, in 
 which ill is substituted for the 
 Flemish quad^ or bad. On the 
 
 same principle of formation, HI- 
 deedie signifies nefarious, and 
 ill-tricky mischievous, both of 
 which might well become Eng- 
 lish if they found favour with 
 authors of acknowledged autho- 
 rity. 
 
 Willie-winkie, a term of some- 
 what contemptuous endearment 
 to a diminutive and not over 
 intelligent child. The Jaco- 
 bites of 1688 to 17 1 5 long 
 applied it to William III., when 
 they did not call him the 
 "Dutchman," "the HoganMu- 
 gan," "Willie the Wag," or 
 ' ' Willie Wanbeard." ' ' The Last 
 Will and Testament of WHZie 
 winkle,''^ is the title of a once 
 popular Jacobite song. 
 
 Wilshoch, wulshoch, changeable 
 of opinion or purpose, a bashful 
 wooer. Jamieson derives the 
 first syllable from the English 
 wiU, and the second from the 
 Anglo - Saxon seoc aeger, sick 
 from the indulgence of one's 
 own will. It seems rather to 
 be from the Gaelic uile, all, 
 totally ; and seog (shog), to swing 
 from side to side — whence, 
 metaphorically, one who is con- 
 tinually at variance with his 
 former opinion, and sways from 
 side to side. 
 
 Wilt, to shrivel, or begin to 
 decay, as a leaf or flower in 
 the extreme heat or cold — not 
 exactly withered in the English 
 sense of the word, inasmuch as 
 a wilted leaf may revive, but a 
 
282 
 
 Wimple — Winsome. 
 
 withered one cannot. This old 
 Scottish word has been revived 
 in America, where it is in com- 
 mon use. The late Artemus 
 Ward punned upon it, when he 
 said to his lady love, ''Wilt 
 thou ? and she wilted.'" 
 
 Miss Amy pinned a flower to her breast, 
 and when she died, she held the wilted 
 fragments in her hand. — Judd's Mar- 
 garet. 
 
 Wilt, though not admitted 
 into the English dictionaries, is 
 in local use in many northern 
 and eastern counties, and is 
 often pronounced wilk, or wilken, 
 which seems to have been the 
 original form ; from the Ger- 
 man, Dutch, and Flemish wel- 
 ken, to decay, to droop. Spenser 
 used welk, in speaking of the 
 sunset, to describe the fading 
 light of the day. 
 
 When ruddy Phoebus 'gins to welk in 
 west. — Faerie Queene. 
 
 Wimple, to flow gently like a 
 brook, to meander, to purl. 
 
 Among the bonnie winding banks, 
 Where Doon rins wimplin clear. 
 
 — Burns : Halloween. 
 
 Win, this word in English signi- 
 fies to gain, to make a profit, 
 to acquire ; but in the Scottish 
 language it has many other and 
 more extended meanings, such 
 as to reach, to attain, to arrive, 
 to get at. It enters into the 
 composition of a great number 
 of compound words and phrases, 
 such as — to win above, to sur- 
 mount ; to win about, to circum- 
 vent ; to win awa, to escape, and, 
 
 poetically, to die, or escape from 
 life ; to win forret, to advance, 
 to get on ; to win owre, to get 
 over, to cajole ; to win past, to 
 overtake, or get by ; to loin free, 
 to get loose ; to win hame, to get 
 home ; to win aff, to get off, or 
 away, to be acquitted on a trial ; 
 to win ben, to be admitted to the 
 house ; to win up, to arise, or 
 get up. 
 
 Win and tine, a man able to win 
 and tine, is a man of substance 
 and energy, able to win and able 
 to lose without hurting himself, 
 and to whom winnings and 
 losings are alike of little con- 
 sequence. 
 
 W i n n o c k, a window comer ; 
 abridged from window -nook. 
 Winnock-bunker, a seat, ledge, 
 or bench at the window. 
 
 A winnock-bunker in the east, 
 Where sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast ; 
 A towsie tyke, black, grim, and large, 
 To gie them music was his charge. 
 
 —Burns : Tarn oShanter. 
 
 Winsome. This pleasant Scottish 
 word is gradually making good 
 its claim to a place in recognised 
 English. The etymology is un- 
 decided whether it be from win, 
 to gain, or the Teutonic wonne, 
 joy, pleasure, or delight. 
 
 I gat your letter, winsome Willie. 
 — Burns. 
 
 She is a winsome wee thing, 
 She is a bonnie wee thing, 
 This sweet wee wife o' mine. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
Wintle — Withershtns. 
 
 283 
 
 Wintle, a corruption of windle, to 
 gyrate, to turn round in the 
 wind ; also, to reel, to stagger, 
 to walk unsteadily ; also, to 
 wriggle, to writhe, to struggle. 
 
 Thieves of every rank and station, 
 From him that wears the star and garter, 
 To him that winiles in a halter. 
 
 — Burns : To J. Rankine. 
 
 He'll wintle in a widdie yet. 
 
 — Jamieson. 
 
 Winze, an oath, a curse, an im- 
 precation, an evil wish; from 
 the Flemish wensch^ a wish, 
 which, conjoined with the prefix 
 rer, became verwenschen, to curse, 
 to wish evil. 
 
 He talcs a swirlie auld moss-oak 
 
 For some black gruesome carline. 
 And loot a winze, and drew a stroke. 
 — Burns : Hallowe'en. 
 
 Wirry-cow, a bugbear, a goblin, 
 or frightful object, a ghost ; 
 the devil ; also a scarecrow. 
 
 Draggled sae 'mang muck and stanes, 
 They looked like wirry-cows. 
 
 — Allan Ramsav. 
 
 The word was used by Scott, 
 in •* Guy Mannering," and is 
 derived by Jamieson from the 
 English " worry," and ** to cow." 
 Wirry, however, seems to be a 
 corruption of the Gaelic uruisg, 
 which, according to Armstrong's 
 Gaelic Dictionary, signified a 
 '• brownie," or goblin, who was 
 supposed to haunt lonely dells, 
 lakes, and waterfalls, and who 
 could only be seen by those 
 who had the "second sight." 
 Kuddiman thought that the 
 
 uruisg was called a "brownie " in 
 the Lowlands, on account of the 
 brown colour of the long hair 
 which covered his body when 
 he appeared to human eyes ; 
 but it is more probable that 
 "brownie" was derived from 
 the Gaelic hrdn, sorrow or cala- 
 mity. The attributes ascribed 
 to the uruisg are similar to those 
 of the " lubber fiend " of Milton. 
 The final syllable of wirry-cow 
 was sometimes written and pro- 
 nounced carl, a fellow. Accord- 
 ing to Jamieson, cow, or kow, 
 signified a hobgoblin, and to 
 "play the Jcov^" was to act the 
 part of a goblin, to frighten 
 fools and children. 
 
 Wisp, to currycomb a horse, or 
 rub it with a ivisp of straw. 
 
 A short horse is sune wispit {i.e., a little 
 job is soon done). — Old Proverb. 
 
 Wissel, to exchange. Wissler, a 
 money-changer ; from the Fle- 
 mish wissel, and geld wisselaar, 
 a money-changer ; the German 
 wechsel. To wissel words, is to 
 exchange words ; usually em- 
 ployed in an angry sense, as in 
 the English phrase, to "bandy 
 words with one," the irritation 
 preceding a quarrel, 
 
 Withershins, backwards, against 
 the course of the sun. To pass 
 the bottle withershins, or the 
 wrong way, at table, is con- 
 sidered a breach of social eti- 
 quette. The word seems to be 
 derived from the Teutonic wider, 
 contrary, and s&nnct the sun ; 
 
284 
 
 Witter — Won. 
 
 or perhaps from wider, and sinn, 
 sense ; whence it would signify, 
 in a " contrary sense." The 
 word wider, corrupted in the 
 Scotch into wither, enters into 
 the composition of many Ger- 
 man words, such as wider-spruch, 
 contradiction ; wider-sinn, non- 
 sense ; wider-stand, resistance. 
 
 The ancient Druids called 
 a movement contrary to the 
 course of the sun, car-tual. On 
 this subject, apropos of the 
 word withershins, a curious note 
 appears in Armstrong's Gaelic 
 Dictionary. "The Druids," he 
 says, " on certain occasions 
 moved three times round the 
 stone circles, which formed 
 their temples. In performing 
 this ceremony, car-deise, they 
 kept the circle on the right, 
 and consequently moved from 
 east to west. This was called 
 the prosperous course ; but the 
 car-tual, or moving with the 
 circle on the left, was deemed 
 fatal or unprosperous, as being 
 "contrary to the course of the 
 sun." 
 
 The said Alison past thrice withershins 
 about the bed, muttering out certain charms 
 in unknown words. — Trial of Alison 
 Nisbetfor IVitchcra/t, 1632. 
 
 To be whipped round a'circle withershins, 
 or car-tual, would thus be considered pecu- 
 liarly degrading, and probably, as the 
 meaning of Gaelic words was perverted 
 by the Saxon -speaking people, was the 
 origin of the phrase, "to be whipped at 
 the cart's tail." — Gaelic Etymology of the 
 Languages of Western Europe. 
 
 Witter, to struggle, to fight, to 
 strive in enmity ; from the Teu- 
 
 tonic wider, against, contrary 
 to ; wider-sacher, an antagonist ; 
 wider-sprechen, to contradict ; 
 Flemish weder-partij , an adver- 
 sary, an opposing party. 
 
 To struggle in whatever way, — often for 
 a subsistence; as, "I'm witterin awa'." 
 A witterin body is one who is struggling 
 with poverty or difficulty. — Jamieson. 
 
 Wittering, a proof. 
 
 And that was to be a wittering true. 
 That maiden she had gane. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : The Broom- 
 field Hill. 
 
 Witterly, knowingly, wittingly ; 
 to do a thing wUterly, to act on 
 good information, or with full 
 knowledge ; to witter, to inform, 
 and also to prognosticate. 
 
 Wod or \imd, stark mad, raging 
 mad ; old English wode, wuth, 
 and toouth ; Dutch and Flemish 
 woode ; German vmth. 
 
 Ye haud a stick in the wod man's e'e, 
 i.e., you hold a stick in the mad man's 
 eyes, or you continue to provoke one 
 already enraged. — Jamieson. 
 
 When neebors anger at a plea, 
 And just as wttd as wtul can be, 
 How easy can the barley bree 
 Cement the quarrel. 
 —Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 The wife was wud, and out o' her wit, 
 She couldna gang, nor could she sit ; 
 But aye she cursed and banned. 
 
 — The Gaberlunzie Man. 
 
 Won, to dwell, to reside, to in- 
 habit. Waning, a dwelling-place. 
 From the German wohnen, and 
 wohnung ; Dutch and Flemish 
 wonen, to dwell ; wonen-huis, a 
 dwelling-house, a lodging. 
 
Wo finer — Wooster. 
 
 285 
 
 There's auld Rab Morris that wons in 
 
 the glen, 
 The king o* guid fellows, and wale o' 
 
 auld men. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Wonner, wonder ; applied in con- 
 tempt to any odd, decrepit, or 
 despicable creature. 
 
 Our whipper-in, wee, blastit wonner. 
 — Burns : The Twa Dogs. 
 
 Wont to be, a phrase applied to 
 any ancient or obsolete custom 
 or observance, a thing that used 
 to be or was wont to he in olden 
 time. 
 
 Mony wont to he's, nae doubt, 
 An' customs we ken nought about, 
 — Jamieson : The Piper o' Peebles. 
 
 Wooer-bab. It was formerly the 
 custom among the young men 
 and lads of the rural population 
 in the Highlands and Lowlands 
 of Scotland to wear bows of rib- 
 bons of flaunting colours in their 
 garters on high days and holi- 
 days, when they expected to 
 meet the lasses, and to dance or 
 flirt with them. 
 
 The lasses' feet are cleanly neat, 
 
 Mair braw than when they're fine, 
 Their faces blythe fu' sweetly kythe, 
 
 Hearts leal an' warm an' kind ; 
 The lads sae trig wi' wooer-bobs 
 
 Weel knotted on their garten. 
 Some unco blate, and some wi' gabs 
 
 Gar lasses' hearts gang startin'. 
 
 — Burns: Hallowe'en. 
 
 *^Bab" says Dr. Adolphus 
 Wagner, the German editor of 
 Bums, '* seems akin to the Eng- 
 lish 606, something that hangs 
 so as to play loose, and is a 
 tassel or knot of ribbons, or the 
 loose ends of such a knot." The 
 
 English word boh, in this sense, 
 is a corruption of the Gaelic 
 hah, a fringe ; and hahag, a. little 
 fringe. Perhaps the English 
 phrase, "tag, rag, and hohtail," 
 is from the same source, and 
 hobtail may signify the ragged 
 fringe of a frayed outer gar- 
 ment, hohbing or dangling loose 
 in the wind. 
 
 Wool or 00'. English ; from the 
 German and Flemish woll ; in 
 Scottish parlance, oo\ A* oo\ 
 all wool ; a' ae oo\ all one wool ; 
 ay, a' ae oo\ yes, all one wool. 
 There is a popular proverb which 
 formerly ran — 
 
 Much cry and little 00', 
 
 to which some humorist added — 
 
 As the Deil said when he shear'd the sow. 
 
 The addendum was at once 
 adopted by the people, though 
 some strict philologists re- 
 main of the opinion that the 
 first line is complete in itself, 
 and that *' cry " does not signify 
 the noise or uproar of the ani- 
 mal, but is a corruption either 
 of the Gaelic graidh, or graigh 
 igry), a flock, a herd, or cruidk, 
 which has the same meaning, 
 and signifies a large flock that 
 yields but little wool. How- 
 ever this may be, the idea in 
 the lengthened proverb has a 
 grotesque humour about it, 
 which insures its popularity. 
 
 Wooster, a wooer, a lover, a 
 sweetheart. 
 
286 
 
 Wooster-tryste — Wowf, 
 
 Wooster-tryste, a lonely meeting. 
 
 At kirk she was the auld folks' love, 
 At dance she was the laddies* e'en, 
 She was the blythest o' the blythe, 
 At ivooster-trystes on Hallowe'en. 
 — Allan Cunningham : Cromek's 
 Remains of Nithsdale and Gal- 
 loway Song. 
 
 Word. "To get the word of," 
 i.e., to get the character, or the 
 repute, of being so and so. 
 ' ' She gets the word o' being a 
 licht-headed quean," i.e., the 
 character of being a light- 
 headed or frivolous woman. 
 
 Worl, wurl, wroul, win*. All 
 
 these words of a common origin 
 express the idea of smallness, 
 or dwarfishness, combined with 
 perversity, disagreeableness, and 
 ill-nature. Jamieson has wurlie, 
 contemptibly small in size ; a 
 vmrlie body, an ill-grown per- 
 son ; wurlin, a child or beast 
 that is unthriven ; wurr, to snarl 
 like a dog ; wirr, a peevish and 
 crabbed dwarf; wurr, to be 
 habitually complaining or snarl- 
 ing ; and a wurlie rung, a knot- 
 ted stick. He suggests that 
 loirr and wurr are corruptions of 
 were-ivolf, the man-wolf of popu- 
 lar superstition — one afflicted 
 with the disease called lycan- 
 thropy, in which the unhappy 
 victim imagines himself to be a 
 wolf, and imitates the bowlings 
 of that animal. The true ety- 
 mology is uncertain. Perhaps 
 all these words are derivable 
 from the Teutonic quer, oblique, 
 athwart, perverse — the origin of 
 the English queer, quirk, and 
 
 quirky. Jamieson has also wurp, 
 a fretful, peevish person ; and 
 wurpit, afflicted with f retf ulness. 
 These latter seem akin to the 
 Gaelic uipear, a clown, a churl, 
 a bungler; and uipearach, ill- 
 tempered, churlish. 
 
 Worry, to vex, to torment. In 
 some parts of Scotland it sig- 
 nifies to strangle, to choke, or 
 to be suffocated. Worry carl, a 
 troublesome fellow, or ill- 
 natured churl, who vexes both 
 himself and others. Possibly 
 from the Gaelic uaire, stormy. 
 (See WiRRY-cow, ante.) 
 
 Wow I an exclamation of surprise 
 or wonder, without etymology, 
 as exclamations usually are. 
 
 A fine fat fodgel wight, 
 Of stature short, but genius bright, 
 
 That's he ! mark weel ! 
 And woTv .' he has an unco slight 
 
 O' cauk and keel ! 
 —Burns : On Captain Gro^t. 
 
 And ivow ! but my heart dances bound in 
 and licht, 
 And my bosom beats blythesome and 
 
 cheery. 
 —James Ballantine : The Gloamin 
 Hour. 
 
 Wowf, partially deranged. The 
 Scottish language is particularly 
 rich in words expressive of the 
 various shades of madness and 
 insanity ; such as wud, raging, 
 or stark staring mad; daft, 
 slightly deranged ; gyte, cranky, 
 subject to abberrations of intel- 
 lect on particular points ; doited, 
 stupidly deranged — all which 
 words are in addition to, and 
 
Wrack — WrouL 
 
 2S7 
 
 not in supercession of the Eng- 
 lish words, mad, idiotic, lunatic, 
 crazy, &c. 
 
 It is very odd how Allan, who, between 
 ourselves, is a little wow/, seems at times 
 to have more sense than all of us put to- 
 gether. — Scott: Tales of My Landlord. 
 
 Wrack, to break in pieces, to 
 VJTech. In English the phrase 
 ''m-ack and ruin" is more often 
 used than '■'■ wreck and ruin;" 
 from the same source as wreak, 
 to act, do, or perform a deed of 
 anger ; to wreck spite or ven- 
 geance. It is possibly of the 
 same origin as the Teutonic 
 werken, the English work, em- 
 ployed in the sense of destroy- 
 ing rather than of creating or 
 constructing. 
 
 Oh, roaring Clyde, ye roar o'er loud, 
 Your stream is wondrous strong ; 
 
 Make me your wrack as I come back. 
 But spare me as I gang. 
 
 — Johnson's Musical Museum : Willie 
 and May Margaret. 
 
 Wraith, an apparition in his own 
 likeness that becomes visible to 
 a person about to die ; a water- 
 spirit. 
 
 He held him for some fleeting wraith. 
 And not a man of blood or breath. 
 
 —Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 By this the storm grew loud apace. 
 The water-wraith was shrieking, 
 
 And in the scowl of heaven each face 
 Grew dark as they were speaking. 
 —Thomas Campbell. 
 
 The etymology of this word 
 is uncertain. Some suppose it 
 to be derived from wrath, or a 
 wrathful spirit, summoning to 
 doom. Jamieson is of opinion 
 
 that it is from the same root as 
 weird, fate or destiny, or the 
 Anglo-Saxon weard or ward, a 
 guardian, a keeper, and thence 
 a fairy, a guardian angel. This 
 derivation is scarcely tenable ; 
 that from breith, doom or judg- 
 ment, aspirated as bhreith, is 
 more probable, as the apparition 
 of the wraith is always supposed 
 to forebode the doom of the 
 person who sees it. 
 
 Wrang, English wrong. The ety- 
 mology of this word has been 
 much disputed ; but it seems to 
 be from wring, to twist, and 
 wrung, twisted or distorted from 
 the right line. Wrang in Scot- 
 tish parlance sometimes signifies 
 deranged — out of the right line 
 of reason. ** He's a' wrang," i.e., 
 he is demented. Wrang-wise is 
 a wrong manner; the opposite 
 of the English right-wise or 
 righteous. 
 
 Writer, an attorney. Writer to 
 the Signet, a solicitor licensed 
 to conduct cases in the superior 
 courts. 
 
 Wroul, an ill-formed or diminu- 
 tive child ; a name originally 
 applied to one who was sup- 
 posed to have been changed in 
 its cradle by malicious fairies ; 
 a changeling. Jamieson refers to 
 wer-wolf, a man supposed to be 
 transformed into a wolf, called 
 by the French a loup-garou, but 
 this is evidently not the true 
 derivation, which is more pro* 
 
288 
 
 Wud-scud — Wyteworthy. 
 
 bably from the Dutch and Fle- 
 mish ruil, to exchange. 
 
 Wud-scud, a wild scamper, a 
 panic, called by the Americans 
 a stampede ; from vmd, mad, and 
 scud, to run precipitately and in 
 confusion. The word is some- 
 times applied to an over-restive 
 or over-frolicsome boy or girl, 
 whom it is difficult to keep 
 quiet. 
 
 Wudspur, a Scottish synonym for 
 the English Hotspur, wild, reck- 
 less, one who rides in hot haste ; 
 from the Flemish woete, German 
 wuth, old English wode and spur. 
 It is difficult to decide which of 
 the two words was the original 
 epithet, and whether wood-spur 
 in Scottish parlance was, or was 
 not, anterior in usage to the 
 Hotspur of the great poet. 
 
 There was a wild gallant among us a', 
 His name was Watty wi' the ntrudspur. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : Ballad of 
 Jamie Telfer. 
 
 Wyg to wa'. "A thing," says 
 Jamieson, ** is said to gang frae 
 wyg to wa', when it is moved 
 backwards and forwards from 
 the one wall of a house to the 
 other." He suggests that wyg 
 is but another name for wall, 
 and that the phrase signifies 
 
 really "from wall to wall." It 
 is more probable that wyg is but 
 a misspelling of the Gaelic uig, 
 
 Wyte, to blame, to reproach 
 The etymology is derived by 
 Jamieson from the Anglo-Saxon 
 witan, to know, and the Gothic 
 wita, to impute. But the root 
 of the word is the Flemish 
 wyten, to blame, to reproach. 
 
 Ane does the skaith, and 
 Another gets the luyte. 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scois Prarverbs. 
 
 Many ivyte their wives 
 For their ain thriftless lives. 
 
 Idem. 
 
 Alas ! that every man has reason 
 To luyte his countrymen wi' treason. 
 — Burns : Scotch Drink. 
 
 " Dame ! deem warily ! Ye watna wha 
 ivytes yoursel." — Old Proverb. (A warning 
 to a censorious or tattling woman to beware 
 of scandal, lest she herself should be scan- 
 dalised.) 
 
 This was an English word in 
 the time of Chaucer, but has 
 long been obsolete except in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Wyter, one who blames ; an 
 accuser. 
 
 Wyteworthy, blameable, blame- 
 worthy. 
 
Yald — Yankee. 
 
 289 
 
 Yald, sprightly, active, nimble, 
 alert ; yald-cuted (erroneously- 
 spelled yaul-cuted in Jamieson), 
 nimble-footed ; from yald, nim- 
 ble, and cute, an ankle. 
 
 Being yald and stout, he wheel'd about, 
 And clove his head in twain. 
 
 — Hogg's Mountain Bard. 
 
 Yammer, yaumer, to lament, to 
 complain ; from the Flemish 
 jammer, lamentation ; jamTnern, 
 to complain or lament ; jammer- 
 voll, lamentable. 
 
 Fareweel to the bodies that yammer and 
 mourn. 
 — Herd's Collection 0/ Scottish Songs, 
 
 Bide ye Vet. 
 We winna, shauna, yaumerin' yirn 
 Though Fortune's freaks we dree. 
 — Whistle Binkie. 
 
 In Lancashire and the North 
 of England yammer is used in 
 another sense, that of yearning 
 or desiring ardently. 
 
 I yammer d to hear now how things 
 
 turned out. 
 — Tim Bobbin : Lancashire Dialect. 
 And the worm yammers for us in the 
 
 ground. 
 — Waugh's Lancashire Songs. 
 
 Yankee, an inhabitant of Massa- 
 chusetts, Rhode Island,Vermont, 
 Connecticut, New Hampshire, 
 and Maine, the six New England 
 States of the American Union. 
 The etymology of the Scottish 
 
 word has not been ascertained. 
 Jank (pronounced yank) in Dutch 
 and Flemish, signifies to cry out 
 lustily, and junger, in German, 
 is a young man, the Enghsh 
 youriker ; but neither of these 
 words can account for yankie, 
 either in the Scottish or Ameri- 
 can sense. Danish and Swedish 
 afford no clue. In provincial 
 English, yanks are a species of 
 leather gaiters worn by agricul- 
 tural labourers, which, accord- 
 ing to Halliwell, were once called 
 ' ' Bow Yankies." But this can- 
 not be accepted as the origin, 
 unless on the supposition that 
 at the time of the emigration of 
 the first colonists to America, the 
 term signified not only leather 
 gaiterSjbut those who wore them. 
 This epithet is often erroneously 
 applied in England to all Ame- 
 ricans, though it is repudiated 
 by the people of the Middle, 
 Southern, and Western States. 
 It is supposed to be a mispro- 
 nunciation of English by the 
 aboriginal Indian tribes, on the 
 first colonisation of the Conti- 
 nent. Much controversy has 
 arisen on the subject, which 
 still remains undecided. No 
 one, however, has hitherto re- 
 marked that the Scottish verna- 
 cular supplies the words yank, 
 yanking, which signify a smart 
 T 
 
290 
 
 Yap — Yark, 
 
 stroke ; yanher, an incessant 
 speaker, and also a great false- 
 hood ; yanking, active, pushing, 
 speculative, enterprising. It is 
 not insisted that this is the cor- 
 rect etymology, but if it be only a 
 coincidence it merits considera- 
 tion. No true New Englander 
 would dissent from it for any 
 other than philological reasons, 
 in which it is certainly vulner- 
 able, though on moral grounds 
 it is all but unassailable. 
 
 Yap, yappish, sometimes written 
 yaup, hungry, eager, brisk co- 
 vetous. 
 
 Right yap she yoked to the ready feast. 
 And lay and ate a full half-hour at least. 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 This word is probably derived 
 from the Gaelic gah or gob, the 
 mouth — whence by extension of 
 meaning, an open mouth, crav- 
 ing to be fiUed. The English 
 word gape, to yawn, or open 
 the mouth wide, is from the 
 same root. The eminent trage- 
 dian, Philip Kemble, always 
 pronouncd ga'pe as ga^ip, not 
 gaipe, and the late W. C. Mac- 
 ready followed his example. 
 Jamieson travels very far north 
 to find the derivation in the Ice- 
 landic gypa, vorax. 
 
 Although her wame was toom and she 
 grown j/ap. 
 
 —Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Though bairns may pu' when yap or 
 
 drouthy 
 A neep or bean to taste their mouthy. 
 
 But a' the neeps and a' the beans. 
 
 The hips, the haws, the slaes, the geens, 
 
 That e'er were pu'd by hungry weans 
 
 Could ne'er be missed, 
 By lairds like you, wi' ample means 
 In bank and kist. 
 — James Ballantine : To the Laird 
 of Blackford Hill. 
 Now hell's black table-cloth was spread, 
 The infernal grace was duly said ; 
 Yap stood the hungry fiends a' owre it. 
 Their grim jaws aching to devour it. 
 — Jacobite Songs and Ballads : Cumber- 
 lands Descent into Hell. 
 At that moment yap as ever. — Nodes 
 Ambrosiance, 
 
 Yare, a word still used by sailors, 
 but obsolete in literature, signi- 
 fying ready, alert, heedful, or 
 in a state of readiness ; used 
 by Shakspeare and the writers 
 of his time. 
 
 Our ship is tight and yare. 
 
 — Tempest, act v. scene i. 
 If you have occasion to use me for your 
 own turn, you shall find me yare. — Mea- 
 sure for Measure, act iv. scene 2. 
 
 Be yare in thy preparations, for thy 
 assailant is quick, .skilful, and deadly. — 
 Shakspeare : Twelfth Night. 
 
 Nares derives it from the Saxon 
 gearwe, paratus ; but the real 
 root seems to be the Celtic aire, 
 heed, attention, alertness, readi- 
 ness for action or duty ; as in 
 the modem Gaelic phrase, 
 '•Thoir an aire," pay attention, 
 be on the alert ; be yare ! allied 
 to the French gare ! and the 
 English heware ! 
 
 Yark, to smite suddenly, forcibly, 
 and aimlessly; possibly a cor- 
 ruption of jerk. 
 
 He .swat a.n' yarkit wi' his hammer, 
 The sparks flew frae the steel like 
 glamour. 
 — Beattie : /ohn o Amha'. 
 
Yatter — Yestreen . 
 
 291 
 
 Yatter (a corruption of the Eng- 
 lish chatter), to talk idly and 
 incessantly ; also, to complain 
 querulously, and without reason. 
 *' She's a weary 2/aWer," i.e., she's 
 a tedious and wearisome gossip. 
 Yatter also signifies a confused 
 mass or heap, and is synonymous 
 with hatter. (See ante, p. 841.) 
 
 Yaud or "far yaudi" an inter- 
 jection or call by a shepherd to 
 his dog, to direct his attention 
 to sheep that have strayed, and 
 that are far in the distance. 
 Yaud, in this sense, as cited by 
 Jamieson, seems to be a mis- 
 pronunciation or misprint of 
 yont ! or yonder. 
 
 Yeld, or yell, barren, unfruit- 
 ful. In Galloway, according to 
 Jamieson, yald signifies nig- 
 gardly. The etymology is un- 
 certain, though supposed to be 
 a corruption of geld, to castrate, 
 to render unproductive. 
 
 A yeld soil, flinty or barren soil. A cow, 
 although with calf, is said to gang yeld 
 when the milk dries up. A yeld nurse 
 is a dry nurse. Applied metaphorically 
 to broth without flesh meat in it (soupe- 
 maigre). — Jamieson. 
 
 A yeld sow was never good to grices 
 [i.e., a barren sow was never good to little 
 pigs, or, a barren stepmother to the chil- 
 dren of her husband by a previous wife.] — 
 Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Thence country wives, in toil and pain, 
 May plunge and plunge the kirn in vain. 
 For oh, your yellow treasure's ta'en . 
 
 By witching skill. 
 And dawtit, twal-pint Hawkie's gaen 
 
 As yelfs the bull. 
 —Burns : Address to the Deil. 
 
 Yerk, a smart blow ; yerker, a very 
 smart and knock down blow ; 
 supposed to be a corruption of 
 jei'k, with which, however, it is 
 not synonymous. 
 
 There's news, news, gallant news. 
 There's gallant news o' tartan trews, 
 
 An' red Clanranald's men, Joe ; 
 There has been blinking on the bent, 
 
 An' flashing on the fell, Joe, 
 The redcoat sparks hae got ih& Jerks, 
 
 But carle dauma tell, Joe. 
 —Jacobite Relics : Clanranalds Men. 
 
 Yestreen, last night, or yesterday 
 evening. Yester, both in Eng- 
 lish and Scotch, was used as 
 a prefix to signify time past ; 
 as yester- jeai, yester -m.onth, 
 yester-week ; but in English its 
 use has in modern times been 
 restricted to day and night ; 
 and, by a strange surplusage 
 of words, to yesterday night 
 instead of yester night, and 
 yesterday morning instead of 
 yester morn. In Scotland, its 
 use is more extended, and 
 yestereen or yestreen, yesternoon, 
 yesternight, are employed alike 
 in poetic style and in every- 
 day conversation. The word is 
 from the German gestern {g pro- 
 nounced as y) and the Flemish 
 gistern. 
 
 I saw the new moon late yestreen, 
 
 Wi' the auld moon in her arm, 
 And if we gang to sea, master, 
 I fear we'll come to harm. 
 
 —Sir Patrick Spens : Border 
 Minstrelsy. 
 
 I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, 
 A gate I fear I'll sairly rue, 
 
 I gat my death frae twa sweet e'en, 
 
 Twa sparklin' e'en o' bonnie blue. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
292 
 
 Yethar — Yorne. 
 
 The derivation of the Teutonic 
 gestern and gistern is probably 
 from the Gaelic aosda, aged or 
 old ; so that yesterday, in con- 
 tradiction to this day, or the 
 new day, would signify the old 
 day, the day that is past. Latin 
 hesternus. 
 
 Yethar, a willow-wythe ; also, a 
 blow with a switch ; probably a 
 corruption of wytker, a stroke 
 with a wythe. 
 
 Yevey, greedy, voracious, clamor- 
 ous for food. Of doubtful ety- 
 mology, though possibly from 
 the Gaelic eibh (ev), to clamour. 
 
 Yill, ale or beer. 
 
 A cogie o' jfzll 
 And a pickle oatmeal, 
 An' a dainty wee drappie o' whisky — 
 An' hey for the cogie, 
 An' hey for the ^ill, 
 Gin ye steer a' thegither, they'll do unco 
 weel. 
 
 —A Cogie o Yill, 1787. 
 
 Yird-fast or earth-fast, a stone 
 well sunken in the earth, or a 
 tree fast rooted in the ground. 
 
 The axe he bears it hacks and tears, 
 'Tis formed of an earth-fast flint ; 
 No armour of knight, though ever so wight, 
 Can bear its deadly dint. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border : 
 
 Leyden —The Count of Keeldar. 
 
 A yirdfast or insulated stone, enclosed 
 
 in a bed of earth, is supposed to possess 
 
 peculiar properties. Its blow is reckoned 
 
 uncommonly severe.— Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Yirr, the growl of a dog, English 
 gxirr. Gurl, growl ; gem, to 
 grin or snarl with ill-nature or 
 anger. 
 
 Yoak, to look, to look at ; pos- 
 sibly from the German aug, the 
 Flemish oog^ the Latin ocidus, 
 the eye ; the English ogle, to 
 look at. 
 
 Voak your orlitch [horloge]. Look at 
 your watch [or clock]. — Jamieson. 
 
 Yon. The use of yon and tlion, in 
 the sense of that, is much more 
 common in Scotland than in 
 England ; as in the phrase, 
 "Do ye ken yon man?" do 
 you know that man. It is also 
 used for yonder ; as, yon hill, 
 for yonder hill. It is sometimes 
 pronounced and written thon ; 
 as in the following anecdote of 
 a wilful child, narrated by Dean 
 
 When he found every one getting soup 
 and himself omitted, he demanded soup, 
 and said, " If I dinna get it, I'll tell thon." 
 Soup was given him. At last, when it 
 came to wine, his mother stood firm and 
 positively refused. He then became more 
 vociferous than ever about telling thon; 
 and as he was again refused, he again de- 
 clared, " Now, I'll tell tJion," and roared 
 out, "Ma new breeks were made out o' 
 the auld curtains ! " 
 
 Yorlin, a small bird, more com- 
 monly known in England as the 
 "yeUow hammer." Scottishand 
 English boys have a traditional 
 prejudice against this bird, for 
 some imaginary reason, or no 
 reason at all. It sometimes 
 reads in the old rhyme : — 
 
 Yellow, y&Wow yorling. 
 You are the devil's darling. 
 
 Yorne, prepared, made ready ; 
 part participle of yare ready, 
 or to make ready. 
 
Youk — Yowff. 
 
 293 
 
 To Norroway, to Norroway, 
 
 To Norroway o'er the faern, 
 The king's daughter o' Norroway, 
 
 'Tis we maun bring her hame ; 
 Ye'U eat and drink, my merry men a'. 
 
 An' see ye be weel yome, 
 For blaw it weet, or blaw it sleet, 
 
 Our gude ship sails the morn. 
 
 Mr. Robert Chambers, in his 
 Collection of Scots Ballads, 
 1829, prints thorne instead of 
 yorne, without note or comment, 
 or apparent knowledge of the 
 unmeaning word. 
 
 Youk or yeuk, to itch ; yowJcy, 
 itchy. From the Teutonic 
 jucken, pronounced yucken. 
 
 Your neck's youkin for a St. Johnstone 
 ribbon. — Allan Ramsay's Scots Pro- 
 verbs. 
 
 (A taunt, implying that a man's 
 career and character is such as 
 to merit hanging, and that he 
 is nearly ready for it. St. 
 Johnstone, now Perth, was the 
 assize city. A ribbon signified 
 the rope.) 
 
 How daddie Burke the plea was cookin', 
 If Warren Hastings' neck y/zs yeukin. 
 — Burns : To a Gentleman -who Pro- 
 mised him a Newspaper. 
 
 Thy auld darned 6[hovf yeuks with joy. 
 — Burns : To Colonel de Peyster. 
 
 A parishioner in an Ayrshire village, 
 meeting the minister, who had just returned 
 after long absence on account of ill health, 
 congratulated him on his convalescence, 
 and added, anticipatory of the pleasure he 
 would have in hearing him preach again — 
 " Eh, sir I I'm unco yuckie to hear a blaud 
 o' your gab."— Dean Ramsay. 
 
 YouUie, a name formerly given to 
 the police in Edinburgh by idle 
 boys or bad characters. " A 
 
 low term," says Jamieson, "pro- 
 bably formed from the yowling 
 or calling out." Was it not 
 rather formed from the Gaelic 
 uallach, proud, haughty, arro- 
 gant, and given to the poUce 
 derisively by the blackguards 
 of the streets when, as they 
 thought, they were interfered 
 with unnecessarily, or ordered 
 to move on ? Or it may be from 
 yoly, the French joli, pretty or 
 handsome, used contemptuous- 
 ly, as in the phrase, "my fine 
 fellow." 
 
 Yowe, a ewe, a female sheep, a 
 lamb ; yowie, a eye lamb. 
 
 Ca' the yowes to the knowes [hills], 
 
 Ca' them where the heather grows, 
 
 Ca' them where the burnie rowes. 
 
 My bonnie dearie. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 An' neist my yowie, silly thing, 
 Gude keep her frae a tether string. 
 — Burns: Poor Mailie. 
 
 Yowf, to strike hard and sud- 
 denly, as the ball is struck at 
 the favourite Scottish game of 
 golf. The common pronuncia- 
 tion of golf is gowf, and yowf is 
 probably, as Jamieson alleges, a 
 corruption of that word. 
 
 But had we met wi' Cumberland 
 On Athol's braes or yonder strand. 
 The blood o' a' his savage band 
 
 Had dyed the German Sea, man. 
 An' cousin Geordie up the gate 
 We wad \i2i.e yowf d ixzie Charlie's seat, 
 And sent him hame to bide in state, 
 
 In's native Germanie, man. 
 ^Jacobite Minstrelsy : Bauldie Trovers' 
 Lament for Culloden. 
 
 Yowff, to bark in a suppressed or 
 feeble manner; said of a dog 
 
294 
 
 Yowl — Yum. 
 
 who is not very earnest in his 
 displeasure. 
 
 Ye puir creature you ! what needs ye 
 yow^when the big dog barks ? — Laird of 
 Logan. 
 
 Yowl, to howl, or whine as a dog ; 
 sometimes written gowl ; from 
 the Gaelic guil, or gul^ to la- 
 ment. 
 
 And darkness covered a' the ha'. 
 Where they sat at their meat, 
 
 The gray ^o%% yowling \&{x. their food, 
 And crept to Henrie's feet. 
 — Border Minstrelsy : King Henry. 
 
 Yule. Yvle was a Druidical fes- 
 tival in honour of the sun, cele- 
 brated at the winter solstice, in 
 ages long anterior to the Chris- 
 tian era. 
 
 Yide, about the etymology of 
 which there has been much con- 
 troversy, was probably named in 
 honour of the sun — the source 
 of all heat and life upon this 
 globe ; from uile, all, the whole, 
 whence, by extension of mean- 
 ing, the whole year, ending at 
 what we now call Christmas, 
 and which in early times signi- 
 fied completion, the full turn 
 of the wheel of the year. The 
 Gaelic cuidhil, a wheel, has also 
 
 been suggested as the true root 
 of the word ; while iid, guidance, 
 knowledge, has found favour 
 with other etymologists, because 
 on that day the assembled 
 Druids, in their groves or in 
 their stone circles, laid down 
 rules for the guidance of the 
 people during the coming year. 
 lul oidche, or the guide of night, 
 was a name applied by Ossian 
 to the Polar star. The French 
 noel, and old English nowdl, 
 names for Christmas or Tide, 
 are from the Gaelic Tiaomh, 
 holy, and Id, a day. Jamieson, 
 in citing the northern appella- 
 tion for Odin as iul-fader, is in 
 error in translating it as the 
 father of Yule, or Christmas, in- 
 stead of "All-Father," or father 
 of all, which was an epithet 
 applied to the sun as the Father 
 of Light and Life. 
 
 Langer lasts year than yule. — Allan 
 Ramsay's Scots Prwerbs. 
 
 Duncan Gray cam' here to woo 
 On blythe j/k/i? night when we were fu'. 
 — Burns : Duncan Gray. 
 
 Yurn, coagulate, churn, curdle. 
 
 And sjme he set the milk ower het, 
 And sorrow a spark of it wad yume. 
 — The Wife of Auchtermuchty. 
 
LOST SCOTTISH AND ENGLISH 
 PRETERITES. 
 
 A LIVING language is like a living man. It has its tender 
 infancy ; its passionate youth ; its careful maturity ; its gra- 
 dual, though it may be imperceptible, decay ; and, finally, its 
 death. After death comes apotheosis, if it has been worthy 
 of such honour — or burial in the books, which, like the re- 
 mains or memorials of ancient heroes, become the sacred 
 treasures of newer ages. All languages pass through these 
 epochs in their career. Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin are fami- 
 liar examples of the death and sanctity of great and mighty 
 tongues, that were once living powers to sway the passions 
 and guide the reason of men. In their ashes even yet live 
 the wonted fires that scholars love to rekindle. The languages 
 of modem Europe that have sprung directly from the Latin 
 may all be said to have passed their infancy and youth, and 
 to have reached maturity, if not old age. The Celtic or Keltic 
 languages — all sprung from an ancient Oriental root, and 
 which include Gaelic, often called Erse or Irish, Manx, Welsh, 
 and Breton — appear to be in the last stage of vitality, destined 
 to disappear, at no very remote period, into the books, which 
 will preserve their memory. Were it not for Victor Hugo, 
 and some recent borrowings from the English, and the coin- 
 age of Ergot or Slang, it might be said that French had 
 ceased to expand, and had become stereotyped into a form no 
 
296 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 longer to be modified. Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian hold 
 their own ; and that is all that can be said of them. German, 
 and the languages sprung from the same root and stem, con- 
 tain within themselves such immense resources, and are so 
 continually evolving out of their rich internal resources such 
 new compounds, if not such new words, as to free them from 
 that reproach of stagnation which may not unjustly be applied 
 to the other great tongues which we have enumerated. But 
 English — which, taken all in all, may be considered by far 
 the richest, though not the most beautiful or the most son- 
 orous, of all the languages spoken in our day — is yet in its 
 vigorous prime, and, though it may be accused of vulgar cor- 
 ruptions and perversions, cannot be accused of exhibiting any 
 symptoms of decay. It is doubtful whether it has yet reached 
 the full maturity of its growth, or whether the mighty nations 
 now existent in America, or the as mighty nations which are 
 destined yet to arise in Australia and New Zealand, will not, 
 as time rolls on, and new wants are created, new circumstances 
 encountered, and new ideas evolved out of the progress of 
 science and civilisation, add many thousands of new words to 
 our already copious vocabulary. Other languages are dainty 
 in the materials of their increment ; but the English is, like 
 man himself, omnivorous. Nothing comes much amiss to its 
 hungry palate. All the languages of the earth administer to 
 its wants. It borrows, it steals, it assimilates what words it 
 pleases from all the points of the compass, and asks no ques- 
 tions of them, but that they shall express thoughts and describe 
 circumstances more tersely and more accurately than any of 
 the old words besides which they are invited to take their 
 places. The beautiful dialect of its Scottish brother has given 
 it strong and wholesome food, in the shape of many poetical 
 words, which it is not likely to part with. But if the English 
 is thus perpetually growing and gaining, it is at the same time 
 perpetually losing. Were it not for the noble translation of 
 
Lost Preterites. 297 
 
 the Bible, and for Chaucer, Gower, and the poets of the Eliza- 
 bethan age, it would have lost still more than it has of its 
 early treasures, and would have been Latinised to an extent 
 that would have impaired and emasculated it, by depriving it 
 of that sturdy vernacular which is the richest element in its 
 blood, and best serves to build up its bone and muscle. If 
 few languages now spoken in the world have gained so much 
 as the English from the progress of civilisation, it must be 
 admitted, at the same time, that few have lost so much, and 
 lost it without necessity. It has been said that a good car- 
 penter is known as much by the shape as by the quantity of 
 his chips ; and the chips that the English tongue has thrown 
 off since the days of "Piers Ploughman" to our own, betoken, 
 both by quality and by quantity, what a plethora of wealth it 
 possesses, and what a very cunning carpenter Time has proved 
 in working with such abundant materials. 
 
 It is one of the current assertions which, once started on 
 high authority, are very rarely questioned, that the writings 
 of Chaucer are a "well of pure English undefiled." Chaucer, 
 though so ancient in our eyes, was a neologist in his own day, 
 and strove rather to increase the wealth of the written English, 
 of which he was so great a master, by the introduction of 
 words from the Norman-French, lit;tle understood by the bulk 
 of the people, though familiar enough to the aristocracy, for 
 whom he mainly wrote, than to fix in his pages for ever the 
 strong simple words of his native Saxon. The stream of Eng- 
 lish in his writings runs pure and cool ; the stream of Norman - 
 French runs pure and bright also ; but the two currents that 
 he introduced into his song never thoroughly intermingled in 
 the language, and at least nine-tenths of the elegant Gallicisms 
 which he employed found no favour with successive writers ; 
 and few of them have remained, except in the earlier poems 
 of Milton. If we really wish to discover the true well of 
 English undefiled, where the stream runs clear and unmixed, we 
 
298 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 must look to the Scottish author of ** The King's Quair " and 
 to the author of "Piers Ploughman," claimed by Buchanan, 
 the tutor of King James the Sixth of Scotland and the first 
 of England, to have been a Scotsman, rather than to Chaucer. 
 "We shall there find a large vocabulary of strong words, such 
 as are plain to all men's comprehension at the present day, 
 in the Bible as well as in the common speech of the peasantry ; 
 and, above all, in that ancient form of the English language 
 which is known as the Scottish dialect, and which, in reality, 
 is the oldest English now spoken. 
 
 Since the days of " Piers Ploughman," a work invaluable 
 to every English and Scottish philologist, the spoken language 
 of the peasantry has undergone but few changes as regards 
 words, but very many changes as regards terminations and 
 inflections. On the other hand, the language of literature 
 and polite society has undergone changes so vast that unedu- 
 cated people are scarcely able to understand the phraseology 
 that occurs in the masterpieces of our great authors, or the 
 Sunday sermons of their pastors, delivered, as the saying is, 
 " above their heads," in words that are rarely or never em- 
 ployed in their everyday hearing. Among this class survive 
 large numbers of verbs as well as of inflections that ought 
 never to have been allowed to drop out of literature, and 
 which it only needs the efforts of a few great writers and 
 orators to restore to their original favour. 
 
 Among the losses which the modern English and Scottish 
 languages have undergone are, first, the loss of the plurals in n 
 and in en, and the substitution of the plural in s; secondly, the 
 present particle in and, for which we have substituted the nasal 
 and disagreeable ing ; thirdly, the loss of the French negative 
 ne, as in nill, for * I will not ;' nould, for * I would not ;' n^am, 
 for * I am not ; ' and of which the sole trace now remaining is 
 * willy-nilly ; ' and, fourthly, the substituting of the preterite 
 in d, as in loved and admire<i, for the older and much stronger 
 
Lost Preterites. 299 
 
 preterite formed by a change in the vowel sound of the 
 infinitive and the present, as in run, ran ; bite, bit ; speak, 
 spoke ; take, took ; and many others that still survive. And 
 not only has the language lost the strong preterite in a great 
 variety of instances where it would have been infinitely better 
 to have retained it, but it has lost many hundred preterites 
 altogether, as well as many whole verbs, which the illiterate 
 sometimes use, but which literature for a hundred and fifty 
 years has either ignored or despised. Of all the nouns that 
 formerly formed their plural in n, as the German or Saxon 
 nouns still for the most part do, very few survive — some in 
 the Bible, some in poetical composition, some in the common 
 conversation of the peasantry, and some, but very few, in 
 polite literature. Among them may be mentioned * oxen,' for 
 oxes; *kine,' for cows; ' shoon,' for shoes ; ' hosen,' for stock- 
 ings j ' een,' for eyes ; * housen,' for houses ; and the words, as 
 common to the vernacular as to literature, 'men,' 'women,' 
 ' brethren,' and ' children.' In America, the word ' sistern ' 
 as a companion to brethren, survives in the conventicle and 
 the meeting 'house. 'Lamben' and 'thumben,' for 'lambs' 
 and 'thumbs,' were comparatively euphemistic words; but 
 thumbs and lambs, and every noun which ends with a con- 
 sonant in the singular, are syllables which set music, and 
 sometimes pronunciation, at defiance. What renders the 
 matter worse is, that the s in the French plural, from which 
 this perversion of the English language was adopted, is not 
 sounded, and that the plural is really marked by the change 
 of the definite article, as le champ, les champs. Thus in bor- 
 rowing an unpronounced consonant from the French, in order 
 to pronounce it the English have adulterated their language 
 with a multitude of sibilations alien to its spirit and original 
 structure. The substitution of s for eth as the terminal of 
 the present person singular of every verb in the language is 
 an aggravation of the evil. If this change had been repudiated 
 
300 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 by our forefathers, a grace much needed would have been 
 retained in the language. 
 
 Gradually, too, the English language has lost the large num- 
 ber of diminutives which it formerly possessed, and which are 
 still common in the Scottish language and its dialects. The 
 English diminutives in ordinary use in the nursery are many, 
 but are chiefly employed in the pet names of children, as 
 
 * Willie,' for little William ; * Annie,' for little Ann ; and so 
 forth. The diminutives belonging to literature are few, and if 
 we write * darling,' for little dear ; ' lordling,' for a small lord ; 
 ' mannikin,' for a very small man ; and such words as ' gos- 
 ling,' * duckling,' * kitten,' we have pretty nearly exhausted 
 the list. But formerly almost every monosyllabic noun had 
 its lawful diminutive, as it has to this day in the Scottish 
 dialect, where such words as ' housie,' * wifie,' ' birdie,' ' doggie,' 
 ' bairnie,' * mannie,' * bookie,' * lassie,' * lammie,' and hundreds 
 of others, are constantly employed. Every Scotsman under- 
 stands the phrase *'a bonnie ivee lassiekie,^^ in which there are 
 no less than three diminutives piled one upon the other, to 
 increase the tenderness of an expression which ceased to be 
 English four hundred years ago. 
 
 Among other losses of the English from which the Scottish 
 language has not suffered to the same extent are the plural in 
 eM of the present tenses of all the verbs. We love?^ and we 
 smile/i would serve many rhymical needs, and administer to 
 many poetic elegancies that the modem forms in English do 
 not supply. 
 
 "The persons plural," observes Ben Jonson, a Scotsman, in 
 his " English Grammar " — a work by no means so well known 
 as his poetry — " keep the termination of the first person sin- 
 gular. In former times, till about the reign of King Henry 
 VIII., they were wont to be formed by adding en; thus, 
 
 * loven,' 'sayen,' 'complainen.' But now (whatsoever is the 
 cause) it hath grown quite out of use. Albeit (to tell you my 
 
Lost Preterites. 301 
 
 opinion) I am persuaded that the lack thereof, well considered, 
 will be found a great blemish to our tongue." 
 
 But of all the losses which the language has sustained, not 
 alone for poetry, but for oratory, that of many useful verbs, 
 some of which are still existing in Scottish parlance, and 
 of the ancient preterites and past participles of many old verbs 
 of which the infinitives and present tenses still hold their 
 places, is the most to be deplored. This loss began early ; 
 and that the process is still in operation in the present day, 
 is manifest from the fact that many preterites written in 
 the best books and spoken in the best society forty years ago, 
 are dropping out of use before our eyes. We constantly find 
 hid for hade — * he hids me now ; ' ' he hid me yesterday ; ' dare 
 for durst — ' I told him I dare not do it ; ' need for needed — * it 
 was clear to me a year ago that he need not perform his pro- 
 mise ; eat for ate or ett — *' he eat his dinner; ' het for hetted — 
 ' he het me a thousand to one.' The verbs to let, to cast, and 
 to puty seem to have enjoyed no preterite during the last two 
 hundred years in England, though in Scottish literature, both 
 of the past and the present, their preterites are as common 
 as their infinitives and present tenses. Must, in^ English, is 
 equally devoid of the infinitive, the preterite, and the future ; 
 while can has a preterite, but neither infinitive nor future. 
 For what reasons these and similar losses have occurred in 
 English, it might be interesting to inquire, though it might 
 possibly lead us into metaphysical mazes were we to ask why 
 an Englishman who may say * I can ' and * I could,' must not 
 say * I will can,^ but must resort to the periphrase of * I will 
 be able,' to express power in futurity ; or why the sense of 
 present duty and obligation implied in the words * I must, ' 
 cannot be expressed by the same verb if the duty be bygone or 
 future, as * I musted^ or * I will must^ but have to be translated, 
 as it were, into * I was obliged,' or * I will be obliged,' to do 
 such and such a thing hereafter. These, however, are losses, 
 
302 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 whatever may be their occult causes, which can never again be 
 supplied, and which at our time of day it is useless to lament. 
 The loss which most immediately aifects the poetical power 
 of modern English is that of the many preterites and past 
 participles of ancient verbs that are still in use, and of many 
 good verbs in all their tenses which without reason have been 
 left for vernacular use to Scotland, and have not been admitted 
 to the honours of literature, except in the poems of Robert 
 Burns and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. These preterites 
 ought not to be lost — they are not dead but sleeping — and 
 only need the fostering care of two or three writers and 
 speakers of genius and influence to be revived. They formed 
 the bone and pith of the language of our forefathers, and the 
 beauty and strength of the Bible in many of its noblest 
 passages, and particularly commend themselves to us in 
 Shakspeare, and other Scottish writers. 
 
 Axe, to inquire. This was the original and is the legitimate 
 form of the verb now written and pronounced ask, and it is 
 not only to be heard in colloquial use all over the British Isles, 
 but to be found in our earliest writers, with the inflexions 
 
 axed and axen. 
 
 Envy with heavy harte 
 Axed after Thrifte. 
 
 — Vision of Piers Ploughman. 
 If he axe a fish. 
 
 — Wickliffe's Translation of the Bible. 
 Axe not why. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Miller's Tale. 
 
 For the purposes of lyrical poetry and musical composition, 
 the past participle of this verb, if reintroduced into literature, 
 would be a vast improvement upon the harsh sound asked, 
 which no vocalist can pronounce without a painful gasp. 
 
 Bake, boke, bulk, beuk, boken, to bake. Both the pre- 
 terite and the past participle of this verb are lost to litera- 
 
Lost Preterites. 303 
 
 ture, though they survive in the rural dialects of Scotland 
 and the north of England. The language possesses but few 
 trochaic rhymes, and in this respect boken might do good 
 service to many a poet at his wits' end for a rhyme to 
 * broken ' and * token.' 
 
 They never beuk a good cake, but 
 
 May bake a bad one. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Beat, beaten. *' The preterite of this verb," says Walker, 
 in his *' Pronouncing Dictionary," " is uniformly pronounced 
 by the English like the present tense." " I think," says Dr. 
 Johnson to Home Tooke, in one of the imaginary conversations 
 of Savage Landor, " that I have somewhere seen the preterite 
 bate.'' "I am afraid," replied Tooke, "of reminding you 
 where you probably met with the word. The Irishman in 
 Fielding's * Tom Jones' says * he bate me.' " Johnson replied, 
 **that he would not hesitate to employ the word in grave 
 composition ; " and Tooke acquiesced in the decision, justify- 
 ing it by a statement of the fact, which, however, he did not 
 prove, "that authors much richer both in thought and ex- 
 pression than any now living or recently deceased have done 
 so." Children, who often make preterites of their own, in 
 this respect acting unconsciously upon the analogies of the 
 language, often say bett for did beat. And the children, it would 
 appear, are correct, if the following from " Piers Ploughman " 
 be considered good English : — 
 
 He laid on me with rage 
 
 And hitte me under the ear ; 
 
 He buffeted me so about the mouthe 
 
 That out my teeth he bette. 
 
 In Ross's " Helenore " — a perfect storehouse of Scottish words 
 current in Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, the Mearns, and 
 the north-east of Scotland — we find, — 
 
 Baith their hearts bett wi' the common stound, 
 And had nae pain, but pleasure in the wound. 
 
304 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 This preterite might well be revived ; it is sadly wanted, as 
 witness the following passage from Mr. Disraeli's ''Vivian 
 Grey " : " Never was she so animated ; never had she boasted 
 that her pulse heat more melodious music, or her lively blood 
 danced a more healthful measure." If * danced ' (a preterite), 
 why not hett, as " Piers Ploughman " has it ? The following 
 recent example of the present for the past participle beaten, 
 is wholly unjustifiable : — 
 
 They were stoned, and the horse in their vehicle heat severely. — 
 Temple Bar Magazine, March 1869. 
 
 Betide, betid, from tide, to happen. The preterite is lost. 
 It occurs both in " Piers Ploughman " and in Chaucer : 
 
 Thee should never have tidde so fair a grace. 
 
 — Canterbury Tales. 
 
 Bid, and its derivative forbid. The ancient preterite and 
 past participle of this verb were hade and hidden, forbade 
 and forbidden. Both of these inflections are threatened with 
 extinction ; — for what offence it is impossible to surmise. 
 Shakspeare says — 
 
 The very moment that he hade me do it. 
 
 That our modern writers do not follow the example of Shak- 
 speare, and conform to the rules of good English, may appear 
 from the following examples : — 
 
 The competition is so sharp and general that the leader of to-day can 
 never be sure that he will not be outbid to-morrow. — Quarterly Review, 
 April 1868. 
 
 Mr. Charles Dickens has finally hid farewell to Philadelphia. — Times, 
 March 4, 1868. 
 
 Uncertain even at that epoch (1864) of Austria's fidelity, Prussia bid 
 high for German leadership. — Times, April 9, 1868. 
 
 He called his servants and bid them procure firearms. — Times, letter 
 from Dublin, March 2, 1868. 
 
 James the First, besides writing a book against tobacco, forbid its use 
 by severe penalties. — Tobacco, by D. King, M.D. 
 
Lost Preterites. 305 
 
 Blend, blent, to mingle. The preterite of this verb pro- 
 perly preserved by the poets, but seems to have entirely given 
 way in prose and in ordinary speech to 'blended.' Any 
 reason for the change it is impossible to discover ; for if it be 
 correct to say * blended,' it would be equally correct to say 
 
 * spended,' * lended,' or ' rended. ' This form of the preterite in 
 the verb * to mend ' has properly been superseded by * mended,' 
 in order to avoid the confusion that would be caused in the 
 use of the verb * to mean,' which has its proper preterite in 
 
 * meant. ' Byron uses blent with fine effect in his noble lines 
 on *' The Battle of Waterloo : "— 
 
 Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial hUnt. 
 
 Blin, to cease, to stop ; hlan, ceased, stopped. 
 
 And so he did or that they went at win. 
 Till he had turned him he could not hlin. 
 
 — Chaucee : The Chanones' YemarCs Tale. 
 
 Her tears did never hlin. 
 
 — Nares : Romeus and Jvlietta. 
 
 One while then the page he went, 
 
 Another while he ranne. 
 Till he'd o'ertaken King Estmere, 
 
 I wis he never hlanne. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : King Estmere. 
 
 Bren or brend, brent or brand, to bum. This verb is lost, 
 though it might well have been retained in the language. 
 " A brand plucked from the burning," and bran new, or brant 
 new, new as a coin newly issued from the fires of the mint, are 
 almost its sole remnants : — 
 
 Bring in better wood, 
 And blow it till it hrend. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Brest, brast, to burst. 
 
 Have thou my truth, till that mine herte hrest. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Franklein's Tale. 
 U 
 
3o6 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 The mayor smote Cloudeslee with his bill, 
 His buckler he hrast in two. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border : Adam Bell, Clym 
 of the (Rough, and William of Cloudeslee. 
 
 Busk, busked, to adorn, to dress, to make ready ; from the 
 Gaelic husg, to dress ; husgadh, a head-dress, an ornament. 
 
 Bush ye, my merry men all. 
 And John shall go with me. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : Rohin Hood and 'Guy 
 of Gisborne. 
 
 The king's bowmen busked them blythe. 
 
 — Adavi Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of 
 Cloudeslee. 
 
 The noble baron whet his courage hot, 
 And husked him boldly to the dreadful fight, 
 
 — Fairfax : Translation of Tasso. 
 
 Bush ye, bush ye, my bonnie, bonnie bride. 
 
 Hamilton : Braes o' Yarrow. 
 
 A bonnie bride is soon busJcit. — Allan Kamsay's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Cast, to throw. This verb in English has lost its preterite 
 coast, and its past participle, casten. Both survive in Scotland 
 and the North of England. 
 
 They coost kevils them amang 
 Wha should to the greenwood gang. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 Burns employs the preterite in " The Death and Dying Words 
 of Poor MaiUe " :— 
 
 As Mailie and her lamb thegither. 
 Were ae day nibbling on the tether. 
 Upon her cloot she coost a hitch. 
 
 And again in his immortal song of " Duncan Gray " : — 
 
 Maggie coost her head fu' high. 
 Looked asklent and unco skeigh, 
 Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh. 
 
Lost Preterites. 307 
 
 In the Scottish dialect * to cast out ' means * to fall out/ 
 * to disagree ; ' and the phrase *' they have casten out " is of 
 constant occurrence. 
 
 Chirm, charm, churm, to sound like the murmur or sound 
 of a multiplicity of birds. Mr. Halliwell, in his "Archaic 
 Dictionary," defines the word to mean the melancholy under- 
 tone of a bird previous to a storm. Nares, in his Glossary, 
 has charref to make a confused noise, a word current in some 
 parts of England. The word is common in Scotland, though 
 almost obsolete in the South. 
 
 Small birds with chirming and with cheeping changed their song. 
 
 — Gawin Douglas's Translation of the jEneid. 
 
 At last the kindly sky began to clear, 
 The birds to chirm, and daylight to appear, 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Milton makes Eve speak of the ^^ charm of earliest birds," a 
 phrase which has been misinterpreted to mean the charming 
 (in the modern sense) song of the birds, while it really means 
 chirm (in the old English and modern Scottish sense), the con- 
 fused and intermingled song of all the morning birds. 
 
 Clead or clede, clad, to clothe. The preterite and past 
 participle remain in poetical use as well as in dignified prose, 
 while the infinitive and the present and future tenses have 
 been superseded by the much harsher word * clothe.' 
 
 Clem, clam, clammed, to perish of hunger, to starve. ' To 
 starve' originally meant *to die,' as we still say of a person 
 that he is " starving with cold." The word has lately come 
 to signify " to die for want of food," and has produced a very 
 ugly and incorrect hybrid in the word * starvation,' said to 
 have been first used by Mr. Dundas, the first Lord Melville, 
 who, as Horace Walpole informs us, received afterwards the 
 nickname of '' Starvation Dundas." The word at the time was 
 
308 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 supposed to be an Americanism. It has unfortunately fixed 
 itself into our literature ; but the original and much better 
 word clem and its derivatives still hold their ground in Lanca- 
 shire and the North of England. The word clem does not occur 
 in Shakspeare, but both Ben Jonson and Massinger use it. 
 
 { Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms or clem. 
 — Ben Jonson : Evei'y Man out of his Humour. 
 
 I canna eat stones and turfs. What I will he dem me and my fol- 
 lowers ? Ask him, will he clem me 1 — Be.^ Jonson : The Poetaster. 
 
 My entrails were dammed with a perpetual fast. — Massinger : The 
 Roman Actor. 
 
 "Let us all clem" said a speaker at a public meeting at 
 Manchester, during the American civil war, " rather than help 
 the cause of slavery." "I would rather clem than go to the 
 workhouse," is still a common and honourable expression in 
 Lancashire. 
 
 Clepe, clept, yclept, to call, to name. The past participle 
 of this verb remains for the use of bad writers, and sometimes 
 of good writers who compose mock heroics. 
 
 The compaignie of comfort, 
 Men deped it some tyme. 
 
 — Pien Ploughman. 
 Peradventure in thilk large book 
 Which that men depe the heaven ywritten was 
 With stars. 
 
 —Chaucer : The Man of Lawes' Tale. 
 
 They depe us drunkards. 
 
 — Shakspeare: Hamlet. 
 
 As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 
 Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are deped 
 All by the name of dogs. 
 
 —Shakspeare: Macbeth. 
 
 Mr. Halliwell, in his " Archaic Dictionary," says that the 
 word is still used by boys at play in the eastern counties, who 
 
Lost Preterites. 309 
 
 clepe or call the sides at a game. Many newspaper writers at 
 the present day, at a loss for a word for * calling' or * naming' an 
 inanimate object, talk of the * christening ' of a church, a street, 
 a battle, or any inanimate object. An example occurs in an 
 editorial article of the Times, on the removing of the grating 
 from the ladies' gallery in the House of Commons — " * the 
 grate question,' as Mr. Lowe christened it." In this and other 
 instances the old word clepe, in default of * call ' or * name,' 
 would be an improvement, if it were possible to revive it. 
 
 Clip, clap, clippe, to embrace, to fondle. Before the Eng- 
 lish language borrowed from the French the word ' embrace,' 
 from emhrassevy to clasp in the arms, this verb was in constant 
 use. It occurs in " Piers Ploughman," and in Chaucer, and 
 had not fallen out of fashion or favour in the days of Shak- 
 speare : — 
 
 Clippe we in covenant, and each of us clippe other. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 He kisseth her and clippeth her full oft. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Merchant's Tale. 
 Worse than Tantalus is her annoy. 
 To clip Elysium and yet lack her joy. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Venus and Adonis. 
 
 Then embraces his son, and then again he worries his daughter with 
 clipping her. — Shakspeare : Winter's Tale. 
 
 Oh let me dip ye in arms as round as when I woo'd ! 
 
 — Shakspeare: Coriolanus. 
 The lusty vine, not jealous of the ivy, 
 Because she clips the elm. 
 
 —Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The preterite, once common, survives to this day in the 
 form of an infinitive and of a noun, but in both too offensive 
 to modesty to be further mentioned. 
 
 Clout, clouted, to mend, to put a patch upon, from the 
 Gaelic clud. The verb survives in Scotland, but has perished 
 
310 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 out of modern English literature, although Shakspeare used 
 it:— 
 
 I thought he slept, and put 
 
 My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness 
 
 Answered my steps too loud. 
 
 — Cymheline. 
 
 Many sentences of one meaning clouted up together. — Roger Ascham. 
 
 Clout the auld, the new are dear, My joe Janet. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Conne or can, to be able. Neither the infinitive nor the 
 past participle of this verb seems to have been used since the 
 days of Chaucer, who says, " I shall not conne answer," *.e., I 
 shall not be able to answer ; and in the " Romance of the 
 Rose " has " Thou shalt never conne knowen." 
 
 Crine, crone, crunken, to shrivel from heat, frost, or sickness. 
 This verb, with all its declensions, has perished, and only 
 survives in its diminutive, to crinkle. In this last form it is 
 rather of the middle ages than of our own. See the ballad 
 of the " Boy and the Mantle " in Percy's '* Reliques." 
 
 Cut. This verb never appears to have had a preterite, 
 though a past participle ykitt or ykutt is cited in Herbert 
 Coleridge's vocabulary of the " Oldest Words in the English 
 Language." Whence or when the word was introduced into 
 English no lexicographer has ever yet been able to determine. 
 It is neither derived from the Teutonic, the French, the 
 Greek, nor the Latin, and is therefore, by the exhaustive pro- 
 cess, supposed by the most recent compilers of dictionaries to 
 have been borrowed from the Gaelic cut, to make short, and 
 such phrases as cuttie-^i^e, cuttie-ssLrk, and cuttie-stooly all 
 implying shortness and curtailment. A near approach to 
 it occurs in the French couteau, a knife or instrument to cut 
 with ; in the Italian coltello ; and in the English and Scottish 
 coulter J the ploughshare, or knife of the plough. It may be 
 
Lost Preterites. 3 1 1 
 
 that the original word was kit, whence ykitt, cited by Mr. 
 Coleridge, and that it formed its preterite by cat and cut. 
 Some little support for this idea may be found in the word cat 
 as applied in * ca^-o'-nine-tails,' a weapon that cuts pretty 
 severely ; and in kit-cat, as applied to portraits that are not 
 exactly full-length, but cut to three-quarters length, as those 
 painted for the celebrated *' Kit-Kat Club." 
 
 DafF, daft, to make a fool of, to play the fool. Daffe in 
 Chaucer signifies a fool; and in the Scottish and North 
 English dialect a daft man signifies either a lunatic, or one 
 who has been befooled. Daffing signifies foolish fun or merri- 
 ment. In the scene between Leonato and Claudio in *' Much 
 Ado about Nothing," when Claudio declines to fight the old 
 man, and says, — 
 
 Away ! away ! I will not have to do with you. 
 
 Leonato replies, — 
 
 Canst thou so daff me ? Thou hast killed my child. 
 
 Both Mr. Charles Knight and Mr. Howard Staunton, follow- 
 ing in the track of other Shakspearean editors, explain daff 
 in this passage to mean * doff,' or ' put off.' The true meaning 
 is to ' befool,' as the word is used in Chaucer. When, else- 
 where, Shakspeare says of Prince Henry, — 
 
 Thou madcap Prince of Wales, that daffed the world aside, 
 
 the meaning of the word is the same. The * madcap ' did 
 not *doff' the world aside, for in this sense the expression 
 would be pleonastic, but daffed or ' fooled ' or jested it aside, 
 as a madcap would. 
 
 Dare or durst, dared. The tendency of our modem and 
 colloquial English, as well as of our current literature, is to 
 ignore the two preterites and the past participle of this word, 
 and to write and say dare where durst or dared would be more 
 
3 1 2 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 correct. There is also a tendency to omit the s in the third 
 person singular of the present tense. The following are 
 examples of each inaccuracy : — 
 
 Neither her maidens nor the priest dare speak to her for half an hour 
 \durst speak to her, &c.]. — Hereward the Wake, by the Rev. Charles 
 
 KiNGSLEY. 
 
 The Government dare [durst] not consent to the meeting being held. 
 . . . No one can feel anything but contempt for a Government which 
 meanly attempts to gain a cheap reputation for firmness by f ulminations 
 which it dare [dares] not carry out ; and by prohibiting meetings which it 
 dare [dares] not prevent. — London morning paper on the Hyde Park riots. 
 
 There is no reason why this verb should be deprived of its 
 declensions, and no careful writer ought to fall into the errors 
 just cited. 
 
 Deem, to judge. This word, which now signifies * to think * 
 rather than *to judge,' and which has lost its old preterite 
 doomy formerly implied the delivery of a doom, sentence, or 
 judgment. Chaucer calls a judge a doomsman ; and in the 
 Isle of IMan the judge is still called the dempster or deemster. 
 The day of Doom is the day of Judgment. Chaucer does not 
 use the old preterite doom, which seems to have perished 
 before his time; but in the "Franklein's Prologue" uses the 
 substantive doom in the sense of an opinion or a private 
 judgment : — 
 
 As to my doom, there is more that is here 
 
 Of eloquence that shall be thy peer, 
 
 If that thou live. 
 
 Out of the lost preterite the English writers of three centuries 
 ago formed a new verb, to doom, with a regular preterite, 
 doomed — a word which does not merely signify to pass judg- 
 ment upon, but to pass a severe sentence. 
 
 Delve, delve, dolven, to dig, to make a trench or ditch, to 
 bury in the earth. This verb is still retained in poetical 
 composition, and in the everyday speech of the people in 
 
Lost Preterites. 3 1 3 
 
 Scotland and some of the northern counties; but the old 
 preterite and past pai-ticiple are lost. They have found a 
 substitute in the regular declension delved. The old preterite 
 seems to have become obsolete at an early period, as appears 
 from the distich of John Ball the priest, the friend and 
 coadjutor of Wat Tyler in the rebellion of 138 1 : — 
 
 When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman ? 
 
 Chaucer used the participle, " I would be dolven [buried] 
 deep ; " and in the *' Romance of Merlin," a man who was to 
 be buried alive is described as to "be dolven quick." " Piers 
 Ploughman" has, "They dolven with spades and shovels to 
 drive away hunger." Keats, in more modern times, employs 
 delved : — 
 
 Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been 
 Cooled a long age in the deep delved earth I 
 
 If he had said deep dolven instead of deep delved, he would 
 have had high authority, and would have greatly improved 
 the stately march and music of his verse. 
 
 Dight, dighted, to prepare, to put in order, to deck, to attire, 
 to wipe away. This useful word of many meanings is all but 
 obsolete in English literature, but survives in Scottish. The 
 preterite has long been lost. An offshoot of this word in the 
 form of misdiglit (misprepared) occurs in Jack Miller's song, 
 quoted by Stowe in his account of Wat Tyler's rebellion ; — 
 
 If might 
 Go before right, 
 And will 
 Before skill, 
 Then is our mill misdight. 
 
 Spencer and Milton both attempted to revive dighty but with 
 only partial success : — 
 
314 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Soon after them, all dancing in a row, 
 
 The comely virgins came with garlands dight. 
 
 — The Faerie Queene. 
 
 The clouds in thousand liveries dight. 
 
 — L' Allegro. 
 
 Storied windows richly dight. 
 
 — II Penseroso. 
 
 In Scottish parlance dight does constant service. The lassie 
 dights her mou' before accepting a kiss, and dights her een after 
 she has been weeping. She dights herself in her best attire 
 before going to kirk ; and the wife dights the dinner for her 
 husband. 
 
 Dight your cheeks and banish care. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Let me rax up to dight that tear, 
 And go with me and be my dear. 
 
 — Burns : Hie Jdly Beggars. 
 
 Ding, dang, dong or dung, to strike hard, to beat down. 
 The infinitive and present tense of this verb are still collo- 
 quially current, but the preterite and past participle are 
 obsolete, or only survive in the nursery phrase, *' Ding^ 
 dong J bell." In Scotland the verb and all its inflections 
 survive. Burns, in his often-quoted line, says, " Facts are 
 chiels that winna ding." Sir Alexander Bos well has a song 
 entitled " Jenny dang the Weaver," which expression was 
 translated by an English critic into the very prosaic form 
 of "Jenny vanquished the cotton manufacturer." The past- 
 participle occurs in the familiar proverbs quoted by Allan 
 Ramsay, " It's a sair dung bairn that munna greet," and 
 " He's sairest paid that's dung wi' his ain wand." The modern 
 English preterite dinged is still occasionally heard in conver- 
 sation, though lost to literature, as in such phrases: "Horace? 
 Yes ; he was dinged into me at school ; " and colloquially, 
 " Why do you keep dinging that old story into my ears ? " 
 
Lost Preterites. 3 1 5 
 
 The word constantly occurs in serious poetry up to the time of 
 Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, and survives, and is likely long 
 to survive, in the nursery rhyme — 
 
 Ding, dong, bell, 
 Pussy's in the well. 
 
 The hellish prince, grim Pluto, with his mace, ding down my soul to 
 hell ! — The Battle of Alcazar. 
 
 Do-well shall dyngen him down, 
 And destroyen his mighte. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 She dings you in her hamely goun o' gray. 
 As far's a summer dings a winter day. 
 
 — Ross's Hdenore. 
 
 My chains then, and pains then, 
 
 Infernal be their hire, 
 Who dang us and^awgr us. 
 
 Into this ugsome mire. 
 
 — Allan Ramsay : The Vision — The Evergreen. 
 
 The beautiful poem of "The Vision," written in older 
 Scotch than that of the time of Allan Ramsay, is signed A. R. 
 Scotus, meaning, "Allan Ramsay, a Scot." It expresses in 
 covert allusion, the indignation of the Scots of Allan Ramsay's 
 day, at the Union of Scotland with England, and the means 
 by which it was accomplished. Allan Ramsay's Jacobite 
 friends were all well aware that the poem was from his pen, 
 but the government of the day, though suspecting the fact, 
 and willing to prosecute him, wisely refrained from doing so. 
 
 Dow, to be able, to thrive ; doughty was able. This verb is 
 utterly lost from English literature, but, like many others of 
 its sturdy class, exists in the speech of the English peasantry, 
 and in the speech as well as the literature of Scotland. By a 
 strange neglect, or a stranger ignorance, the makers of dic- 
 tionaries — from Blount and Philips up to Johnson, Richardson, 
 Worcester, Webster, and Stormonth — have either omitted all 
 mention of it, or erroneously considered it to be sjmonymous 
 
3 1 6 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 with, or an orthographical error for, the similar word * do,' with 
 which it has no connection. "I do as well as I daw?" — i.e., 
 *' I do as well as I can " — is a common phrase in the North : 
 and the super-eminently English but pleonastic inquiry, " How 
 do you do ? " — which means " How do you dow ? " — i.e., thrive, 
 prosper, or get on — has come to be accepted as accurate Eng- 
 lish, though wholly a mistake of the learned. Even Nares, in 
 his Glossary, has no suspicion of this word, though Halliwell, 
 more acute, gives one of its meanings, * to thrive,' * to mend 
 in health ; ' and Mr. Thomas Wright, in his *' Provincial 
 Dictionary," follows in the same track as regards its use in 
 English literature, though he does not seem to be aware of its 
 commonness in the literature of Scotland. William Hamilton, 
 the Scottish poet, writes to his friend Allan Ramsay, — 
 Lang may'st thou live and thrive and dow / 
 
 And Burns says to Gavin Hamilton, — 
 
 When I dovma yoke a naig, 
 The Lord be thankit, I can beg ! 
 
 In his " Epistle to King George III.," in his eulogy of facts, 
 Burns speaks of them as " chiels that winna ding," and adds, 
 "they downa be disputed." Boss, in his *' Helenore," has 
 *' When he dow do nae mair," — a phrase that shows the 
 essential difference between the two words. 
 
 From this obsolete verb springs the adjective douglity, 
 strong, able — a derivation which up to the present time seems 
 to have escaped the notice of all the English lexicographers. 
 
 Dread, drad, dradden, to fear greatly. The modem pre- 
 terite and past participle dreaded have entirely superseded the 
 ancient forms. 
 
 But what I drad, did me, poor wretch, betide. 
 
 — Robert Greene, 1593. 
 
 Dwine, dwined, to pine away, to fall of. This verb has 
 been superseded by its diminutive, to dwindle, which has the 
 same meaning. 
 
Lost Preterites. 3 1 7 
 
 Thus dmneth he till he be dead. 
 
 — GOWKR. 
 
 It dwined for eld. 
 
 — Chaucer. 
 Bacchus hates repining ; 
 Venus loves no dwining. 
 
 —Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Fang, fong, fung, to seize, to lay hold of. Most people 
 remember the old law phrase, ^^mfang thief and outfang 
 thief," the one signifying a thief taken within the jurisdiction 
 of a feudal lord, and the other a thief taken without his juris- 
 diction. This is the only remnant of this verb that has come 
 down to our time except the substantive fang, the large tooth 
 of a beast of prey or of a serpent ; the diminutive /angle, to 
 take hold of a new fancy or fashion ; and the common phrase 
 new-fangled. In Scotland it is sometimes said when the well 
 does not readily yield the water after repeated strokes of the 
 pump, that the pump has lost its fang o' the water. 
 
 I nold fang a farthing (I would not take a farthing). 
 
 — Vision of Piers Ploughman. 
 
 He fong his f oeman by the flank, 
 And flang him on the floor. 
 
 — Buchan's Northern BaUads. 
 
 Fare, foor, fore, fure, fared, to travel. This verb is not 
 wholly obsolete, though its preterite is lost. It has come to 
 signify to eat and drink as well as to travel, and also that 
 which is eaten or drunk. It is doubtful whether our beautiful 
 word * farewell' means "may you travel well through life," 
 or " may you be well treated by the world." A waj- faring 
 man is still a common expression. * AvUd-farrand,' travelling 
 on the old ways, old-fashioned, is intelligible to the people on 
 the north of the Tweed. The preterite occurs several times 
 in the " Vision of Piers Ploughman." 
 
 Alexander fell into a fever therewith, so that he fure wondrous ille. 
 —MS. Lincoln, quoted in Halliwell's Archaic Dictionary. 
 
3 1 8 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Her errand led her through the glen to fare. 
 
 — Ross's Hdenore. 
 As o'er the moor they lightly foor, 
 A burn was clear, a glen was green — 
 Up the banks they eased their shanks. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Forewent, preterite of to forego, to renounce. 
 
 Writers and speakers still say, " I forego the pleasure," but use a 
 roundabout form of expression rather than say, " I forewent the 
 pleasure." And why ? Forewent is as legitimate a word as forego, 
 and should not be allowed to become obsolete. — Lost Beauties of the 
 English Language. 
 
 Forswink, forswunk, to be worn out with overmuch toil. 
 
 She is my goddess plain. 
 And I her shepherd swain, 
 Albeit forswunk and f orswat I am. 
 
 — Specker : Shepherd's Calendar. 
 
 Fret, freet, freten, to devour or eat up ; from the French 
 and Dutch, freteriy the Germsin fressen, to eat. 
 
 Like as it were a moth fretting a garment. — Psalm xxxix.. Common 
 Prayer. 
 
 Adam freet of that fruit. 
 
 And forsook the love of our Lord. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 He (the dragon) has fretten of folk more than five hundred. — Morte 
 d' Arthur. 
 
 Frush, frusht, frushed, to bruise, disturb, rumple, dis- 
 arrange. From the Gaelic frois, a driving gust of rain, and 
 froiseachf to scatter, to shake off, and French froisser, to rub 
 against. This good Shakspearean word is fairly admissible 
 into modem dictionaries, in few of which, however, does it 
 find a place. 
 
 Stand ! stand, thou Greek I thou art a goodly mark 1 
 
 No ! wilt thou not ? I like thy armour well, 
 
 VYi. frush it and unlock the rivets all ! 
 
 — Sbakspeare : Troilus and Cressida. 
 
Lost Preterites. 319 
 
 Hector assailed Achilles and gave him so many strokes that he all to 
 frusht and brake his helm. — Caxton's Destruction of Troy. 
 
 High cedars SLiefrushed with tempests. — Hinde, 1606. 
 
 Southey uses the substantive : — 
 
 Horrible uproar and frusk of rocks that meet in battle. 
 
 The word well deserves favour and restoration. 
 
 Gar, gart, gard, to compel, to force, to make, to cause a 
 thing to be done. This verb in all its declensions has become 
 obsolete in English literature, where its place has been but 
 feebly supplied by 'make' and 'made.' "I'll make him do 
 it " is neither so strong nor so elegant as the ancient English 
 and modern Scotch, " I'll gar him do it." 
 
 Gar us have meat and drink, and make us chere, 
 
 — Chaucer : The Eeeve's Tale. 
 
 Gar saddle me my bonnie black, 
 Gar saddle soon, and make her ready. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 And like the mavis on the bush. 
 He gart the vallies ring. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques. 
 
 Auld Girzie Graham, having twice refused a glass of toddy, when 
 pressed a third time, replied, "Weel! weel ! since ye winna hear o' 
 a refusal, just mak it hot, an' strong, an' sweet, an' gar me tak it ! " — 
 Laird of Logan. 
 
 Get, got, gotten, to attain, to procure, to come into posses- 
 sion of. The past participle of this verb has lately become 
 obsolete, except in the talk of the uneducated and in Scottish 
 literature. It was common in the last century. 
 
 We knew we were gotten far enough out of their reach. — Defoe : 
 Robinson Crusoe. 
 
320 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Ken ye what Meg o' the mill has gotten ? 
 She's gotten a lout wi' a lump o' siller, 
 And broken the heart o' the barley miller. 
 
 — RoBEKT Burns. 
 
 There is also a marked tendency to the disuse of this inflection 
 in the verb *to forget,' and people too commonly say and 
 write *'I hdiWQ'forgotj^ instead oi forgotten. 
 
 Glide, glode, glidden, to move away easily and smoothly. 
 The ancient preterite and past participle have become obsolete, 
 and have been superseded by glided, much to the loss of versi- 
 fiers in search of good rhymes. 
 
 His good stede he all bestrode, 
 And forth upon his way he glode. 
 
 —Chaucer. 
 
 He glode forth as an adder doth. 
 
 — Idem. 
 
 Through Guy's shield it glode. 
 
 — Ouy of Warwick. 
 
 The reason of the substitution of the regular for the irregu- 
 lar preterite may be found in the desire to prevent confusion 
 with the regular preterite of the verb * to glow.' 
 
 Glint, glent, glinted, to shine, to flash, to appear suddenly. 
 In Sternberg's " Northamptonshire Glossary " the infinitive of 
 this verb as used amongst the peasantry of that part of Eng- 
 land is cited as gline. Glint would be the legitimate preterite 
 if this were correct. In Scottish poetry glint is the infinitive, 
 and glinted the preterite and past participle. In Old English 
 poetry glent is the preterite. 
 
 The sunbeams are glinting far over the sea. 
 
 — Newcastle Garland. 
 
Lost Preterites. 321 
 
 Cauld blew the bitter biting north 
 Upon thy early humble birth, 
 Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 
 Amid the storm. 
 
 — Burns : To a Mountain Daisy. 
 
 There came a hand withouten rest 
 
 Out of the water, 
 
 And brandished it. 
 Anon as a gleam away it glent. 
 
 — Morte d' Arthur. 
 
 Gnaw, gnew, gnawed, to bite at a hard substance. The 
 old preterite is lost, doubtless on account of its identity in 
 pronunciation with the more familiar word *knew,' the 
 preterite of * know,' a word of different meaning. 
 
 Till with the grips he was baith black and blue, 
 At last in twa the dowie ropes he gnew. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 Ko sustenance got. 
 But only at the cauld hill's berries gnew. 
 
 — Idem. 
 
 Go, gaed, gone, to depart. The ancient and legitimate 
 preterite of this verb has been superseded by the preterite 
 (*went') of the verb to *wend,' to turn away. It maintains 
 its ground, however, in Scotland and the northern English 
 counties. Chaucer has * gadling,' for a vagabond, a wanderer 
 who goes much about ; and the language still retains the word 
 to *gad,' to wander or stray about, making short visits. 
 
 I ga^d a waef u' gate yestreen. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Grab, grub, grabbed, to dig up, to seize. This verb, in all 
 its inflections, has been wholly relegated to the speech of the 
 vulgar, but, like many other vulgar words, has a highly 
 respectable origin. Grab, in its first sense, means to dig 
 a grave or hole ; and gruh means that which is dug up, such 
 
322 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 as roots for human subsistence, whence its modern and slang 
 signification, 'food.' 
 
 Graith, graithed, to prepare, make ready. A critic in the 
 Literary Gazette of March 30, i860, called a poet to account 
 for using such an unpermissible word as graith, of which he 
 declared his utter ignorance. He might, however, have found 
 it in Chaucer, in Worcester's Dictionary, and in Robert 
 Bums : — 
 
 Her son Galathin 
 
 She graithed in attire fine. 
 
 — Arihour and Merlin. 
 
 Unto the Jewes such a hate had he, 
 That he bade graith his chair full hastUie. 
 
 — Chaucee : The Reeve's Tale. 
 
 Go warn me Perthshire and Angus baith, 
 And graith my horse. 
 
 — Song of the Outlaw Murray. 
 
 Greet, grat, grutten, to weep. This verb, with all its 
 declensions, has lost its place in English literature, though 
 the word greet remains with a different meaning, * to salute. ' 
 Like other strong indigenous words which modem English has 
 unnecessarily discarded, it is retained in Scotland. It seems 
 to have been lost even in Chaucer's time, who uses greet 
 entirely in the modem sense of Ho salute.' "Piers Plough- 
 man " has it in the sense of * to lament ' or * weep.' 
 
 And then 'gan Gloton to greet, 
 And great dool to make. 
 
 ** It's a sad time," says an old Scottish proverb, " when hens 
 crow and bearded men greet.'' Another proverb says, "Better 
 bairns should gi'eet than bearded men." 
 
 Then ilk ain to the other made his wain, 
 
 And sighed and grat, and grat and sighed again. 
 
 — Ross's ITelenore. 
 
Lost Preterites. 323 
 
 Duncan sighed baith out and in, 
 Oral his een baith bleer't and blin*. 
 
 — Burns : Duncan Gray, 
 
 The Edinbro' wells are grutten dry. 
 
 — Burns ; Elegy on the Year 1788. 
 
 Heat, to make or grow hot ; het, made hot. 
 
 Let him cool in the skin he het in. — Allan Ramsay : Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Help, help, holpen, to aid. The preterite and past participle 
 are fast becoming obsolete. They are still retained in the 
 Flemish language. 
 
 For thou hast holpen me now. 
 
 — Halliwell: MS. Cantab, 
 
 And blind men holpen. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Building upon the foundation that went before us, and being 
 holpen by their labours. — ITie translators of the Bible to the reader : temp. 
 James I. 
 
 Hend, hent, to take, to hold, to seize, to apprehend. 
 
 Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, 
 
 And merrily hent the style-a : 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a. 
 
 It is probable that in this well-known passage from the song 
 of Autolycus in the " Winter's Tale," the preterite Iient is a 
 misprint for the infinitive hendy though it must be admitted 
 that Chaucer uses hent both in the present and the past tenses. 
 This is a very unusual defect in an English verb of that early 
 period. 
 
 All be it that it was not our intente, 
 
 He should be sauf , but that we sholde him hent. 
 
 —Chaucer : The Friar's Tale. 
 
324 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Shakspeare uses hent as a substantive, to signify a purpose, an 
 intention to hold by, in Hamlet's exclamation, when he deter- 
 mines not to kill the king at his prayers : — 
 
 No! 
 Up, sword ! and know thou a more horrid hent ! 
 When lie is drunk, asleep, or in his rage. 
 
 Hit, het, hitten, to strike, to touch violently with a blow. 
 Both preterite and past participle are obsolete. Hitten sur- 
 vives in the colloquial language of the peasantry. 
 
 Your honour's hitten the nail upon the head. 
 
 — Ross's Hdenore. 
 
 The Americans, in default of the old preterite het^ occasion- 
 ally say hot — as, " He hot me a heavy blow ; he hot out right 
 and left." 
 
 Hold, held, holden, to have, grasp, or retain in possession. 
 The past participle is obsolete, but might be advantageously 
 revived for the sake of the rhyme which it affords to * golden,' 
 * embolden,' &c. 
 
 Keek, keeked, to peep, to look in slily. 
 
 The robin came to the wren's nest, 
 And Iceelced in and Iceeked in. 
 
 —Nursery Rhymes of England. 
 
 This Nicholas sat even gape upright. 
 As he had keeked on the new moone. 
 
 —Chaucer : The Miller's Tale. 
 
 Stars, dinna keek in 
 And see me wi' Mary. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Kythe, kouth or couth, to show, appear, know, make 
 known. This word has become wholly obsolete in England, 
 
Lost Preterites, 325 
 
 but survives in Scotland. The sole remnant of it in English 
 
 is uncouthf originally meaning something unknown, unheard 
 
 of, strange, and now meaning rough or ungainly. Milton 
 
 has — 
 
 Bound on a voyage uncouth, 
 
 meaning unknown. The Scotch have the word couthiej 
 familiar, or well known. , 
 
 And to the people's eres all and some 
 
 Was couth that a new markissesse 
 
 He with him brought in such pompe and richenes 
 
 That never was there seen with manne's eye. 
 
 — Chauceb : The Clerk's Tale. 
 
 Take your sport, and kythe your knights. 
 
 — Sir Ferumhras. 
 
 • Kythe in your ain colours, that folk may ken you. — Allan Ramsay's 
 Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Their faces blythe, they sweetly kythe. 
 
 — BUBNS. 
 
 Laugh, lough, leuch. The ancient preterite and past parti- 
 ciple of this verb have been superseded by the modern preterite 
 in ed. 
 
 Then lough there a lord, 
 And " By this lighte " saide, 
 ** I hold it right and reson." 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 He cleped it Valerie and Theophrast, 
 And lough always full fast. 
 
 — Chauceb : The Wife of Bath's Prologue. 
 
 When she had read Wise William's letter, 
 She smiled and she leuch. 
 
 — Mothebwell's Collection. 
 
 " I think not so," she hnlflina said, and leuch. 
 
 —Ross's Hdenore. 
 
326 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 How graceless Ham leuch at his dad, 
 Which made Canaan a nigger. 
 
 — Burns : The Ordination. 
 
 An' ilka ane leuch him to scorn. 
 
 —Percy's Religues : The Avid Guidman. 
 
 Leap, lope, lopen, to leap. At what time this verb followed 
 the analogy of weep, creep, and sleep, and formed its preterite 
 in leap or leptj does not very clearly appear. 
 
 And they laughing lope to her. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Have lopen the better. 
 
 — Idem. 
 
 Up he lope and the window broke, 
 
 And he had thirty foot to fall. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : The Murder of the King of Scots. 
 
 Tom Kindle lope fra the chimley nook. 
 
 — ^Waugh's Lancashire Songs. 
 
 Let, loot, letten, looten, to let, to permit. This verb has 
 lost all its inflections in literary and colloquial English, but 
 preserves them in the Scottish dialect. 
 
 But letten him lede forth whom hym liked. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 And aye she loot the tears down fa' 
 For Jock o' Hazeldean. 
 
 — Sib Walter Scott. 
 
 Ye've loot the ponie o'er the dyke. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 But dool had not yet letten her feel her want. 
 
 — Ross's Hdenore. 
 
 He boore upon him and ne'er loot her ken. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
Lost Preterites. 327 
 
 Ligge, ligged, to lie down. This ancient word is still in 
 common use in Cumberland and Northumberland, and also 
 in the Border counties of Scotland. 
 
 So that the Holy Ghost 
 Gloweth but as a glade, 
 Till that lele love 
 Ligge on him. 
 
 — Pun Ploughman. 
 
 What hawkes sitten on the perche above I 
 What houndes liggen on the floor adown I 
 
 —Chaucer : The Knight's Tale. 
 
 I have ligged for a fortnight in London, weak almost to death, and 
 neglected by every one. — G. P. R. James : Gowrie, or the King's Plot. 
 
 List or lest, lust, to please. This word has gradually been 
 dropping out of use, but having been preserved in the Bible, is 
 still occasionally heard. The preterite is lost, though the word 
 itself survives as a substantive, and as the infinitive of another 
 verb, to lust^ signifying to desire pleasure vehemently. 
 
 The wind bloweth where it listeth. 
 
 The colloquial expression, " to list for a soldier," seems to come 
 from this root, and means, to please to become, or voluntarily 
 to become, a soldier. Chaucer uses Itist in the sense of joy : — 
 
 Farewell, my Ufe, my lust, and my gladnesse. 
 
 —The Knight's Tale. 
 
 Lout, louted, to make an obeisance or a curtsey. 
 
 And then louted adown. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 ** Sir," quoth the dwarf, and louted low. 
 
 — Pkeoy's Reliques : Sir Cavline. 
 
 They louted to that ladye. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : On Alliterative Metre. 
 
328 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 To which image both young and old 
 Commanded he to lout. 
 
 — Chaucee : The Monke's Tale. 
 
 And I am louted by a traitor villain. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Henry VI., Part i. 
 
 Melt, molt, molten, to liquefy by means of heat. The 
 preterite is lost, but the past participle is still preserved in 
 poetry and the Bible. 
 
 Mint, minted, to essay, to try, to aim, to attempt, to prove 
 the genuineness of metals before coinage. 
 
 Minting's not making (attempting's not doing). 
 
 — Allan Ramsay's Scots Provei'bs. 
 
 A minted [attempted] excuse. 
 
 — The Two Lancashire Lovers : 1660. 
 
 Nake, naked, to denude of covering. The preterite survives 
 as an adjective j the infinitive is lost. 
 
 Come, be ready 1 nake your swords. 
 Think of your wrongs 1 
 
 — Nares : Jieveitge's Tragedy. 
 
 Pight, a word that occurs in Chaucer, is defined by Tyrwhitt 
 as meaning, * pitched,* rather than the preterite of *put ': — 
 
 He pight him on the pomel of his head, 
 That in the place he lay as he were dead. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Knight's Tale. 
 
 Stowe, however, at a later period, uses jnght for * did put ' : — 
 
 He was brought to the Standard in Cheape, where they strake off 
 his head and pight it on a pole, and bare it before them. — Stowe's 
 Annals: Henry VI. 
 
Lost Preterites. 329 
 
 Prank, prankt or pranked, to adorn, to embellish, to dress 
 fashionably. 
 
 Some prank their rirffs, and others trimly dight 
 Their gay attire. 
 
 — Spenser : The Faerie Queene. 
 
 False tales prankt in reason's garb. 
 
 — MttTON : Comus. 
 
 Most goddess-like pranked up. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Winter's Tale. 
 
 Put, pat or pight, putten or pitten, to place. The modem 
 verb has lost the preterite and past participle. 
 
 I there wi' something did f orgether, 
 That pat me in an eerie swither. 
 
 — Burns : Death and Doctor Hornbook. 
 
 Ye see how Kob and Jenny's gone sin' they 
 Ha'e pitten o'er their heads the metry day. 
 
 — Ross's Helenore. 
 
 He's putten it to a good purpose, has Brighouse. — The Master of 
 Marston: London, 1664. 
 
 Quake, quoke, to tremble with fear. 
 
 An ugly pit, as deep as any hell, 
 That to behold therein I quoke for fear. 
 
 — The King's Quair. 
 
 The whole land of Italy trembled and quoke. 
 
 — Douglas : Translation of the JSneicL 
 
 Quethe or queath, quoth, to say. The infinitive of this verb 
 is lost, but the preterite quoth remains in colloquial use, and 
 in writings that do not aspire to eloquence or dignity, as 
 * quoth he,' ^ quoth I.' Bequeath^ to say in your will what 
 part of your property your heirs or legatees shall possess, is 
 a remnant of this ancient verb. 
 
330 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Eax, raught, to reach, to stretch. 
 
 He raught to the steere (he reached to the hehn). 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 He start up and would have him raught. 
 
 — Merlin : Early English Metrical Romances. 
 
 The villain is o'er-raught of all my money. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Comedy of Errors. 
 
 Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces, 
 Their raxing conscience. 
 
 — Burns : Episde to M'Math. 
 
 Is this a time to talk o' wark, 
 
 When Colin's at the door ? 
 Rax down my cloak, I'll to the quay, 
 
 And see him come ashore. 
 
 — MiCKLE : There's nae Luck ahout the House. 
 
 Beap, rept, rope, ropen, to cut, or help to cut the harvest. 
 
 Ropen and laide away the come. 
 ' — Chaucer : Legende of Good Women. 
 
 After the com is rept. 
 
 — Nares. 
 
 Reave, reft, take off, take away, whence the old English 
 and Scottish word reaver or reiver, a thief. This word survives 
 in bereave and bereft, but is fast becoming obsolete. 
 
 If he reaveth me by night. 
 He robbeth me by maistrye. 
 
 — Piers PloughTnan. 
 
 Therefore, though no part of his work to reave him, 
 We now for matters more allied must leave him. 
 
 — Hetwood's Troia Britannia, 1609. 
 
 To go robbe that ragman. 
 And reave the fruit from him. 
 
 — Piers PloughTnan. 
 
 Means to live by reafoi other men's goods. — Holinshed's Chronicles, 
 
Lost Preterites. 331 
 
 Reek, roke, to emit smoke or vapour. Tlie present tense of 
 this verb survives in solemn and poetical composition in Eng- 
 land, but both the present and preterite are in common and 
 colloquial use in Scotland. " Auld Reekie " is a popular name 
 for Edinburgh. 
 
 Rown, rowned, to whisper, to talk privately, to whisper in 
 the ear. This word is wholly lost, but might have been pre- 
 served, if Shakspeare, like modern authors, had been in the 
 habit of correcting his proof-sheets. The word, misprinted 
 rounds occurs several times in Shakspeare, and has puzzled all 
 the commentators. Mr. Staunton, in a note on the passage 
 where Polonius says to the king in " Hamlet " — 
 
 Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him 
 To show his grief — let her be round with him, 
 
 says, " Let her be blunt and plain-spoken with him." 
 
 In another note to the word in *'King John," act ii. scene 2 — 
 
 Whom zeal and charity brought to the field 
 As God's own soldier, rounded in the ear 
 With that same purpose — charge — 
 
 he explains the true meaning of rounded (which should be 
 roioned, just as vulgar people sometimes say ' drownded ' for 
 drowned) as * insinuated,' * whispered in the ear.' He 
 quotes from the Spanish tragedy the line where the same 
 orthographical error occurs — 
 
 Forthwith, revenge, she rounds them in the ear. 
 
 The word appears correctly in all authors previous to Shak- 
 speare : — 
 
 They rose up in rape. 
 And rowned together. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman, 
 
332 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 The steward on his knees sat down 
 With the emperor for to rovm. 
 
 — Romance of Cceur de Lion. 
 
 But if it like you that I might rovme in your ear. 
 
 — Skelton. 
 
 Sag, sog, to bend or give way under pressure, to faiL 
 
 The mind I sway by, and the heart, I fear, 
 Shall never sag with doubt or shake with fear. 
 
 — Shakspeare: Macbeth. 
 
 That it may not sag from the intention of the founders. 
 
 —Fuller's Worthies. 
 
 From the lost preterite sog comes the adjective soggy, often 
 used by the Americans to signify wet boggy soil that yields to 
 the foot. 
 
 Scathe or skaith, to do an injury or damage. Shakspeare 
 and Milton use the verb : — 
 
 This trick may chance to scathe you. 
 
 — Romeo and Jvliet. 
 
 Scathed the forest oaks. 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 The substantive scathe or sTcaith, signifiying hurt, damage, and 
 injury, survives in Scottish speech and literature, and is not 
 wholly obsolete in English poetry, though rarely used by 
 modern writers. 
 
 Oh 1 if on my bosom lying, 
 
 I could work him deadly scathe, 
 In one burst of burning passion, 
 
 I would kiss him unto death 1 
 
 — Love in Hate. 
 
 Seethe, sod, sodden, to boil. The translators of the Bible 
 have preserved this old English word, which was in common 
 
Lost Preterites. 333 
 
 use before its modern synonym was borrowed with other culi- 
 nary phrases from the Norman French : — 
 
 And he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage 
 for the sons of the prophets. — 2 Kings iv. 38. 
 
 Go suck the subtle blood o' th' grape 
 
 Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Timon of A them. 
 
 Seethe stanes in butter, the brew will be good. — Allan Ramsay's Scots 
 Proverbs. 
 
 It is unsavorye 
 Y-sodden or y-baken 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 Shape, shope, shopen, to make, to create, to put into form. 
 This verb has wholly lost its original meaning in the infini- 
 tive and present, in which form it subsists as a regular verb, 
 with its preterite in d. Its preterite and past participle have 
 long been obsolete, and do not seem to have been used in Eng- 
 lish literature after the time of Chaucer. 
 
 God shope the world.— Wicklipfe's Bible. . 
 
 The king and the commune 
 Shopen laws. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 To which this sempnour shope him for to wende. 
 
 — Chauoee : The Frere's Tale. 
 
 Shear, sheer, shore or shure, shorn, to cut closely off. The 
 ancient preterite is obsolete, and has been superseded in the 
 regular form in ed. The sea-shore — i.e., the strip of land 
 sheared, shore, or shorn by the action of the waves — is the sole 
 relic of this word in modern parlance. 
 
 Robin shure in hairst [harvest], 
 I shure wi' him. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
334 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Boston was the Delilah that allured him [Daniel Webster]. Oft he 
 broke withes of gold, till at last she shore off his locks, and his strength 
 went from him. — Theodoee Pabker : Discourse on the Death of Daniel 
 Webster, 
 
 Shend, shent, shent, to rebuke, to blame, to shame, or bring 
 to shame. 
 
 What say yon, sir? 
 
 I am shent for speaking to you. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Twelfth Night. 
 
 He that shames let him be shent. 
 
 — Allan Ramsat, 
 
 All woe-begone was John o' the Scales, 
 Soe shent he could say never a word. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : The Heir of Lynne, 
 
 Spenser in the " Faerie Queene," and Thomson in the " Castle 
 of Indolence," use this word. According to Dr. Johnson, the 
 last author of note who employed it was Dry den. It sur- 
 vives in Scotland. 
 
 Shread, shred, to cut off the ends, to lop. The old preterite 
 has long been obsolete, but survives as a noun ; shred, a thing 
 lopped off or cut off, a remnant. 
 
 The superfluous and waste sprigs of vines being shreaded off. — 
 Withall's Dictionarie : 1608. 
 
 A shredded of trees. — Nares. 
 
 Shrew, shrew, shrown. This obsolete word, of which the 
 only current representative is shrewd, a perversion of the 
 original meaning, signifies *to curse,' and finds a singular 
 synonym in America. In England a scolding wife is a shrew ; 
 in America the same disagreeable person is a * cuss.' Shak- 
 speare applies the word shrew to both sexes, just as the 
 
Lost Preterites. 335 
 
 Americans do the word * cuss.' " Beshrew me ! " the old ejacu- 
 lation, meant " curse me ! " At the present day inferior 
 writers and careless speakers will say, "I have a shrewd 
 suspicion," meaning " a sharp, cunning suspicion." The time 
 at which the word assumed this new meaning in speech or 
 literature is uncertain. 
 
 Shrive, shrove, shriven, to confess to the priest ; shrift, a 
 confession. This verb, in all its inflections, went out when 
 the Reformation came in, and only survives in poetry and 
 romance, and in the word " Shrove Tuesday." 
 
 Slake, sloke, sicken, to assuage thirst, to quench a fire. 
 The preterite and past participle are obsolete. 
 
 Sneap, sneb, snub, to check, chide, rebuke angrily, to be 
 sharp to a person, like a cutting wind. 
 
 An envious sneaping frost 
 
 That bites the first-born infants of the spring. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Love's Labour Lost. 
 
 Do you sneap me too, my lord ? 
 
 — Browne's Antipodes. 
 
 This word only survives in its past participle snub, which has 
 become the infinitive of a verb with the original meaning. 
 
 Snow, snew, snown, to drop partially congealed rain. The 
 preterite and past participle survive in America, but are con- 
 sidered vulgarisms. 
 
 Withouten bake meat never was his house, 
 Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous. 
 It snewe in his house of meat and drink. 
 
 — Chaucer : Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 First it blew, and then it snew, and then it friz horrid. 
 
 —Major Downing 's Letters. 
 
33^ Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Ben Jonson, in his "English Grammar," cites the following 
 verbs that make their preterite in ew — viz., blow, grow, throw, 
 crow, know, draw, slay, and snow. The last is the only one 
 of the number that now forms its preterite in ed, though un- 
 educated people both in Great Britain and America some- 
 times form the preterites of grow, blow, and know in ed 
 — as when Topsy, in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," says " she 
 growed." " I knowed it," instead of '' I knew it," is also a 
 common vulgarism. 
 
 Stand, stood, studden. 
 
 Weel, I thought there was naething but what your honour could hae 
 studden in the way o' agreeable conversation. — Scott : The Antiquary. 
 
 Stent, stint, stunt, to desist, to cease, to limit, to confine 
 within a certain bound. This verb is a curious instance of the 
 liberties which Time takes with the old words of a language. 
 The three inflections have each been made to do duty for an 
 infinitive, so that one verb has been virtually converted into 
 three. Chaucer has stent,. the correct and original form : — 
 
 And of this cry we would they never sterU. 
 
 —The Knight's Tale. 
 
 The noun stent, an allotted portion of work, though obsolete in 
 England, is common in America. 
 
 Little boys in the country, working against time, with stents to do. — 
 Theodore Parker : Discourse on the Death of Daniel Webster. 
 
 Stint, the ancient preterite, is the modem infinitive, and 
 forms its preterite and past participle regularly in ed. Stint, 
 to stint, or stop, or cease in growth, goes through the same 
 inflections. The late Daniel O'Connell called the Duke of 
 Wellington a *' stunted corporal." 
 
 Sweat, swat, to perspire. This ancient word survives in 
 colloquial, but has been of late years banished from literary 
 
Lost Preterites. 337 
 
 English, and from polite society. The curse pronounced upon 
 Adam, " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat [or earn] thy 
 bread," would have lost much of its native energy if the 
 ancient translators had been as mealy-mouthed as the men of 
 the present day, and rendered sweat by pers^iiration. 
 
 His fair steed 
 So swat that men might him ring. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Rhyme of Sir Topaz. 
 
 His hackenye which that was al pomelee gris, 
 So swatte that it wonder was to see. 
 
 — The Chanones Yemanne's Tale. 
 
 Some, lucky, find a flowery spot, 
 For which they never toiled nor swat. 
 
 — BuENS: Epistle to James Smith. 
 
 An anecdote is related by Dean Ramsay, of a sturdy old lady 
 who so greatly loved hearty vehemence in preaching, that she 
 delighted in one particular minister, because when he preached 
 he was in such grim earnest with his discourse that " he grat 
 and spat and sivat " over it ! 
 
 Swell, swale, swoll, swollen. The preterite in swale is 
 almost obsolete; that in swoll has been newly revived, but 
 scarcely holds its own against swelled. 
 
 An' thought it swale so sore about hir harte. 
 
 — Chaucee : The Wife of Bathe's Tale. 
 
 Swink, swank, swonken, to labour over hard. This word 
 appears to have been almost obsolete in Shakspeare's time. 
 Some of his contemporaries use it, and Milton tried to re- 
 vive it. 
 
 In setting and sowing 
 Swinken full hard. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 Y 
 
338 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Great boobies and long 
 That loth were to swink. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 For which men swink and sweat incessantly. 
 
 — Spenser : Faerie Queme. 
 
 We'll labour and swinke, 
 We'll kiss and we'll drinke. 
 — Beaumont and Fletcher : The Spanish Cureto. 
 
 For he had swonken all the nighte long. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Reeve's Tale. 
 
 Thole, tholed, to suffer, to endure, to tolerate. This word is 
 in common use throughout Scotland and on the English border, 
 but has long been lost to literature. 
 
 Which died and death tholed 
 About mid-day. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 What mischief and malease Christ for man tholed. 
 
 — Chaucer: Visions. 
 
 What mickle wo as I with you have tholed. 
 
 — Chaucer. 
 
 She shall the death thole. 
 
 — GowER : Confessio Amantis. 
 
 He who tholes conquers. 
 
 —Allan Eamsat's Scots Proverbs. 
 
 Tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
 How they maun thole the factor's snash ! 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 Threap, to argue, to complain, to lament. 
 
 'Tis not for man with a woman to threap. 
 
 — Percy's Reliques : Tak' thy avid dodk 
 about thee. 
 
 Some cry upon God, others threap that He hath forgotten them. 
 
 —Bishop Fisher. 
 
Lost Preterites. 339 
 
 Some heads well learned upon the book, 
 Would threap auld folks the thing mistook. 
 
 — Burns. 
 
 In Grose's " Provincial Glossary " a shopkeeper's phrase is 
 quoted, ''This is not threaping ware" — i.e.y these goods are so 
 superior that they are not to be argued about or cheapened. 
 
 Thring, throng, thrung, to press, to jostle, to crowd, whence 
 the modern word to throng. 
 
 A thousand of men, 
 Thrungen together, 
 Cried upwards to Christ. 
 
 •Piers Ploughman. 
 
 The Scottish word thrang — i.e., busy with a crowd of cus- 
 tomers — is a remnant of this word, in which, as in many 
 others, the original preterite has been made to do duty for 
 the infinitive and the present tense. 
 
 Trat, the preterite of treat. — Tim Bobbin. 
 
 Wax, wox, waxed, woxen, woxed, to grow, to increase. 
 This word, chiefly preserved by its frequent use in the Old 
 and New Testament, lost its original preterite and participle, 
 wox and woxen, before the translation of the Bible in the reign 
 of James I., at which time the word wax, with the regular 
 inflections, was in common use. 
 
 And when he woxen was more 
 In his mother's absence. 
 
 — Piers Ploughman. 
 
 This man wox wellnigh wood [mad] for ire. 
 
 — Chaucer : The Sompnoure's Tale. 
 
 Before my breath, like blazen flax, 
 Man and his marvels pass away ; 
 
340 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 And changing empires wane and wax, 
 Are founded, flourish, and decay. 
 
 — Sir Walter Scott : Translation of the 
 Dies Irce. 
 
 Wink, wank, to close and open the eyes, to make signals 
 with the eye. 
 
 Our king on the shepherd wank 
 PrivUy with his eye. 
 
 — Halliwell : MS. Cantab. 
 
 Wreak, wreaked, wroke, wroken, to avenge. The infinitive 
 of this verb is still current in connection with the nouns 
 wrath, vengeance, displeasure, spite, and others. 
 
 So iweake us, God, of all our foes. 
 
 — Sir Bevis of Hampton. 
 
 'Tis not my fault, the boar provoked my tongue. 
 Be wreaked on him. 
 
 — Shakspeare : Venus and Adonis. 
 
 And soon in the Gordon's foul heart's blood, 
 He's wroken his faire ladye. 
 
 — Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 To have wroken himself of such wrongs as were due him by the 
 French king. — Holinshed's Chronicles. 
 
 The verbs here quoted are mei-ely samples of the literary 
 treasures that lie concealed in the speech of the common 
 people of the northern counties, in the old English authors 
 anterior to Shakspeare, and in the Scottish literature of the 
 present day. What should we say if an English nobleman of 
 ancient and illustrious lineage and great wealth had in the 
 cellars and vaults of his castle hundreds of coffers and oaken 
 chests filled to the lid with coins of the purest gold stamped 
 with the image and superscription of bygone kings, if he would 
 never use nor look at any portion of his wealth ? What, also, 
 should we say of him if, in want of gold for his daily needs, he 
 
Lost Preterites. 341 
 
 persisted in borrowing it from strangers at usurious interest, 
 rather than touch his antique treasures ? We should say he 
 was unwise, or at the least eccentric, and that it was questionable 
 whether he deserved to possess the great wealth which he had 
 inherited. Every master of the English tongue, whether he 
 be poet, orator, or great prose writer, is in the position of this 
 supposed nobleman, if he will not study the ancient words of 
 the language, and revive to the extent of his ability such 
 among them as he finds to be better adapted to express strong 
 as well as delicate shades of meaning, than the modem words 
 which have usurped their places. To the poets more especially, 
 and, if there be none such left in our day (which we should 
 be very sorry to assert, when certain great names flash upon 
 our memory), to the versifiers who are not likely ever to fail 
 us as long as there are hopes and fancies in the hearts of 
 young men and women, this is a matter of especial concern. 
 The permissible rhymes of the modern English tongue are not 
 copious in number ; and such as exist, if not as well worn as 
 love and dove, breeze and trees, heart and dart, are far too 
 familiar to come upon the ear with any great charm of novelty. 
 The dactylic rhymes are still fewer, as every one who has 
 tried his hand at versification is painfully aware. It is the 
 poet, more than the prose writer, who strengthens as well as 
 beautifies the language which he employs. It is true that 
 language first makes literature; and that literature, when 
 once established among a people, reacts upon language, and 
 fixes its form — decides what words shall and what words shall 
 not be used in the higher forms of prose and poetical com- 
 position. Old English — such as it is found in " Piers Plough- 
 man," Chaucer, Spenser, and the poets and dramatists of the 
 Elizabethan era, and as late as Milton and Dryden — is a 
 passionate rather than an argumentative language ; and poets, 
 who ought to be passionate above all else, otherwise they are 
 but mere versifiers, should go back to those ancient sources, 
 
342 Dictionaty of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 if they would be strong without ceasing to be correct and 
 elegant. The words that were good enough for Shakspeare 
 and his contemporaries ought to be good enough for the 
 greatest writers of our day. But Shakspeare himself is be- 
 coming obsolete, and needs the aid of a glossary to explain to 
 educated people many excellent words that are quite intel- 
 ligible to a Scottish or English ploughman. Is it the fault 
 of Shakspeare or of modern writers that this should be 
 the case? Doubtless the fault is not in Shakspeare, but in 
 ourselves. 
 
 — Reprinted and Extended from 
 " Blackwood's Magazine" 
 
ALLAN EAMSAY'S 
 COLLECTION OF SCOTTISH PROVERBS. 
 
 A BEGUN turn is half ended. 
 
 A blate cat makes a proud mouse. 
 
 A black hen lays a white egg. 
 
 A blythe heart makes a blooming look. 
 
 A bit is oftener better gi'en than eaten. 
 
 A bonny bride is soon busked, 
 
 And a short horse is soon whisked. 
 A borrowed len shou'd gae laughing hanie. 
 A bread house never skail'd. 
 A black shoe makes a blythe heart. 
 A cock's aye crouse on his ain middin'. 
 A cramb'd kite makes a crazy carcass. 
 A daft nurse makes a wise wean. 
 A denk maiden, a dirty wife. 
 A dog wiriua yowl if ye strike him wi' a bane. 
 A dog's life ; — muckle ease muckle hunger. 
 A dry summer ne'er made a dear peck. 
 A deuk winna dabble aye in ae hole. 
 A dumb man wins nae law. 
 Ae beggar's wae that anither by the gate gae. 
 Ae bird in hand is worth ten fleeand. 
 Ae good turn deserves anither. 
 
 Ae good turn may meet anither, if it were at the brigg o' London. 
 Ae half of the warld kenna how the ither half live. 
 Ae hour's cauld will suck out seven years' heat. 
 Ae hour in the morning is worth twa after noon. 
 Ae man may lead a horse to the water, but four and twenty winna 
 
 gar him drink. 
 Ae man's meat is anither man's poison. 
 Ae scabbed sheep will smit the hale hirdsel. 
 Ae year a nurse, and seven year a daw. 
 
344 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 A fair maiden tocherless will get mae wooers than husbands. 
 
 A fool and his money are soon parted. 
 
 A fool's bolt is soon shot. 
 
 A fool may speer mair questions than a doctor can answer. 
 
 A fool may give a wise man counsel. 
 
 A friend in need is a friend indeed. 
 
 Affront your friend in mows, and tine him in earnest. 
 
 A friend's dinner's soon dight. 
 
 Aft ettle, whiles hit. 
 
 Aft counting keeps friends lang thesfither. 
 
 Aft times the cautioner pays tiie debt. 
 
 After meat mustard. 
 
 After a storm comes the calm. 
 
 A fu' man and a hungry horse make haste hame. 
 
 A fu' purse never lacks friends. 
 
 A gawn foot's aye getting. 
 
 A gentle horse shou'd be sindle spurr'd. 
 
 A gi'en horse shou'd na be look'd i' the mouth, 
 
 A gi'en game was never won. 
 
 A good beginning makes a good ending. 
 
 A good goose may ha'e an ill gansel. 
 
 A good face needs nae band, and an ill ane deserves nane. 
 
 A good tongue's a safe weapon. 
 
 A good word is as soon said as an ill. 
 
 A good tale is no the waur to be twice tauld. 
 
 A good name is sooner tint than won. 
 
 A " good fellow" is a costly name. 
 
 A graining wife and a grunting horse ne'er fail'd their master. 
 
 A green wound is half hale. 
 
 A green yule makes a fat kirk-yard. 
 
 A great rooser was never a good rider. 
 
 A greedy eye never got a good pennyworth. 
 
 " A great cry and little woo," quoth the deil when he clippet the sow. 
 
 A handfu' of trade is worth a gowpen o' gowd. 
 
 A hasty man's never lasty. 
 
 A horse hired never tired. 
 
 A horse with four feet may snapper. 
 
 A horn spoon hands nae poison. 
 
 A boundless hunter and a gunless gunner aye see rowth of game. 
 
 A hungry man smells meat afar. 
 
 A hungry louse bites sair. 
 
 Aj(hungry man's aye angry. 
 
 A kiss and a drink of water is but a wersh disjune. 
 
 A lass that has mony wooers oft wales the warst. 
 
 A lang gather'd dam soon rins out. 
 
 A leaky ship lacks muckle pumping. 
 
 Ale-sellers shou'd na be tale-tellers. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 345 
 
 A' liars shou'd ha'e good memories. 
 Alike ilka day makes a clout on Sunday. 
 A li(^ht purse makes a heavy heart. 
 •A' o'ers are ill, except o'er the water and o'er the hill. 
 A' fails that fools think. 
 A' the truth shou'd na be tauld. 
 A' the corn's no shorn by kempers. 
 
 A' the men of the Mearns can do nae mair than they may. 
 A' the winning's in the first buying. 
 A' cracks are not to be trow'd. 
 
 A' that's said in the kitchen shou'd na be tauld in the ha'. 
 A' cats are gray in the dark. 
 A' the keys hang not at your belt. 
 A's no tint that's in hazard. 
 A's fish that comes in the net. 
 A's not at hand that helps. 
 A' things wytes that no well fares. 
 A's well that ends well. 
 A' things are good untried. 
 A man's mind is a mirk mirror. 
 A man's aye crouse in his ain cause. 
 A man canna bear a' his kin on his back. 
 A man of mony trades may beg his bread on Sunday. 
 A man at five may be a fool at fifteen. 
 
 A man may see his friend in need, that winna see his pow bleed. 
 A man may woo where he will, but wed where his wierd is. 
 A man may be kind and gi'e little o' his gear. 
 A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden fu' of weeds. 
 A man is well or wae, as he thinks himself sae. 
 A man has nae mair goods than he gets good of. 
 A misty morning may be a clear day. 
 A mouthfu' of meat may be a townfu' of shame. 
 A muzzled cat was ne'er a good hunter. 
 An auld mason makes a good barrow-man. 
 An auld tout in a new horn. 
 An auld sack craves muckle clouting. 
 An ill shearer never gat a good hook. 
 An illwilly cow shou'd ha'e short horns. 
 An ill cow may ha'e a good calf. 
 An ill plea shou'd be well pleaded. 
 An ill cook shou'd ha'e a good cleaver. 
 An ill lesson is soon lear'd. 
 An ill wife .and a new kindled candle shou'd ha'e their heads 
 
 hadden down. 
 An ill turn is soon done. 
 An ill servant ne'er proved a good master. 
 An ill life makes an ill end. . ., . , 
 
34^ Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 An ill won penny will pu' down a pound. 
 
 An inch of a nag is worth a span of an aver. 
 
 An inch off a miss is as good as a span. 
 
 An inch of good fortune is worth a fathom of forecast. 
 
 An olite mother makes a sweer daughter. 
 
 An ounce of mother- wit is worth a pound of clergy. 
 
 An unlucky man's cart is eith tumbled. 
 
 Ane of the court but nane of the council. 
 
 Ane does the skaith, and anither gets the wyte. 
 
 Ane never tines by doing good. 
 
 Ane beats the bush and anither grips the game. 
 
 Anes paid never craved. 
 
 Ane may bind a sack before it be fu'. 
 
 Ane may lo'e the kirk well enough, yet no be aye riding on the 
 
 rigging o't. 
 Ane may lo'e a haggis that wadna ha'e the bag bladed in his teeth. 
 Ane is not so soon heal'd as hurt. 
 Ane gets sma' thanks for tining his ain, 
 Ane canna wive and thrive baith in ae year. 
 Ane will gar a hundred lie. 
 A new besom sweeps clean. 
 A nod of an honest man is eneuch. 
 April showers bring May flowers. 
 A party pot never play'd even. 
 A poor man gets a poor marriage. 
 A poor man is fain o' little. 
 A pound o' care winna pay an ounce o' debt. 
 A proud heart in a poor breast has meikle dolor to dree. 
 A ragged colt may prove a good gelding. 
 A reeky house and a girning wife, 
 Will make a man a fashous life. 
 A reproof is nae poison. 
 A rowing stane gathers nae fog. 
 As a carle riches he wretches. 
 As broken a ship has come to land. 
 As day brak butter brak. 
 As fain as a fool of a fair day. 
 As fu' o' mischief as an egg's fu' o' meat. 
 As good may baud the stirrup as he that lowps on. 
 As good a fellow as ever toom'd a bicker. 
 As good merchants tine as win. 
 As lang runs the fox as he feet has. 
 As lang lives the merry man as the sad. 
 As lang as the bird sings before Candlemas it greets after it. 
 As lang as. ye serve the tod ye maun bear up his tail. 
 As mony heads as mony wits. 
 As mickle upwith as mickle downwith. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs, 547 
 
 As ready as the king has an egg in his pouch. 
 
 As sail light wrens as cranes. 
 
 As soon gangs the lamb's skin to the market as the auld sheep's. 
 
 As sair greets the bairn that's paid at e'en as he that gets his whawks 
 
 in the morning. 
 As tired as a tyke is of langkale. 
 As the sow fills the draff sours. 
 As the auld cock craws the young cock lears. 
 As the wind blaws seek your bield. 
 As the fool thinks the bell clinks. 
 As the market gangs wares maun sell. 
 As well be hang'd ibr a wedder as for a lamb. 
 As ye lo'e me look in my dish. 
 As ye lead your ain life ye judge your neighbours. 
 As ye make your bed sae ye maun lie down. 
 A saft aver was never a good horse. 
 A safe conscience makes a sound sleep. 
 A scawd head is eith to bleed. 
 A sheaf off a stouk is enough. 
 A short tree stands lang. 
 
 A sillerless man gangs fast through the market. 
 A silly man will be sleely dealt with. 
 A sinking master makes aft a rising man. 
 A slotlifu' hand makes a slim fortune. 
 A sorrowfu' heart's aye drouthy. 
 A sooth bourd is nae bourd. 
 A spur in the head is worth twa on the heel. 
 At open doors dogs gae ben. 
 A tale-teller is waur than a thief. 
 A tarrowing bairn was never fat. 
 A taking hand will never want. 
 A tale never tines in the telling. 
 A thrawin question should have a thrawart answer. 
 A thread will tye an honest man better than a rape will a knave. 
 A tocherless dame sits lang at hame. 
 A toolying tike comes limping hame. 
 A toom purse makes a tartling merchant. 
 A toom pantry makes a thriftless good wife, 
 A toom hand is nae lure for a hawk. 
 A turn well done is soon done. 
 A twapenny cat may look at a king. 
 A vanter and a liar are right sib. 
 A wad is a fool's argument. 
 A wee bush is better than nae bield. 
 A wee mouse can creep under a great corn stack. 
 A wee house well fill'd, a wee piece land well till'd, a wee wife well 
 
 wiU'd, will make a happy man. 
 
34^ Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 A wee house has a wide mouth. 
 
 A wee spark niaks meikle wark. 
 
 A wee thing puts your beard in a bleeze. 
 
 A wee thing fleys cowards. 
 
 A wight man never wanted a weapon. 
 
 A wife is wise enough that kens her guidman's breeks frae her 
 
 ain kirtle. 
 A wilfu' man never wanted wae. 
 A wilfu' man shou'd be unco wise. 
 A woman's mind is like wind in a winter night. 
 Auld men are twice bairns. • 
 Auld sparrows are ill to tame.. 
 Auld springs gi'e nae prize. 
 Auld sins breed new shame. 
 Auld wives and bairns make fools of physicians. 
 A yeld sow was never good to grices. 
 A yule feast may be quit at pasch. 
 
 Bairns are certain care, but nae sure joy. 
 
 Bare backs mak burnt shins. 
 
 Bare gentry, braggand beggars. 
 
 Bastard brood are aye proud. 
 
 Be a friend to yoursell and others will. 
 
 Be lang sick that ye may be soon hale. 
 
 Be it better, be it worse, be ruled by him that has the purse. 
 
 Be thou well, be thou wae, thou wilt not be aye sae. 
 
 Be the thing ye wad be ca'd. 
 
 Bear wealth well, poortith will bear itsell. 
 
 Before ye chuse a friend eat a peck o' saut wi' him. 
 
 Begin wi' needles and prins and end wi' horu'd nowt. 
 
 Beg frae beggars, you'll never be rich. 
 
 Beggars breed, and gentry feed. 
 
 Beggars dow bear nae wealth. 
 
 Beggars shou'd na be choosers, 
 
 Better a bit in the morning than fast a' day. 
 
 Better a clout in, than a hole out. 
 
 Better a dog fawn on you than bark at you. 
 
 Better a finger aff than aye wapging. 
 
 Better a fair foe than a fause friend. 
 
 Belter a good fame than a fine face. 
 
 Better a laying hen than a lying crown. 
 
 Better a mouse in the pot than nae flesh. 
 
 Better a shameless eating than a shamefu' living. 
 
 Better a tocher in her than wi' her. 
 
 Better a toom house than an ill tenant. 
 
 Better a thigging mother than a riding father. 
 
 Better a wee ingle to warm ye than a mickle fire to burn ye. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 349 
 
 Better auld debts than auld sairs. 
 
 Better bairns greet than bearded men. 
 
 Better be blytlie wi' little than sad \vi' mickle. 
 
 Better be envied than pitied. 
 
 Better be alane than in ill company. 
 
 Better be idle than ill employed. 
 
 Better be out of the world than out of the fashion. 
 
 Better be sonsy than soon up. 
 
 Better be the lucky man than the lucky man's son. 
 
 Better be unkind than cumbersome. 
 
 Better beg than borrow. 
 
 Better day the better deed. 
 
 Better eat gray bread in youth than in eild. 
 
 Better flatter a fool than fight wi' him. 
 
 Better find iron than tine siller. 
 
 Better gi'e Ijie slight than tak' it. 
 
 Better guide well than work sair. 
 
 Better baud by a hair than draw with a tether. 
 
 Better baud with the hound than rin with the hare. 
 
 Better hain at the braird than at the bottom. 
 
 Better baud loose than in an ill tethering. 
 
 Better hap at court than good service. 
 
 Better kiss a knave than cast out wi' him. 
 
 Better keep the de'il without the door than ha'e to drive him out of 
 
 the house. 
 Better keep well than make well. 
 Better lang something than soon naething. 
 Better late thrive than never do weel. 
 Better lear frae your neighbour's skaith than your ain. 
 Better leave to my faes than beg frae my friends. 
 Better live in hope than die in despair. 
 Better marry o'er the middin' than o'er the moor. 
 Better my bairns seek frae me than I beg frae them. 
 Better my friend think me fremit than fashous. 
 Better ne'er begun than ne'er ended. 
 Better rough and sonsy than bare and donsy. 
 Better saught with little aught, than care with mony a cow. 
 Better say here it is than there it was. 
 Better short and sweet than lang and lax. 
 Better sit still than rise up and fa'. 
 Better sit idle than work for nought. 
 Better skaith saved than mends made. 
 Better sma' fish than nae fish. 
 Better spared than ill spent. , 
 
 Better tlie ill ken'd than the good unken'd. 
 Better the end of a feast than the beginning of a frav. 
 Better thole a grumph than a sumph. 
 
350 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 Better to hand than draw. 
 
 Better twa skaiths than ae sorrow. 
 
 Better nnborn than untaught. 
 
 Better wade back mid-water than gae forward and drown. 
 
 Better wait on the cook than the doctor. 
 
 Better wear shoon than sheets. 
 
 Between three and thirteen 
 
 Thraw the wand when it is green. 
 Bid a man to the roast and stick Him with the spit. 
 Birds of a feather flock together. 
 Birth's good, but breeding's better. 
 Black will take no other hue. 
 Blaw the wind ne'er sae fast, 
 
 It will lown at the last. 
 Blind men should na judge of colours. 
 Blood's thicker than water. 
 Boden gear stinks. 
 
 Break my head and syne draw on my bow. 
 Broken bread makes hale bairns. 
 Burnt bairns dread the fire. 
 
 Buy a thief frae the gallows, and he'll help to hang you. 
 By chance a cripple may grip a hare. 
 By guess, as the blind man fell'd the dog. 
 
 Can do is eithly born about. 
 
 Caimy chiels carry cloaks when 'tis clear, 
 
 The fool when 'tis foul has nane to wear. 
 Careless fowk are aye cumbersome. 
 Cast na out the dow'd water till ye get the fresh. 
 Cats and carlins sit in the sun. 
 Cauld cools the love that kindles ower het. 
 Changes are lightsome. 
 
 Come a' to Jock Fool's house, and ye'se get bread and cheese. 
 Come unca'd sits unserv'd. 
 Come not to council unbidden. 
 Comes to my hand like the bowl o' a pint stowp. 
 Come it air, come it late, in May comes the cow-quake. 
 Come with the wind, and gae with the water. 
 Confess'd faut is half amends. 
 Confess debt and crave days. 
 Count again is no forbidden. 
 Count siller after a' your kin. 
 Count like Jews and gree like brethren. 
 Courtesy is cumbersome to them that ken it no. 
 Counsel is nae command. 
 
 Crab without a cause and mease without amends. 
 Credit is better than ill won gear. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 351 
 
 Curses make the fox fat. 
 
 Cut your cloak according to your claith. 
 
 Baffin and want of wit maks auld wives donnard. 
 
 Dawted bairns dow bear little. 
 
 Daylight will peep through a sma' hole. 
 
 Deal sma' and serve a'. 
 
 Dear bought and far sought is meet for ladies. 
 
 Death and marriage make term-day. 
 
 Death at ae door, and hardship at the other. 
 
 Death defies the doctor. 
 
 Deed shaws proof. 
 
 Ding down the nest, and the rooks will flee awa\ 
 
 Dirt bodes luck. 
 
 Do on the hill as ye wad do in the ha'. 
 
 Do your turn well, and nane will spier what time ye took. 
 
 Do weel and dread nae shame. 
 
 Do weel and doubt nae man, do ill and doubt a' men. 
 
 Do as the lasses do, say no and tak' it. 
 
 Do not meddle with the de'il and the laird's bairns. 
 
 Do not talk of a rape to a chiel whase father was hangit. 
 
 Dogs will redd swine. 
 
 Dolor pays nae debt. 
 
 Double drinks are good for drouth. 
 
 Double charges rive cannons. 
 
 Drive a cow to the ha', she'll run to the byre. 
 
 Drink and drouth come not aye together. 
 
 Drink little that ye may drink lang. 
 
 Drunken at e'en, and dry in the morning. 
 
 Eat in measure, and defy the mediciner. 
 Eat your fill, but pouch nane. 
 Eats meat and never fed, 
 
 Wears claiths and never clad. 
 Eating and drinking want but a beginning. 
 Eith learning the cat to the kirn. 
 Eith learn'd soon forgotten. 
 Eith working when will's at hame. 
 Either prove a man or a mouse. 
 Either win the horse or tine the saddle. 
 E'ening red and a morning gray, 
 
 Is a token of a good day. 
 E'en as ye win't sae ye may wear't. 
 Enough's as good as a feast. 
 Ever busy ever bare. 
 
 Every ane kens best where his ain shoe nips him. 
 Every ane lowps the dyke where it is laighest. 
 
352 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Every craw thinks its ain chick whitest. 
 
 Every dog has his day. 
 
 Every man wears his belt his ain gate. 
 
 Every man can guide an ill wife but he that has her. 
 
 Every man bows to the bush he gets bield I'rae. 
 
 ]<]very man's blind in his ain cause. 
 
 Every man to his mind, as the man said when he kiss'd the sow. 
 
 Every man's tale is good till another's be tauld. 
 
 Every man's no born with a siller spoon in his mouth. 
 
 Every man has his ain draff pock. 
 
 Every miller wad wyse the water to his ain mill. 
 
 Every shoe fits not every foot. 
 
 Every thing has an end, and a pudding has twa. 
 
 Experience teaches fools. 
 
 Faint heart never won fair lady. 
 
 Fair heights make fools fain. 
 
 Fair fa' the wife, and weel may she spin, 
 
 That counts aye the lawing with a quart to come in. 
 Fair fa' good ale, it gars fowk speak as they think. 
 Fair exchange is nae robbery. 
 Fair maidens wear nae purses. 
 Fair hair may have foul roots. 
 Fair words hurt ne'er a bane, 
 
 But foul words break mony a ane. 
 Fair and foolish, black and proud, 
 
 Lang and lazy, little and loud. 
 Fann'd fires and forced love ne'er did weel. 
 Fancy flees before the wind. 
 Far away fowls have fair feathers. 
 Farewell frost, fair weather niest. 
 Far frae court far frae care. 
 Farmers faugh gar lairds laugh. 
 Fast bind fast find. 
 Fat flesh freezes soon. 
 Fat paunches bode lean pows. 
 Fause fowk shou'd hae mony witnesses. 
 Fiddler's dogs and flesh-flies come to feasts unca'd. 
 Fight dog, fight bear, wha wins de'il care. 
 Fine feathers mak' fine birds. 
 Fire and water are good servants, but ill masters. 
 First come first served. 
 
 Fleas and a girning wife are wakerife bedfellows. 
 Fleshers lo'e nae coUops. 
 Fl eying a bird is no the gate to grip it. 
 Flee never sae fast, your fortune will be at your tail. 
 Flitting of farms makes mailins dear* 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 353 
 
 Fools' haste is nae speed. 
 
 Fools are aye fain of fUttinj^. 
 
 Fools shou'd na see wark that's haff done. 
 
 Fools make feasts, and wise fowk eat them ; 
 
 The wise make jests, and fools repeat them. 
 Fools are fain of naething. 
 For want of steek a shoe may be tint. 
 For fashion's sake, as dogs gang to the market. 
 Fortune favours fools. 
 Fortune helps a,ye the hardy. 
 Force without forecast aften fails. 
 Fore-warn'd, haff arm'd. 
 For faut of wise fowk fools sit on binks. 
 Foul water slockens fire. 
 Friendship canna stand aye on ae side. 
 Friends gree best sindry. 
 Frost and fawshood have baith a dirty way gang. 
 
 Gae to bed with the lamb, and rise with the lav'rock. 
 
 Gane is the goose that laid the great egg. 
 
 Gaunting bodes wanting. 
 
 Gayly wad be better. 
 
 Gear is easier j^ain'd than guided. 
 
 Gentle paddocks have lang taes. 
 
 Get your rock and spindle, and God will send tow. 
 
 Get the word 0' soon rising, and you may lie in your bed a' day. 
 
 Giff gaff makes good friends. 
 
 Girn when ye bind and laugh when you loose. 
 
 Gi'e a bairn its will, and a whelp its fill, 
 
 Nane of them will e'er do well. 
 Gi'e a dog an ill name, and he'll soon be hang'd. 
 Gi'e a carle your finger, and he'll take your hale hand. 
 Gi'e a gawn man a drink, and a quarrelsome chiel a cuff. 
 Gi'e a thing and take a thing, 
 
 That's the ill man's gowd. ring. 
 Gi'e o'er when the play's good. 
 Gi'e them tow eneuch and they'll hang themsells. 
 Gi'e the de'il his due. 
 
 God be wi' auld lang syne, when our gutchers ate their trenchers. 
 God help great fowk, the poor can beg. 
 God's help is nearer than the fair e'en. 
 God Ae'er sent the mouth but He sent the meat wi't. 
 God send water to that well that people think will never run dry. 
 God sends us claiths according to our cauld. 
 God sends meat, but the de'il sends cooks. 
 God send you mair wit and me mair siller. 
 God shapes the back for the burthen. 
 
 z 
 
354 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Good ale needs nae wisp. 
 
 Good cheer and good cheap ca's mony customers. 
 
 Good fowk are scarce, take care of ane. 
 
 Good forecast furthers the wark. 
 
 Good fishing in drumly waters. 
 
 Good will shou'd be tane in part payment. 
 
 Good words cost nathing. 
 
 Great barkers are nae biters. 
 
 Great words fley cowards. 
 
 Great winning makes wark easy. 
 
 Greedy fowk have lang arms. 
 
 Gut nae fish till ye get them. 
 
 Ha' binks are sliddery. 
 
 Had ye sic a shoe on ilka foot it would gar you shaghle. 
 
 Haud a hank in your ain hand. 
 
 Haff acres bear good corn. 
 
 Hang a thief when he's young, and he'll no steal when he's auld. 
 
 Hankering and hinging on is a poor trade. 
 
 Handle the pudding while it is het. 
 
 Hang hunger and drown drouth. 
 
 Hap and a halfpenny is gear enough. 
 
 Happy the wife that's married to a motherless son. 
 
 Happy for the son when the dad goes to the de'il. 
 
 Hardships sindle come single. 
 
 Haste makes waste. 
 
 Have ye gear, have ye nane, 
 
 Tine lieart, and a's gane. 
 He begs frae them that borrowed frae him. 
 He brings a staff to break his ain head. 
 He can haud meal in his mouth and blaw. 
 He comes aftner with the rake than the shool. 
 He complains early that complains of his kail. 
 He can iiide his meat and seek mair. 
 He does na aye ride when he saddles his horse. 
 He does na like his wark that says now when it is done. 
 He gangs away in an ill time that never comes again. 
 He gangs lang barefoot that wears dead men's shoon. 
 He gat his kail in a riven dish. 
 He has brought his pock to a braw market. 
 He has mickle prayer but little devotion. 
 He has come to good by misguiding. 
 He has an eye in his neck. 
 He has a bee in his bonnet lug. 
 He has gotten a bite o' his ain bridle. 
 He has the best end o' the string. 
 He has faut of a wife that marries mam's pet 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 355 
 
 He has niair wit in his little finger than ye have in a' your 
 
 bouk. 
 He has coosten his cloak on the ither shoulder. 
 He has feather'd his nest, he may flee when he likes. 
 He has need o' a lang spoon that sups with the de'il. 
 He has cowped the nieikle dish into the little. 
 He has a hole aneath his nose that will ne'er let him be rough. 
 He has wit at will that with an angry heart can sit still. 
 He has licket the butter aff my bread. 
 He has a slid grip that has an eel by the tail. 
 He has a good judgment that does not lippen to his ain. 
 He has a iiearty hand for giving a hungry mealtith. 
 He has a crap for a' corn. 
 He has need to ha'e a clean pow, 
 
 That ca's his neighbour "nitty know." 
 He hears with his heels, as geese do in harvest. 
 He kens na a B by a bull's foot. 
 He kens his ain groats among other fowk's kail. 
 He kens whilk side his cake is butter'd on. 
 He'll mend when he grows better, like sour ale in summer. 
 He'll no let grass grow at his heels. 
 He'll tell't to nae mair than he meets. 
 He loo's me for little that hates me for nought. 
 He'll wag as the bush wags. 
 He looks like the far end o' a French fiddle. 
 He'll soon be a beggar that canna say nay. 
 He loo'd mutton weel that lick'd where the ewe lay. 
 He'll have enough some day when his mouth's fou o' mods. 
 He may well swim that has his head hadden up. 
 He maun be soon up that cheats the tod. 
 He maun hae leave to speak that canna baud his tongue. 
 He may find faut that canna mend. 
 He may laugh that wins. 
 
 He never did a good darg that gade grumbling about it. 
 He never lies but when the hollin's green. 
 He needs maun run that the de'il drives. 
 He never tint a cow that grat for a needle. 
 He rides sicker that ne'er fell. 
 He's a fool that forgets himsell. 
 He's better fed than nurtur'd. 
 He's a man of a wise mind, 
 
 That of a foe can make a friend. 
 He's gane as the dog drave. 
 
 He's wise that kens whan he's weel, and can baud himself sae. 
 He's lifeless that's faultless. 
 He's a gentle horse that never coost his rider. 
 He's silly that spares for ilka speech. 
 
356 Dictionafy of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 He's a fool that marries at yule, 
 
 For when the bairn's to bear the corn's to shear. 
 He's at his wii's end. 
 He's wise tliat's timely war}'. 
 He's as welcome as water in a riven ship. 
 He's like a tiee in a blanket. 
 He's no sae daft as he lets on. 
 He's sairest dung that's paid wi' his ain wand. 
 He's a sairy beggar that canna gae by ae door. 
 He's o'er soon up that's hanged ere noon. 
 He's poor eneuch that's ill loo'd. 
 He's a sairy cook that mayna lick his ain fingers. 
 He's a silly chiel that can neither do nor say. 
 He's a wise bairn that kens his ain faither. 
 
 He's unkofu' in his ain house that canna pike a bane in his neighbour's. 
 He's a proud horse that winna bear his ain provender. 
 He's well worthy of sorrow that buys it. 
 He's like the singed cat, better than he's likely. 
 He's a worthless goodman that's no missed. 
 He's a good horse that never stumbled, 
 
 And a better wife that never grumbled. 
 He's a weak beast that downa bear the saddle. 
 He sleeps as dogs do when wives sift meal. 
 He speaks in his drink what he thought in his drouth. 
 He sits fu' close that has riven breeks. 
 He stumbles at a strae and lowps o'er a wonlyne. 
 He that aught the cow gangs nearest her tail. 
 He that blaws best let him bear the horn. 
 He that's born to be hang'd will never be drown'd. 
 He that's born under a tippenny planet will ne'er be worth a groat. 
 He that buys land buys stanes, 
 
 And he that buys beef buys banes. 
 He that counts a' cost will ne'er put plough in the eard. 
 Hethatcheatsmeanesshamefa'him,if he cheatme twice, shame fa' me. 
 He that clatters to himself talks to a fool. 
 He that canna make sport shou'd mar nane. 
 He that canna do as he wou'd maun do as he may. 
 He that comes unca'd sits unserved. 
 He that counts before the ostler counts twice. 
 He that does his turn in time sits half idle. 
 He that does bidding deserves na dinging. 
 He that deals in dirt has aye foul fingers. 
 He that forecasts a' perils will win nae worship. 
 He that fa's in a gutter, the langer he lies the dirtier he is. 
 He that fishes before the net, 
 
 Fishes lang or he fish get. 
 He that gets gear before he gets wit, will die ere he thrive. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 357 
 
 He that gets, forgets, but he that wants, thinks on. 
 He that gangs a borrowing, gangs a sorrowing. 
 He that gi'es a' his gear to his bairns. 
 
 Take up a bittle and ding out his hams. 
 He that gi'es all wad gi'e nathing. 
 
 He that gets ance his nieves in dirt can hardly get them out. 
 He that has twa hoards will get a third. 
 He that has a good crop may thole some thistles. 
 He that has nae siller in his purse shou'd ha'e silk on his tongue. 
 He that hides can best find. 
 He that has mickle gets aye mair. 
 He that has mickle wad aye ha'e mair. 
 
 He that has a dog of his ain may gang to the kirk wi' a clean breast. 
 He that has a mickle nose thinks ilka ane speaks o't. 
 He that's ill to himsell will be good to naebody. 
 He that in bawdry wastes his gear, 
 
 Baith shame and skaith he will endure. 
 He that kens what will be cheap or dear, 
 
 Needs be a merchant but for ae year. 
 He that keeks through a hole may see what will vex him. 
 He that lives weel lives lang. 
 He that lacks my mare wad buy my mare. 
 He that laughs at his ain joke spills the sport o't. 
 He that laughs alane will make sport in company. 
 He that lives upon hope has a slim diet. 
 He that looks to freets, freets follow him. 
 He that marries or he be wise will die e'er he be rich. 
 He that meddles with tulzies comes in for the redding streak. 
 He that never rade never fell. 
 He that never eats flesh thinks harigalds a feast. 
 He that shaws his purse bribes the thief. 
 He that sleeps with dogs maun rise with fleas. 
 He that slays shall be slain. 
 He that steals can hide. 
 
 He that strikes my dog wad strike mysell if he durst. 
 He that spends his gear before he gets't will get little good o't. 
 He that seeks motes gets motes. 
 He that speers all opinions comes ill speed. 
 He that speaks what he should not. 
 
 Will hear what he would rather not. 
 He that spares to speak spares to speed. 
 He that sells ware for words maun live by the wind. 
 He that speaks wi' a drawnt and sells wi' a cant, 
 
 Is right like a snake in the skin o' a saunt. 
 He that teaches himsell has a fool for his master. 
 He that will cheat in play winna be honest in earnest 
 He that winna when he may, shanna when he wad. 
 
358 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch . 
 
 He that wad eat the kirnel maun crack the nut. 
 He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. 
 He that's welcome fares well. 
 He that well bides well betides. 
 He that will na thole, maun flit mony a hole. 
 He was the bee that made the honey. 
 He was scant o' news that tauld his father was hanged. 
 He wears twa faces beneath ae cowl. *. 
 
 He was mair fleyed than hurt. 
 Help is good in a' play. 
 Hens are aye free of horse corn. 
 Highest in court the nearest the widdy. 
 His wit gat wings and would have flown, 
 But pinching poortith pu'd him down. 
 His auld brass will buy a new pan. 
 His bark is waur than his bite. 
 His egg has aye twa youks. 
 His geese are a' swans. 
 His room's better than his company. 
 His pipe's out. 
 
 Honesty hands lang the gate. 
 Honesty's the best craft. 
 Hooly and fair gangs far in a day. 
 Horses are good of a' hues. 
 Hunger will break through stane wa's. 
 Hunger's hard upon a heal heart. 
 Hunger is good kitchen. 
 Hunger thou me and I'll harry thee. 
 Hungry dogs are blythe o' bursten puddings. 
 Hungry stewards wear mony shoon. 
 
 I ANCE gae a dog his handsel, and he was hanged ere night. 
 
 I bake nae bread by your shins. 
 
 I canna sell the cow and sup the milk. 
 
 I have gi'en a stick to break my ain head. 
 
 I had rather gang by your door than o'er your grave. 
 
 I ha'e gotten an ill kame for my ain head. 
 
 I ha'e seen mair than I have eaten. 
 
 I ken by my cogue wha milks my cow. 
 
 I ken how the world wags, 
 
 He's honor'd maist wlio has moniest bags. 
 I ken him as well as I had gane through him with a lighted candle. 
 I'll gi'e ye a bane to pike that will baud your teeth gawn. 
 I'll gar his ain gartens tie up his ain hose. 
 I'll never dirty the bonnet I'm gawn to put on. 
 I'll keep my mind to mysell and tell my tale to the wind. 
 I'll never stoop sae laigh and lift sae little. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 359 
 
 I'll never put the carl aboon the gentleman. 
 
 I'll never keep a dog and bark mysell. 
 
 I'll never live poor to die rich. 
 
 I'll never buy a blind bargain, or a pig in a pock. 
 
 I'll never brew drink to treat drunkards. 
 
 I'm o'er auld a cat to draw a strae before. 
 
 I'm no sae blind as I'm blear-eyed. 
 
 I'm flyting free with him. 
 
 I'm no sae scant o' clean pipes as to blaw with a brunt cutty. 
 
 I'm no every man's dog that whistles on me. 
 
 I'm neither sma' drink thirsty, nor gray bread hungry. 
 
 I may come to break an egg in your pouch. 
 
 I never liked a dry bargain. 
 
 I spake but ae word, gi'e me but ae strake. 
 
 I took him aft" the moor for God's sake, and he begins to bite the bairns. 
 
 I wad be scant o' claith to sole my hose with dockens. 
 
 I wadna ca' the king my cousin. 
 
 I wad rather see't than hear tell o't. 
 
 I wadna be deaved with your keckling for a' your eggs. 
 
 I winna make fish 0' ane and flesh o' anither. 
 
 I wish you readier meat than a running hare. 
 
 I wish you as muckle good o't as dogs get of grass. 
 
 If ae sheep lowp o'er the dyke a' the lave will follow. 
 
 If a lie could worry you, ye wad have been choked langsyne. 
 
 If a man's gawn down the brae ilk ane gi'es him a jundie. 
 
 If e'er I find his cart tumbling I'se gie't a put. 
 
 If he be not a souier he's a good shoe-clouter. 
 
 If I canna kep geese I'll kep gaislins. 
 
 If I canna do't by might I'll do't by flight. 
 
 If it can be nae better, it is well it is nae warse. 
 
 If it winna be a good shoe, let it gang down i' the heel. 
 
 If it serve me to wear, it may serve you to look to. 
 
 If marriages be made in heaven, ye have had few friends there. 
 
 If the de'il be laird ye'U be tenant. 
 
 If things were to be done twice ilka ane wad be wise. 
 
 If the de'il find you idle he'll set you to wark. 
 
 If we hae little gear we hae less care. 
 
 If ye dinna like what I can gie, 
 
 Tak what ye brought w'ye. 
 If ye can spend muckle, put the mair to the fire. 
 If ye brew weel ye'll drink the better. 
 If ye wad be a merchant fine. 
 
 Beware 0' auld horseg, herring, and wine. 
 If ye sell your purse to your wife, gi'e her your breeks to the bargain. 
 If you tell your servant your secret, you make him your master. 
 If ye had as little money as ye ha'e manners, ye wad be the poorest 
 man of your kin. 
 
36d Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 If ye do a wrang make amends. 
 
 If ye do nae ill dinna ill like. 
 
 If ye steal no my kale, break na my dyke. 
 
 If ye wad live for ever, wash the milk frae your liver. 
 
 If ye wad be haly, healthy, and wealthy, rise soon in the morning. 
 
 Ill bairns are best heard at hame. 
 
 Ill comes upon waur's back. 
 
 Ill counsel will gar a man stick his ain mare. 
 
 Ill doers are aye ill dreaders. 
 
 Ill deem'd haff hang'd. 
 
 Ill getting het water frae 'neath cauld ice. 
 
 Ill herds make fat foxes. 
 
 Ill news are aft o'er true. 
 
 Ill payers are aye good cravers. 
 
 Ill weeds wax weel. 
 
 Ill- won gear winna enrich the third heir. 
 
 Ill-won as ill ware'd. 
 
 It canna rain, but it pours. 
 
 It gangs in at the ae lug and out at the ither. 
 
 It is a bauch brewing that's no good in the newing. 
 
 It is a bare moor that ye gang through and no get a heather coo. 
 
 It is a good game that fills the wame. 
 
 It is a good tongue that says nae ill. 
 
 It is a hard task to be poor and leal. 
 
 It is an ill wind that blaws naebody good. 
 
 It is an ill pack that's no worth the custom. 
 
 It is an ill cause that the lawyer thinks shame o'. 
 
 It is a lamb at the up-taking, but an auld sheep ere ye get it aflF. 
 
 It is a mean mouse that has but ae hole. 
 
 It is a stinking praise comes out of ane's ain mouth. 
 
 It is a sin to lie on the de'il. 
 
 It is a shame to eat the cow and worry on the tail. 
 
 It is a sair field where a's slain. 
 
 It is a sooth dream that's seen waking. 
 
 It is a silly flock where the ewe bears the bell. 
 
 It is a sairy hen that canna scrape for ae bird. 
 
 It is a' tint that's done to auld fowk and bairns. 
 
 It is a' tint that fell by. 
 
 It is best ganging wi' a horse in ane's hand. 
 
 It is better to sup wi' a cutty than want a spoon. 
 
 It is by the head that the cow gie's milk. 
 
 It is clean about the wren's door where there is nought within. 
 
 It is dear coft honey that's licked aff a thorn. 
 
 It is eith crying yool on anither man's stool. 
 
 It is eith finding a stick to strike a messan. 
 
 It is fair in ha' when beards wag a'. 
 
 It is good to dread the warst, the best will be the welcomer. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 361 
 
 It is good to be good in your time, ye kenna how lang it may last. 
 It is good to be merry and wise, 
 
 Quoth the miller when he mouter'd twice. 
 It is good to have our cogue out when it rains kail. 
 It is good to hae twa strings to your bow. 
 It is hard to gar an auld mare leave flinging. 
 It is hard to sit in Rome and strive wi' the Pope. 
 It is hard for a greedy eye to ha'e a leal heart. 
 It is hard baith to have and want. 
 It is ill to be ca'd a thief and aye found piking. 
 It is ill crooking before cripples. 
 It is an ill kitchen that keeps the bread away. 
 It is ill to bring out o' the flesh what's bred i' the bane. 
 It is ill to lear the cat to the kirn. 
 It is ill taking corn frae geese. 
 It is ill bringing butt what's no ben. 
 It ill sets a haggis to be roasted. 
 It is ill meddling between the bark and the rhind. 
 It is ill making a silk purse o' a sow 's lug, or a touting-horn 0' a 
 
 tod's tail. 
 It is ill putting a blythe face on a wae heart. 
 It is kittle shooting at corbies and clergy. 
 It is kittle for the cheeks when the hurl-barrow gaes o'er the brig 
 
 o' the nose. 
 It is kittle to waken sleeping dogs. 
 It is lang or the de'il be found dead at a dyke side. 
 It is lang or ye cry shoo to an e^g. 
 It is muckle gars the tailor laugh, but souters girn aye. 
 It is needless to pour water on a drown'd mouse. 
 It is no the cowl that makes the friar. 
 It is nae sin to take a good price, but in gi'eing ill measure. 
 It is nae mair to see a woman greet than to see a goose gae barefoot. 
 It is nae play when ane laughs and anither greets. 
 It is no the way to grip a bird to fling your bonnet at it. 
 It is not what is she, but what has she ] 
 It is weel ware'd that wasters want. 
 It is weel that our fauts are not written on our face. 
 It is time enough to skreigh when ye're strucken. 
 It is time enough to make my bed when I'm gawn to lie down. 
 It is the best spoke in your wheel. 
 It keeps his nose at the grindstane. 
 It maun be true that a' fowk says. 
 It sets a sow weel to wear a saddle. 
 It was never for naething that the gled whistled. 
 It will be a het day gars you startle. 
 It will set his beard in a bleeze. 
 It will be a feather out of your wing. 
 
362 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Kail hains bread. 
 
 Kame sindle, kame sair. 
 
 Kamesters are aye creeshy. 
 
 Keek in the stowp was ne'er a good fellow. 
 
 Keep hame, and hanie will keep you. 
 
 Keep woo and it will be dirt, keep lint and it will be silk. 
 
 Keep out of his company that cracks of his cheatery. 
 
 Keep your ain fish guts to feed your ain sea maws. 
 
 Keep your kill-dry'd taunts to your mouldy-hair'd maidens. 
 
 Keep your tongue within your teeth. 
 
 Keep the staff in your ain hand. 
 
 Keep your breath to cool your crowdie. 
 
 Keep your mouth close and your een open. 
 
 Ken yoursell and your neighbours winna misken you. 
 
 Ken when to spend and when to spare, 
 
 And ye needna be bissy, and ye'll never be bare. 
 Kindness comes wi' will ; it canna be coft. 
 Kindness will creep where it canna gang. 
 Kindness canna stand aye on ae side. 
 Kings and bears aft worry their keepers. 
 Kissing gaes by favour. 
 
 Kiss ye me till I be white, and that will be an ill web to bleach. 
 Kythe in your ain colours that fowk may ken you. 
 
 Lacking breeds laziness, praises breed pith. 
 
 Laith to bed and laith to ri^e. 
 
 Lang mint, little dint. 
 
 Lang look'd for comes at last. 
 
 Lang or ye cut Falkland wood with a penknife. 
 
 Lang standing and little offering mak a poor priest. 
 
 Lang straes are nae motes. 
 
 Lang tarrying tines thanks. 
 
 Lang sports turn to earnest. 
 
 Langest at the fire soonest finds cauld. 
 
 Langer lasts year than yule. 
 
 Law's costly, tak a pint and 'gree. 
 
 Law-makers should na be law-breakers. 
 
 Laugh at leisure, ye may greet ere night. 
 
 Leal heart never lied. 
 
 Leave welcome behind ye. 
 
 Leave aff as lang as the play's good. 
 
 Learn young, learn fair. 
 
 Learn the cat to the kirn and she'll aye be lickin'. 
 
 Letna the plough stand to slay a mouse. 
 
 Let alane maks mony a lown. 
 
 Let a friend gang with a fae. 
 
 Let byganes be byganes, and fairplay in time to come. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 363 
 
 Let him play a spring on his ain fiddle. 
 
 Let him cool in the skin he het in. 
 
 Let him that's cauld blaw up the ingle. 
 
 Let his ain wand ding him. 
 
 Let it fa' upon the fey est. 
 
 Let the horns gang wi' the hide. 
 
 Let the mom come and the meat wi't. 
 
 Let the kirk stand in the kirk yard. 
 
 Let them laugh that win. 
 
 Let them care that come behind. 
 
 Lie for him and he'll swear for you. 
 
 Light suppers mak lang life days. 
 
 Light winning maks a heavy purse. 
 
 Lightly come lightly gane. 
 
 Light burdens break nae banes. 
 
 Like a Scots man ye take your mark frae an ill liour. 
 
 Likely lies aft in the mire, when unlikely wins thro'. 
 
 Lik'd gear is haff bought. 
 
 Like hens, ye rin aye to the heap. 
 
 Like the wife, that never cries for the ladle till the pot rins o'er. 
 
 Like the cat, fain fish wad ye eat, 
 
 But ye are laith to wet your feet. 
 Like the wife wi' the mony daughters, the best comes hind- 
 most. 
 Lippen to me but look to yoursell. 
 Little can a lang tongue lien. 
 Little kenn'd the less cared for. 
 Little gear the less care. 
 
 Little wats the ill-willy wife what a dinner may haud in't. 
 Little odds between a feast and a fu' wame. 
 Little said is soon mended, little gear's soon spended. 
 Little wit in the head maks muckle travel to the feet. 
 Little meddling maks fair parting. 
 Little may an auld nag do that mauna nicher. 
 Little dogs hae lang tails. 
 Little mense to the cheeks to bite aff the nose. 
 Live and let live. 
 
 Live upon love as lav'rocks do on leeks. 
 Look before ye lowp, ye'll ken the better how to light. 
 Lordships change manners. 
 Love and lordships like nae marrows. 
 Love and raw peas break the heart and burst the wame. 
 Love's as warm among cotters as courtiers. 
 Love me, love my dog. 
 Love me lightly, love me lang. 
 Love o'er het soonest cools. 
 Love o'erlooks mony fauts. 
 
364 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Maidens should be mild and meek, 
 
 Quick to hear and slow to speak. 
 Maidens' bairns are aye well bred. 
 
 Maidens' tochers and ministers' stipends are aye less than ca'd. 
 Mair by good luck than good guiding. 
 Mair haste the waur speed, 
 
 Quoth the tailor to the lang threed. 
 Make ae wrang step and down ye gae. 
 Mair hamely than welcome. 
 Mak the best of an ill bargain. 
 Mak your hay when the sun shines. 
 Malice is aye mindfu'. 
 Man propones but God dispones. 
 Marry in haste, repent at leisure. 
 Marry aboon match and get a master. 
 Mealy mou'd maidens stand lang at the mill. 
 Measure twice, cut but anes. 
 
 Meat feeds, and claith cleads, but manners mak the man. 
 Messengers shou'd neither be headed nor hanged. 
 Mickle fails that fools think. 
 Mickle corn mickle care. 
 Mickle wad aye hae mair. 
 Mickle spoken, part spilt. 
 Mickle power maks many faes. 
 Mickle may fa' between the cup and the lip. 
 Mickle water rins by that the miller wats not of. 
 Mickle pleasure some pain. 
 Mickle about ane, quoth the de'il to the collier. 
 Might o'ercomes right. 
 Mint ere ye strike. 
 Misterfou' fowk mauna be mensfu'. 
 Money is welcome in a dirten clout. 
 Money maks money. 
 Mony hands mak light wark. 
 Mony a ane kisses the bairn for love of the nurice. 
 Mony hounds may soon worry ae hare. 
 Mony heads are better than ane. 
 Mony purses baud friends lang together. 
 
 Mony fair promises at marriage make few at tocher good paying. 
 Mony lack what they hae in their pack. 
 Mony dogs die ere ye fa' heir. 
 Mony ane's coat saves his doubtlet. 
 Mony ways to kill a dog tho' ye dinna hang him. 
 Mony cooks ne'er made good kail. 
 Mony sma's mak ae mickle. 
 
 Mony a ane maks an errand to the ha' to bid the lady good-day. 
 Mony irons in the fire part maun cool. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 365 
 
 Mony aue opens their pack and sells nae wares. 
 
 Mony a ane speers the gate they ken fu' well. 
 
 Mouths are nae measure. 
 
 Mows may come to earnest. 
 
 Moyen does mickle, but money does mair. 
 
 Murder will out. 
 
 Must is a king's word. 
 
 My son's my son aye till he get him a wife, 
 
 My daughter's my daughter a' the days o' her life. 
 My niest neighbour's skaith is my present peril. 
 
 Nae butter sticks to his bread. 
 
 Nae fool to an auld fool. 
 
 Nae friend to a frieud in need. 
 
 Nae fleeing without wings. 
 
 Nae great loss but there's some sma' advantage. 
 
 Nae langer pipe nae langer dance. 
 
 Nae man has a tack o' his life. 
 
 Nae man can thrive unless his wife let him. 
 
 Nae man can live langer in peace than his neighbour likes. 
 
 Nae mair haste than good speed. 
 
 Nae safe wading in unco waters. 
 
 Nae weather's ill if the wind be still. 
 
 Nathing freer than a gift. 
 
 Nathing comes fairer to light than what has been lang hidden. 
 
 Nathing's baulder than a blind mare. 
 
 Nathing enters into a closs hand. 
 
 Nathing sae crouse as a new washen louse. 
 
 Nathing's ill to be done when will's at hame. 
 
 Nathing to be done in haste but gripping of fleas. 
 
 Nathing venture nathing win. 
 
 Nane ferlies mair than fools. 
 
 Nane sae weel but he hopes to be better. 
 
 Nane can mak a bore but ye'll find a pin till't. 
 
 Nane can play the fool sae weel as a wise man. 
 
 Narrow gather'd widely spent. 
 
 Nearest the heart nearest the mouth. 
 
 Nearer the night the mair beggars. 
 
 Necessity has nae law. 
 
 Need makes men of craft. 
 
 Need will gar an auld wife trot and a naked man rin. 
 
 Neither sae sinfu' as to sink, nor sae haly as to saunt. 
 
 New lords have new laws. 
 
 Never a barrel better herrings. 
 
 Never break out of kind to gar your friends ferly at you. 
 
 Never draw your dirk when a dunt will do't. 
 
 Never fin' faut with my shoon unless ye pay my souter. 
 
366 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Never gae to the de'il wi' a dish-clout about your head. 
 
 Never let on you, but laugh in your ain sleeve. 
 
 Never meet never pay. 
 
 Never marry a widow unless her first man was hang'd. 
 
 Never put a sword in a wud man's hand. 
 
 Never put the plough before the owsen. 
 
 Never quat certainty for hope. 
 
 Never o'er auld to learn. 
 
 Never scaud your lips in other fowk's kail. 
 
 Never seek a wife till ye ken what to do wi' her. 
 
 Never show your teeth unless ye can bite. 
 
 Never strive against the stream. 
 
 Never venture never win. 
 
 Nineteen nay-says of a maiden are haff a grant. 
 
 Now's now, and yule's in winter. 
 
 Nobility without ability is like a pudding without suet. 
 
 O'er braw a purse to put a plack in. 
 
 O'er mickle of ae thing is good for naething. 
 
 O'er mickle hameliness spoils good courtesy. 
 
 O'er mickle cookery spoils the brochan. 
 
 O'er mickle loose leather about your chafts. 
 
 O'er narrow counting culzies nae kindness. 
 
 O'er rackless may repent. 
 
 O'er strong meat for your weak stamach. 
 
 Of a' sorrow a fu' sorrow's best. 
 
 Of a little take a little, when there's nought take a'. 
 
 Of bairns' gifts ne'er be fain, 
 
 Nae sooner they give but they seek them again. 
 Of ill debtors men get aiths. 
 Of twa ills choose the least. 
 Open confession is good for the saul. 
 Our sins and debts are aften mair than we think of. 
 Out of debt out of danger. 
 Out of the peat pot into the gutter. 
 Out of men's blessing into God's sun. 
 
 Pay him in his ain coin. 
 
 Penny wise and pound foolish. 
 
 Pennyless sauls may pine in purgatory. 
 
 Placks and bawbees grow pounds. 
 
 Play's good while it is play. 
 
 Please your kimmer and ye'll easily guide your gossip. 
 
 Plenty makes dainty. 
 
 Poor fowk's friends soon misken them. 
 
 Poor fowk are fain o' little. 
 
 Poortith parts good company. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 367 
 
 Poortith \vi' patience is less painfu'. 
 
 Possession is eleven points of the law. 
 
 Pride and grace dwell never in ae place. \ 
 
 Pride ne'er leaves its master till he get a fa'. 
 
 Pride and sweerness tak niickle uphadding. 
 
 Provision in season makes a bien liouse. 
 
 Put a coward to his mettle and he'll fight the de'il. 
 
 Put twa pennies in a purse and they'll creep together. 
 
 Put the saddle on the right horse. 
 
 Put your hand nae farther than your sleeve will reach. 
 
 Put your hand twice to your bonnet for anes to your pouch. 
 
 Put your finger in the fire and say it was your fortune. 
 
 Quality without quantity is little thought of. 
 Quick at meat quick at wark. 
 Quick, for you'll never be cleanly. 
 Quick returns mak rich merchants. 
 
 Reckless youth maks a ruefu' eild. 
 
 Raise nae mair de'ils than ye're able to lay. 
 
 Rather spill your joke than tine your friend. 
 
 Red wood makes good spindles. : 
 
 Remove an auld tree and it will wither. 
 
 Remember, man, and keep in mind, 
 
 A faithfu' friend is hard to find. 
 Rich fowk hae rowth of friends. 
 Right mixture maks good mortar. 
 Right wrangs nae man. 
 Rob Peter to pay Paul. 
 Robin that herds on the height, 
 
 Can be as blythe as Sir Robert the knight. 
 Rome was not a' bigged in ae day. 
 Roose the ford as ye find it. 
 Roose the fair day at e'en. 
 Royet lads may make sober men. 
 Rue and thyme grow baith in ae garden. 
 Rule youth well, for eild will rule itsell. 
 
 Sae mony men sae mony minds. 
 
 Sain yoursell frae the de'il and the laird's bairns. 
 
 Sair era vers are aye ill payers. 
 
 Satan reproving sin. 
 
 Saw wheat in dirt and rye in dust. 
 
 Say weel's good, but do weel is better. 
 
 Scant of grace hears lang preachings. 
 
 Scant of cheeks makes a lang nose. 
 
 Scorn comes commonly wi' skaith. 
 
368 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Seeing's believing a' the world over. 
 See for love and buy for money. 
 Seek your saw where ye get your ail, 
 
 And beg your barm where ye buy your ale. 
 Seek mickle and get something, seek little and get nought. 
 Second thoughts are best. 
 Send you to the sea ye'll no get saut water. 
 Serve yoursell till your bairns come to age. 
 Set a beggar on horseback he'll ride to the de'il. 
 Set that down on the back side of your count-book. 
 Set a knave to grip a knave. 
 Shame's past the shade o' your hair. 
 Sharp stomachs mak short graces. 
 Shoal waters make maist din. 
 She that gangs to the well wi' ill will. 
 
 Either the pig breaks or the water will spill. 
 She looks as if butter wadna melt in her mou'. 
 She'll keep her ain side o' the hoose,'and gang up and down in yours. 
 She hands up her head like a hen drinking water. 
 She that taks gifts, hersell she sells. 
 
 And she that gi'es them does nought else. 
 She's better than she's bonny. 
 Shod in the cradle and barefoot on the stibble. 
 Short fowk are soon angry, their heart's soon at their mouth. 
 Sic man sic master, sic priest sic offering. 
 Sic as ye gi'e sic will ye get. 
 Sic reek as is therein comes out o' the lum. 
 Silence grips the mouse. 
 Silks and satins put out the kitchen fire. 
 Sindle seen soon forgotten. 
 Slaw at meat slaw at wark. 
 Slander leaves a slur. 
 Smooth waters run deep. 
 Sma' fish is better than nae fish. 
 Soon enough to cry chuck when it is out of the shell. 
 Soon ripe soon rotten, soon het soon cauld. 
 Soon enough if well enough. 
 Some hae hap and some stick in the gap. 
 Sorrow is soon eneuch when it conies. 
 Sorrow and an ill life make soon an auld wife. 
 Sorrow and ill weather come unsent for. 
 Spare when ye're young and spend when ye're auld. 
 Speak the truth and shame the de'il. 
 Spend and God will send, spare and aye be bare. 
 Speak good o' pipers, your faither was a fiddler. 
 Speak o' the de'il and he'll appear. 
 Spilt ale is waur than water. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 369 
 
 Standers-by see mair than the gamesters. 
 
 Standing dubs gather dirt. 
 
 Stay nae langer in your friend's house than ye are welcome. 
 
 Strike as ye feed, and that's but soberly. 
 
 Strike the iron as lang as it is het. 
 
 Stuffing hands out storms. 
 
 Sudden friendship sure repentance. 
 
 Supp'd out wort was ne'er good ale. 
 
 Surfeits slay mair than swords. 
 
 Some ha'e a hantle faiits, ye are only a ne'er-do-weel. 
 
 Sour plumbs, quoth the tod when he couldna climb the tree. 
 
 Souters and tailors count hours. 
 
 Souters shou'dna gae ayont their last. 
 
 Souters shou'dna be sailors that can neither steer nor row. 
 
 Spare at the spigot and let out at the bung. 
 
 Spae well and hae well. 
 
 Speer at Jock thief if I be a leal man. 
 
 Speak when you're spoken to and drink when you're drunken to. 
 
 Stown dints are sweetest. 
 
 Sturt follows a' extremes. 
 
 Sturt pays nae debt. 
 
 Swear by your burnt shins. 
 
 Sweet at the on-taking, sour in the aflf-putting. 
 
 Sweer to bed and sweer up in the morning. 
 
 Spit on a stane, and it will be wet at last. 
 
 Stay and drink of your ain browst. 
 
 Sticking gangs na by strength, but by right guiding o' the gullie. 
 
 Tak it a' and pay the merchant. 
 
 Tak a spring of your fiddle, and dance when ye have done. 
 
 Tak the bit and the buffet wi't. 
 
 Tak a pint and gree, the law's costly. 
 
 Tak your ain will and then ye'll no die o' the pet. 
 
 Tak time ere time be tint. 
 
 Tak your venture as mony good ship has done. 
 
 Tak your thanks to feed your cat. 
 
 Tak wit in your anger. 
 
 Tak care o' the man that God has marked. 
 
 Tak a hair o' the dog that bit you. 
 
 Tak part of the pelf when the pack's a dealing. 
 
 Tak a man by his word and a cow by her horn, 
 
 Tak me not up before I fa'. 
 
 Tak nae mair on your back than you're able to bear. 
 
 Tak your will, you're wise enough. 
 
 Tak up the next ye find. 
 
 Tam Tell-truth is nae courtier. 
 
 Tell nae tales out 0' school. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Tell not your fae when your foot's sleeping. 
 
 That's but ae doctor's opinion. 
 
 That's for the father but no for the son. 
 
 That's for that and butter's for fish. 
 
 That's my tale, where's yours ? 
 
 That's the piece a step-bairn never (^at. 
 
 That which God will give, the de'ii canna reeve. 
 
 The auld aver may die waiting for new grass. 
 
 The auld dog maun die in somebody's aught. 
 
 The bairn speaks in the field what he hears at the fireside. 
 
 The bird maun flichter that flees wi' ae wing. 
 
 The bird that can sing and winna sing shou'd be gart sing. 
 
 The best is aye best cheap. 
 
 The better day the better the deed. 
 
 The book o' maybe's is very braid. 
 
 The banes o' a great estate are worth the picking. 
 
 The banes bear the beef hame. 
 
 The blind man's peck shou'd be well measured. 
 
 The cow may want her ain tail yet. 
 
 The cure may be warse than the disease. 
 
 The cow that's first up gets the first o' the dew. 
 
 The de'il bides his day. 
 
 The de'il was sick, the de'il a monk wou'd be, 
 
 The de'il grew hale, syne de'il a monk was he. 
 The de'il's aye good to his ain. 
 The de'il's bairns hae the de'il's luck. 
 The day has een and the night hears. 
 The de'il's aye busy with his ain. 
 The de'il will take little ere he want a'. 
 The de'il drives aye his hogs to an ill market.. 
 The de'il does na aye show his cloven cloots. 
 The de'il's aye good to beginners. 
 The e'ening red and the morning gray. 
 
 Is a good sign of a fair day. 
 The farthest way about is aft the nearest gate hame. 
 The foremost hound grips the hare. 
 The foot at the cradle and the hand at the reel, 
 
 Are signs of a wife that means to do weel. 
 The farther in the deeper. 
 The first dish is best eaten. 
 The grace o' a gray bannock is in the baking o't. 
 The good or ill hap o' a good or ill life, 
 
 Is the good or ill choice o' a good or ill wife. 
 The gray mare may be the best horse. 
 The greatest burthens are not the maist gainfu'. 
 The gravest fish is an oyster. 
 
 The gravest bird is an owl ; 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 371 
 
 The gravest beast is an ass, 
 
 And the gravest man is a fool. 
 The greatest clerks are no the wisest men. 
 The happy man canna be berried. 
 The hen's eggs gang to the ha', 
 
 To bring the goose's egg awa'. 
 The higher up the greater fa'. 
 The higher the hill the laigher the grass. 
 The hurt man writes wi' steel on marble stane. 
 The king's errand may come in the cadger's gate. 
 The lazy man's the beggar's brother. 
 The lucky pennyworth sells soonest. 
 The langest day will have an end. 
 
 The mother of a' mischief is nae bigger than a midge's wing. 
 The mair cost the mair honour. 
 The mawt is aboon the meal wi' him. 
 The mair noble the mair humble. 
 The mother's breath is aye sweet. 
 The master's eye makes the horse fat. 
 The mair mischief the better sport. 
 The name o' an honest woman's muckle worth. 
 The poor man's aye put to the warst. 
 
 The reek o' my ain house is better than the fire 0' my neighbour's. 
 The strongest horse lowps the dyke. 
 The still sow eats up a' the draff. 
 
 The stoNvp that gangs aft to the well comes hame broken at last. 
 The subject's love is the king's life guard. 
 The smith's mare and the souter's wife are aye warst shod. 
 The thing that's done is no to do. 
 The thing that's fristed is not forgi'en. 
 The thing that lies not in your gate, breaks not your shins. 
 The thrift of you was the death of your good-dame. 
 The tod ne'er sped better than when he gaed on his ain errand. 
 The tod's whelps are ill to tame. 
 The tree does na fa' at the first strake. 
 The water will never rob the widdy. 
 The warse luck now the better another time. 
 The weakest gangs to the wa'. 
 The worth 0' a thing is best ken'd by the want o't. 
 There is mony a true tale tauld in a jest. 
 There is nane sae blind as them that winna see. 
 There is naething ill said that's no ill tane. 
 There is nae sport where there is neither auld fowk nor bairns. 
 There was aye some water where the stirk was drown'd. 
 There was never enough where naething was left. 
 There was never a silly Jocky but there was as silly a Jenny. 
 There was never a thrifty wife with a sheet about her head. 
 
372 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 There is skill in gruel making. 
 
 There is nae fence against a flail. 
 
 There is a time to gley and a time to look straight. 
 
 There is a great differ amang market days. 
 
 There is little wit in his pow that lights the candle at the low. 
 
 There is an end o' an auld sang. 
 
 There is a tough sinew in an auld wife's heel. 
 
 There is aye life in a living man. 
 
 There is an act in the laird o' Grant's court, that no aboon eleven 
 
 speak at anes. 
 There are mair ways to the wood than ane. 
 There are mair working days than life days. 
 There is ae day of reckoning and another of payment. 
 There came never ill after good advisement. 
 There is a sliddery stane afore the ha' door. 
 There's a difference between will ye buy ] and will ye sell ? 
 There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out o't. 
 There is a great difference between fenn and farewell. 
 There is a hole in the house. 
 There is life in a throssle as lang as she cheeps. 
 There is little for the rake after the shool. 
 They are well guided that God guides. 
 They are aye good that are far away. 
 
 They are lightly berried that have b! their ain. ^ 
 
 They are sad rents that come in with tears. 
 They complain early that complain o' their kail. 
 They have need of a cannie cook that have butae egg to their dinner. 
 They loo me for little that hate me for nought. 
 They never saw great dainties that think a haggis a feast. 
 They shou'd please the goodwife that wou'd win the goodman. 
 They speak of my drinking that never think of my drouth. 
 They that get the word o' soon rising may lie in their bed a' day. 
 They that laugh in the morning may greet ere night. 
 They that give you hinder you to buy. 
 They that live langest fetch wood farthest. 
 They that see your head see not your height. 
 They that hae rowth of butter may lay it thick on their scone. 
 They were scant o' bairns that brought you up. 
 They were never fain that fidged, nor fu' that lick'd dishes. 
 They wist as well that didna speer. 
 
 They were never first at the wark that bid God speed the wark. 
 They never gae with the speet but they gat with the ladle. 
 Thistles are a salad for an ass. 
 Three is aye sonsy. 
 
 Three can keep a secret if twa be away. 
 Time o' day to find the nest when the birds are flown. 
 Time tint is ne'er to be found. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 373 
 
 Time and thinking tame the toughest grief. 
 
 Time and tide will tarry for nae man. 
 
 Time tries a'. 
 
 Tine heart and a's gane. 
 
 Tine book, tine grace. 
 
 Tine thimble, tine thrift. 
 
 Touch nae me on the sair heel. 
 
 Tramp on a snail and she'll shoot out her horns. 
 
 True blue will never stain. 
 
 Truth and honesty keep the crown o' the causey. 
 
 True love kyths in time of need. 
 
 Try your friend ere you need him. 
 
 Try before you trust. 
 
 Twa hungry meals make the third a glutton. 
 
 Twa blacks make na ae white. 
 
 Twa things ane shou'd not be angry at, what he can help and what 
 
 he canna help. 
 Twa fools in a house are a couple ower mony. 
 Twa words maun gang to that bargain. 
 Twa wits are better than ane. 
 That bowt came never out of your bag. 
 The back and the belly bauds every ane busy. 
 The black ox ne'er trod on your taes. 
 The cat wou'd fain fish eat. 
 
 But she is laith to weet her feet. 
 The de'il's good when he's pleas'd. 
 The father buys, the son biggs, 
 
 The oye sells, and his son thiggs. 
 The greedy man and the gielainger are well met. 
 The greatest tochers make not the greatest testaments. 
 The kirk's muckle, but ye may say mass in the end o't. 
 The laird may be laird and need his hind's help. 
 The man may eithly tine a stot that canna count his kinsh. 
 The mair the merrier, the fewer the better cheer. 
 The meal cheap and the shoon dear, 
 
 What souters' wives like weel to hear. 
 The pains o'ergang the profit. 
 The poor man's shilling is but a penny. 
 The scholar may waur the master. 
 The simple man's the beggar's brother. 
 The warst warld that ever was, some maun won. 
 The weeds o'ergrow the corn. 
 The warld is bound to nae man. 
 The unsonsy fish gets the unlucky bait. 
 There is mair knavery amang kirk men than there is honesty amang 
 
 courtiers. 
 There is a measure in a' things. 
 
374 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch* 
 
 There is muckle to do when burghers ride. 
 
 There is mair room without than within. 
 
 There is nae remedy for fear but cut aff the head. 
 
 There was never a fair word in flyting. 
 
 There is steel in the needle point tho' little o't. 
 
 There are twa enoughs, and he has gotten ane of them. 
 
 There are mair married than good house hadders. 
 
 There's a bonny reason wi' a rag about the foot o't. 
 
 There came never sic a gloff to a daw's heart. 
 
 There is fey blood in your head. 
 
 There grows nae grass at the cross. 
 
 There is little to sew when tailors are true. 
 
 They are not a' saints that get haly water. 
 
 They 'gree like butter and mells. 
 
 They may ken by your beard what has been on your board. 
 
 They never beuk a good cake but may bake an ill ane. 
 
 They that see you a' day winna break the house for you at night. 
 
 They that hain at their dinner will hae the mair to their supper. 
 
 They that burn you for a witch lose a' their coals. 
 
 They tliat lie down for love shou'd rise for hunger. 
 
 They that eat till they sweat and work till they're cauld, 
 
 Sic servants are fitter to hang than to hald. 
 They that bourd with cats maun count upo' scarts. 
 They are eith hindered that are not very furdersome. 
 Twa dogs were striving about a bane, and the third ran awa' wi't. 
 Twa conveniences sindle times meet, 
 
 What's good for the plant is ill for the peat. 
 Tarry breeks pay nae fraught. 
 Tell your gleyd good-dame that. 
 That's a tee'd ba'. 
 That's a tale o' twa drinks. 
 
 The bag to the auld stent, and the belt to the yule hole. 
 The cause is good, and the word fa' on. 
 The death of ae bairn winna skail a house. 
 The dorty dame may fa' in the dirt 
 The e'ening brings a' hame. 
 
 The flesh is aye sairest that's farthest frae the bane. 
 The gait gi'es a good milking, but dings it down wi' her feet 
 The langer we live the mair ferlies we see. 
 The neist time ye dance tent wha ye take by the hand. 
 The piper wants muckle that wants his nether chafts. 
 The poor man pays for a'. 
 The thacker said to his man, 
 
 Let us raise this ladder, if we can. 
 The thrift of you and the woo of a dog wou'd make a braw web. 
 The tod never fares better than when he's bann'd. 
 There was never a good town but there was a dub at the end o't 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 375 
 
 There was never a cake but it had its maik. 
 
 There is little mair between the poor and the rich but a piece of an 
 
 ill year. 
 They have been born as poor as you that have come to a pouchf u' o' 
 
 green pease ere they died. 
 They that drink langest live langest. 
 Thoughts beguiled the lady. 
 
 Thoughts are free, tho' I mayna say mickle, I can yerk at the thinking. 
 Till other tinklers ill met ye 'gree. 
 Touch a gawd horse on the back and he'll fling. 
 Tit for tat, as the auld wife said when she f — — -d at the thunder. 
 Trot father, trot mother, how can the foal amble ] 
 Twine tow, your minny was a good spinner. 
 
 Untimeous spurring spills the steed. 
 
 Unseen, unrued. 
 
 Under water dearth, under snaw bread. 
 
 Up hill spare me, down hill take tent to thee. 
 
 Up starts a carle and gather'd good. 
 
 And thence came a' our gentle blood. 
 Use makes perfytuess. 
 
 Wad ye gar us trow that the moon's made 0' green cheese, or that 
 
 spade-shafts bear plumbs 1 
 Wage will get a page. 
 
 Wae's the wife that wants the tongue, but well's the man that gets her. 
 Want of wit is waur than want of wealth. 
 War makes thieves, and peace hangs them. 
 Wark bears witness of wha well does. 
 Wealth gars wit waver. 
 Weans maun creep ere they gang. 
 Well kens the mouse when the cat's out o' the house. 
 Well's him and wae's him that has a bishop in his kin. 
 Welcome is the best dish in the kitchen. 
 Well worth a' that gars the plough draw. 
 Well is that well does. 
 Were it not for hope heart wad break. 
 
 We'll never ken the worth of the water till the well gaes dry. 
 We can drink of the burn when we canna bite of the brae. 
 We'll meet ere hills meet. 
 
 We can live without our kin, but no without our neighbours. 
 We'll bark oursells ere we buy dogs sae dear. 
 We canna baith sup and blaw. 
 We maun live by the living, but no by the dead. 
 We are bound to be honest and no to be rich. 
 We may ken your meaning by your mumping. 
 Wedding and ill wintering tame baith man and beast. 
 
376 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 We are aye to lear as lang as we live. 
 
 We can poind for debt, but no for unkindness. 
 
 We may ken your eilk by the runkles o' your horn. 
 
 Wee things fley cowards. 
 
 Wha wats wha may keep sheep another day. 
 
 Wha uses perils, perish shall. 
 
 What ye win at that, ye may lick afF a het girdle. 
 
 What better is the house that the daw rises soon. 
 
 Wha can baud what will away % 
 
 Wha comes aftener and brings you less 1 
 
 Wha daur bell the cat 1 
 
 Wha can help misluck ? 
 
 Wha canna gi'e will little get. 
 
 What the eye sees na the heart rues na. 
 
 What's nane o' my profit shall be nane o' my peril. 
 
 What if the lift fa', then ye may gather lav'rocks. 
 
 What's gotten o'er the de'il's back will gang away under hifi belly. 
 
 What raks the feud where the friendship dow not. 
 
 What winna do by might do by flight. 
 
 What's my case the day may be yours the morn. 
 
 What's waur than ill luck ? 
 
 What may be done at ony time will be done at nae time. 
 
 What puts that in your head that didna put the sturdy wi't ? 
 
 What need a rich man be a thief 1 
 
 What said Pluck ? the greater knave the greater luck. 
 
 What may be, may not be. 
 
 What canna be cured maun be endured. 
 
 When ae door steeks anither opens. 
 
 When a' men speaks nae man hears. 
 
 When drink's in wit's out. 
 
 When friends meet hearts warm. 
 
 When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 
 Where was a' our gentry than % 
 When my head's down my house is theeked. 
 When the tod preaches tak tent o' the lambs. 
 When thieves reckon, leal fowk comes to their gear. 
 When the bags are fou the dron gets up. 
 When the tod wins to the wood he cares not how many keek for his 
 
 tail. 
 When the cup's fu* carry it even. 
 When poverty comes in at the door friendship flies out of the 
 
 window. 
 When lairds break carles get land. 
 When a fool finds a horse-shoe, 
 
 He thinks aye the like to do. 
 When a' fruit fa's, then welcome haws. 
 When I'm dead make me a cawdel. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 377 
 
 AVhen ilka ain gets their ain the thief will get the widdy. 
 
 When a ewe's drown'd she's dead. 
 
 When the goodman drinks to the goodwife, a' wad he well. 
 
 When the goodwife drinks to the goodman, a' is well. 
 
 When the heart's fou of lust the mouth's fou of leasing. 
 
 When your neighbour's house is in danger take care 0' your ain. 
 
 When you are served a' the geese are water'd. 
 
 When wine sinks words swim. 
 
 When the barn's fu' you may thresh before the door. 
 
 When ye're gaun and coming the gate's no toom. 
 
 When the heart's fu' the tongue will speak. 
 
 When he dies for age ye may quake for fear. 
 
 When ye are weel, hand yoursell sae. 
 
 When the well's fu' it will rin o'er. 
 
 When the pot's o'er f u', it will boil o'er and bleeze in the ingle. 
 
 When the steed's stown, steek the stable door. 
 
 Where the buck's bound, there he maun bleet. 
 
 Where the deer's slain some of the blood will lie. 
 
 Where the dyke's laighest it is eithest to lowp. 
 
 Where there is o'er mickle courtesy there is little kindness. 
 
 Where there is naething the king tines his right. 
 
 Where drums beat laws are dumb. 
 
 Where the pig's broken let the sherds lie. 
 
 Where there are gentles there is aye aff-fawing. 
 
 Where gat ye that, gif a body may speer 1 
 
 I gat it where it was, and where leal fowk get gear. 
 Where will you get a park to keep your yeld kye in ] 
 Where the heart gangs let the tail follow. 
 While the grass grows the steed starves. 
 Whitely things are aye tender. 
 Whom God will help nane can hinder. 
 Will a fool's feather in my cap gar my pot play ? 
 Wipe wi' the water and wash wi' the towel. 
 Wise men may be whilly'd wi' wiles. 
 Wives and wind are necessary ills. 
 Widdy baud thy ain ! 
 Wilfu' waste makes waefu' want. 
 Wiles help weak fowk. 
 Will and wit strive wi' ye ! 
 Win't and wear't. 
 
 Winter thunder bodes summer hunger. 
 Wink at wee fauts, your ain are muckle. 
 Wishers and waddlers were never good house banders. 
 Wit bought makes fowk wise. 
 Wit bought is worth twa for nought. 
 Woman's wark's never done. 
 Women and bairns lein what they ken not. 
 
37^ Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 "Wood iu a wilderness, moss on a mountain, 
 
 And wit in a poor man are little thought on. 
 Words are but win, but dunts are out o' season. 
 Woo sellers ken aye woo buyers. 
 Work for nought makes lowk dead sweer. 
 Wrang has nae warrant. 
 Wrang count is nae payment. 
 Wad ye gar me trow that my head's cow'd when ne'er a shear's 
 
 come on't ? 
 Wae to the wame that has a wilfu' master. 
 Wae's them that has the cat's dish and she aye mewting. 
 Water stowps had nae ale. 
 Wealth in the widow's house, kail but saut. 
 Well worth a' good takens. 
 We are as mony Johnstons as ye are Jardines. 
 We hounds slew the hare, quoth the bleer'd messan. 
 Wha invited you to the roast 1 
 Wha can court but cost. 
 Wha made you a gentleman that didiia cut the lugs frae your liead 
 
 to ken you by. 
 What ye do when you're drunk ye may pay for when you're dry. 
 What ye want up and down ye have hither and yont. 
 
 Ye breed of the tod, ye grow gray before ye grow good. 
 
 Ye breed of the miller's dog, ye lick your lips ere the pock be opened. 
 
 Ye breed of Macfarlane's geese, ye have mair mind o' your play 
 
 than your meat. 
 Ye breed of the cow's tail, you grow backward. 
 Ye breed of nettle kail and cock lairds, ye need muckle service. 
 Ye breed of the gowk, ye have never a rhyme but ane. 
 Ye breed of ill weather, ye come uiisent for. 
 Ye breed of Saughton swine, your neb's ne'er out of an ill turn. 
 Ye breed of auld maidens, ye look sae high. 
 Ye breed of the chapman, ye're aye to handsell. 
 Ye breed of our laird, ye'll do nae right nor take nae wrang. 
 Ye breed of good mawt, ye're lang a-coming. 
 Ye breed of the beggars, ye're never out of your gate. 
 Ye breed of the butcher, that seeks his knife when it is in his teeth. 
 Ye breed of the leek, ye have a white head and a green taiL 
 Ye breed of Lady Mary, when ye're good ye're ower good. 
 Ye breed of the miller's daughter, that speer'd what tree groats grew on. 
 Ye breed of the goodman's mither, ye're aye in the gate. 
 Ye breed of the witches, ye can do nae good to yoursell. 
 Ye breed o the herd's wife, ye busk again e'en. 
 Ye breed of the baxters, ye loo your neighbour's browst better than 
 
 your ain batch. 
 Ye crack crously with your bonnet on. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs. 379 
 
 Ye cut before the point. 
 
 Ye come a day after the fair. 
 
 Ye cut laiig whangs out o' other fowks' leather. 
 
 Ye come aftener with the rake than the shool. 
 
 Ye caniia make a silk purse of a sow's lug. 
 
 Ye canna see wood for trees. 
 
 Ye can never fare well but ye cry roast meat. 
 
 Ye came a clipping time. 
 
 Ye cangle about uncost kids. 
 
 Ye canna preach out 0' your ain poupit. 
 
 Ye canna get leave to thrive for thrang. 
 
 Ye ca' hardest at the nail that drives fastest. 
 
 Ye canna do but ye ower do. 
 
 Ye drive the plough afore the owseu. 
 
 Ye dinna ken where a blessing may light. 
 
 Ye drew not sae well when my mare was in the mire. 
 
 Ye feik it awa' like an auld wife baking. 
 
 Ye gat your will in your first wife's time, and ye'se no want it now. 
 
 Ye glowr'd at the moon and fell on the middin'. 
 
 Ye gang about by Lanark, for fear Linton dogs bite you. 
 
 Ye glowr like a wild-cat out o' a whin-bush. 
 
 Ye get o'er muckle o' your will, and that's no good for you. 
 
 Ye gae far about seeking the nearest. 
 
 Ye have run lang on little ground. 
 
 Ye have aye mind of your meat though ye have ill luck til't. 
 
 Ye have a ready mouth for a ripe cherry. 
 
 Ye have a saw for ilka sair. 
 
 Ye have brought the pack to the pins. 
 
 Ye have given the wolf the wedder to keep. 
 
 Ye have tied a knot with your tongue that ye canna loose with a' 
 
 your teeth. 
 Ye have been bred about a mill, ye have mouped a' your manners. 
 Ye have o'er foul feet to come "sae far benn. 
 Ye have a stawk of carle hemp in you. 
 Ye have gotten a revel'd hesp o't. 
 Ye have ae crap for a' corn. 
 Ye have tane the measure of his foot. 
 Ye have o'er muckle loose leather about your chafts. 
 Ye have tint your ain stomach and found a tike's. 
 Ye have put a toom spoon in my mouth. 
 Ye have fasted lang, and worried on a midge. 
 Ye have tint the tongue 0' your trump. 
 Ye have staid lang, and brought little wi' ye. 
 Ye have gi'en baith the sound thump and the loud skirl. 
 Ye have aye a foot out of the langle. 
 Ye have tane't upon you as the wife did the dancing. 
 Ye have good manners, but ye bear them not aye about wi' you. 
 
380 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 Ye have the wrang sow by the lug. 
 
 Ye ken naething but milk and bread when it is mool'd in to you. 
 
 Ye ken what drinkers dree. 
 
 Ye kenna wha may cool your kail yet. 
 
 Ye live at the lug o' the law. 
 
 Yelping curs will raise mastiffs. 
 
 Ye live on love as lav'rocks do on leeks. 
 
 Ye'll neither dance nor hand the candle. 
 
 Yell get nae mair of the cat but the skin. 
 
 Ye look like let me be. 
 
 Ye look like a Lochaber-axe new come frae the grindstane. 
 
 Ye'll no sell your hen on a rainy day. 
 
 Ye'll get as mickle for ae wish this year as fortwa fern year. 
 
 Ye'll gar me seek the needle where I didna stick it. 
 
 Ye'll never cast saut on his tail. 
 
 Ye look like a Lammermoor lion. 
 
 Ye'll let naething be tint for want 0' seeking. 
 
 Ye'll no harry yoursell wi' your ain hands. 
 
 Ye look like the de'il in daylight. 
 
 Ye look liker a thief than a bishop. 
 
 Ye'll ne'er make a mark in your testament by that bargain. 
 
 Ye'll let little gae by you unless it be the swallow. 
 
 Ye may tine the father seeking the son. 
 
 Ye may drive the de'il into a wife, but ye'll ne'er ding him out of her. 
 
 Ye may be greedy, but ye're no greening. 
 
 Ye may gang farther and fare warse. 
 
 Ye may be heard where ye're no seen. 
 
 Ye may gang thro' a' Egypt without a pass. 
 
 Ye may hae a good memory, but your judgment winna gi'e mickle. 
 
 Ye maun take the will for the deed. 
 
 Ye maunna think to win thro' the warld on a feather-bed. 
 
 Ye maunna be mealy-mou'd. 
 
 Ye mete my pease by your ain peck. ' 
 
 You look like a runner, quoth the de'il to the lobster. 
 
 Ye'll be made up at the sign o' the wind. 
 
 Ye'll play at sma' game before ye stand out. 
 
 Ye'll beguile nane but them that lippens to you. 
 
 Ye'll mend when ye grow better. 
 
 Ye'll never be sae auld with sae mickle honesty. 
 
 Ye never saw green cheese but your e'en reel'd. 
 
 Ye never want a good whittle at your belt. 
 
 Ye never heard a fisher cry stinking fish. 
 
 Ye needna think shame to tak it, your teeth's langer than your beard. 
 
 Ye put at the cart that's aye ganging. 
 
 Ye're as daft as ye're days auld. 
 
 Ye're o'er auld farran to be fley'd for bogles. 
 
 Ye're a good seeker but an ill finder. 
 
A Collection of Scotch Proverbs, 381 
 
 Ye ride a bootless errand. 
 
 Ye're like the wife wi' the mony daughters, the best comes last. 
 
 Ye're nae chicken for a' your cheeping. 
 
 Ye're come o' blood, and sae is a pudding. 
 
 Ye're come to a peel'd egg. 
 
 Ye're a widdy-fou against hanging time. 
 
 Ye're as lang a tuning your pipes as ane wad play a spring. 
 
 Ye're good enough but ye're no braw new. 
 
 Ye're no sae poor as ye peep. 
 
 Ye're well away if ye bide, and we're well quat. 
 
 Ye're of sae mony minds, ye'U never be married. 
 
 Ye're come to fetch fire. 
 
 Ye're sae weel in your wooing ye watna where to wed. 
 
 Ye're never pleased fu' nor fasting. 
 
 Ye're black about the mouth for want of making of. 
 
 Ye're welcome, but ye winna win ben. 
 
 Ye're unco good and ye'll grow fair. 
 
 Ye're sair fash'd h adding naething together. 
 
 Ye're not fed with deaf nuts. 
 
 Ye're sick but no sair handled. 
 
 Ye're busy seeking a thing that's no tint. 
 
 Ye're good for carrying a propine, ye can make muckle of little. 
 
 Ye're like the hens, ye rin aye to the heap. 
 
 Ye're fear'd for the day ye never saw. 
 
 Ye're bonny enough to them that loo you, and o'er bonny to them 
 
 that loo you and canna get you. 
 Ye're o'er bird-mouth'd. 
 
 Ye're new risen and your young heart's nipping. 
 Ye're a sweet nut if you were well cracked. 
 Ye're no light where ye lean a'. 
 Ye're mair fley'd than hurt. 
 Ye're Davy do a' thing and good at naething. 
 Ye seek grace o' a graceless face. 
 Ye sell the bear's skin on his back. 
 Ye served me as the wife did the cat, 
 
 Coost me in the kirn and syne harl'd me out. 
 Ye may dight your neb and fly up. 
 Ye'll never die on your ain assize. 
 Ye'll drink afore me. 
 Ye'll find liim whaur ye left him. 
 Ye'll get the cat wi' the twa tails. 
 Ye're the greatest liar 0' your kin except your chief that wan his 
 
 meat by't. 
 Ye're mistane 0' the stuff, it is haff silk. 
 Ye'se no want while I hae, but look weel to your ain. 
 Ye soon weary o' well-doing. 
 Ye'se get your brose out o' the lee side of the pot. 
 
382 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 Ye shanna be niffer'd but for a better. 
 
 Ye sleep like a dog in a milL 
 
 Ye shape shoon by your ain shacbled feet. 
 
 Ye take luair in your gab than your cheeks can baud. 
 
 Ye take the first word of flytinj,'. 
 
 Ye tine the ladle for the licking. 
 
 Your tongue's nae slander. 
 
 Your tongue rins aye before your wit. 
 
 Ye wad make raickle of me if I were yours. 
 
 Ye watna what wife's ladle may cogue your kail. 
 
 Ye wad be a good midwife gin ye baud the grip ye get. 
 
 Ye wad be good to fetch the de'il a drink. 
 
 Ye wad ferly mair if the craws bigged in your cleavding and flew 
 
 away with the nest. 
 Ye watna where a blessing may light. 
 Young fowk may die and auld fowk maun die. 
 Young ducks may be auld geese. 
 Yule's young on Yule e'en. 
 Youth and eild never sowder well. 
 Your meal's a' deagh. 
 
 Your bread's baken, ye may hing by your girdle. 
 Your head's nne sooner up than your stamock's yapin. 
 Your wind shakes nae corn. 
 Your head will never till your father's bonnet. 
 Your trumpeter's dead. 
 
 Your thrift's as good as the profit of a yeld hen. 
 Your winning is no my tinsel. 
 Your wit winna worry ye. 
 Your mind's chasing mice. 
 Your gear will ne'er o'ergang you. 
 Your minnie's milk is no out of your nose yet. 
 Your een's no marrows. 
 
 Ye have sitten your time as mony a good hen has done. 
 Ye have naething to do but suck and wag your tail. 
 Ye promise better than ye pay, yer hechts ye never brooked. 
 Ye're ane of snaw-ba's bairn-time. 
 Ye're here yet and your belt's hale. 
 Ye spill unspoken to. 
 
 Ye was set atf frae the oon for nipping the pies." 
 Ye was never bom at that time of year. 
 Ye was sae gare ye wadna bide the blessing. 
 Your wame thinks your wyson's cutted. 
 Your purse was steeked when that was paid for. 
 Your neck's youking for a St. Johnston ribbon. 
 
A LIST 
 
 OP 
 
 THE PEINCIPAL WEITEES IN THE 
 SCOTTISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 COMPILED BY G. MAY. 
 
 Ainslie, Hew, born in 1792, 
 at Dailly, Ayrshire; his songs, 
 published in " A Pilgrimage to 
 the Land of Burns" (1820), 
 obtained for him considerable 
 popularity. In later life he 
 emigrated to America. In 1855 
 he published at New York a 
 volume of "Scottish Songs, 
 Ballads, and Poems." 
 
 Ainslie, Robert (1766- 1838), a 
 Writer to the Signet, and a 
 friend and correspondent of 
 Robert Burns. He was for forty 
 years a contributor to the 
 Edinburgh Magazine, and other 
 periodicals. 
 
 Aird, Thomas, born in 1802 at 
 Bowden in Roxburghshire ; a 
 distinguished poet, journalist, 
 and prose writer. He published 
 in 1845 "The Old Bachelor, in 
 the Old Scottish Village," a 
 collection of tales illustrative 
 of Scottish life, character, and 
 scenes, and in 1856 a complete 
 collection of his numerous 
 poetical works. 
 
 Aytoun, Sir Robert (i 570-1638), 
 an accomplished poet and cour- 
 tier, who occupied the post of 
 private secretary to the queens 
 of James I. (of England) and 
 Charles I. His poems are pub- 
 lished in the Miscellany of 
 the Bannatyne Club. 
 
 Aytoun, William Edmondstoune 
 (181 3-1865), Professor of Rhe- 
 toric and English Literature at 
 the University of Edinburgh 
 (1845- 1 865). His earliest literary 
 efforts appeared in magazine 
 literature, notably Blackwood's, 
 of which in 1854 he became 
 assistant or advising editor. 
 Poetical works — "Ballads of Scot- 
 land" (edited 1858); "Both- 
 well" (a narrative poem in 
 the style of Sir Walter Scott, 
 1856) ; " Firmilian, a Spasmodic 
 Tragedy " (1854) ; " Lays of the 
 Scottish Cavaliers, and other 
 Poems " (1849) — his chief poeti- 
 cal work; "The Execution of 
 Montrose," and " The Burial 
 March of Dundee;" "Nuptial 
 
384 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Ode on the Marriage of the 
 Prince of Wales" (1863) ; " Po- 
 land, and other Poems." The 
 " Glenmutchkin Kail way " (a 
 tale); "How I Became a Yeo- 
 man ; " " Life and Times of 
 Richard I." (1840); "Norman 
 Sinclair" (1861). He was one 
 of the authors, in conjunction 
 with Sir Theodore Martin, of 
 the " Bon Gaultier Ballads." 
 
 Baillie, Joanna (i 762-1 851), a 
 Scottish poetess and dramatist, 
 many of whose songs became 
 popular, and still maintain their 
 place in literature. 
 
 Balfour, Alexander (i 776-1829), 
 a miscellaneous writer, among 
 whose works may be men- 
 tioned " Campbell, or the Scot- 
 tish Probationer," a novel, pub- 
 lished in 1819 ; an edition of 
 Gall's poems in the same year ; 
 a volume of his own poems, en- 
 titled " Contemplations," and 
 several other novels. 
 
 Balfour, Sir James, a distin- 
 guished lawyer who died in 
 1 5 83-84. His chief work, ' ' The 
 Practicks of Scots Law" (in 
 MSS.), was for a long period a 
 standard work of reference. It 
 was printed in 1754 with a 
 biographical introduction by 
 Walter Goodal. 
 
 Ballantine, James (born in 18 10, 
 died in 1878), author of " The 
 Gaberlunzie's Wallet," " Lilias 
 Lee," and of many beautiful 
 songs in " Whistle Binkie " and 
 other Scottish collections of 
 lyrical poetry. His songs are of 
 the highest merit, and of great 
 and deserved popularity. 
 
 Ballantyne, James (1772-1833). 
 The senior member of the cele- 
 brated printing and publishing 
 firm of that name. He was an 
 intimate friend and afterwards 
 partner of Sir Walter Scott, a 
 friendship which commenced 
 at school and lasted through 
 life. To Mr. Ballantyne' s judi- 
 cious criticism are owing many 
 corrections and suggestions in 
 the works of the " Wizard of 
 the North." 
 
 Bannatyne, George (1545- 1606). 
 The name of this eminent col- 
 lector of Scottish poetry of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 has been adopted as the cogno- 
 men of a distinguished literary 
 Society. His " Ancient Scottish 
 Poems " was published in 1770. 
 
 Barbour, John (1316-1395), a 
 historical poet, author of " The 
 Bruce," a metrical chronicle 
 finished in 1375 and first pub- 
 lished from the MS. in 1489. 
 This work possesses great value 
 as an historical record, and 
 has run through about twenty 
 editions, of which the best are 
 Pinkerton's (dated 1790) and 
 Dr. Jamieson's (1820). 
 
 Beattie, George (1785 - 1823), 
 was an advocate or solicitor 
 at Montrose. His principal 
 work is, "John o' Arnha'," a 
 humorous and satirical poem 
 somewhat in the style of " Tam 
 o* Shanter." 
 
 Beattie, James, LL.D. (1735- 
 1803), a poet, essayist, and 
 miscellaneous writer, born at 
 Laurencekirk, Kircardineshire. 
 His name was first brought pro- 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 385 
 
 minently before the public by 
 his "Essay on the Nature and 
 Immutability of Truth in Oppo- 
 sition to Sophistry and Scepti- 
 cism," a reply to Hume. His 
 other works are — "Judgment of 
 Paris" (1765); " The Minstrel," 
 in two parts, Spenserian metre. 
 (Incomplete. Merivale added 
 a third part). '* Poems and 
 Translations" (1760). Prose 
 works — " Dissertations " (1783) ; 
 " The Elements of Moral 
 Sciences" (1790-1793); "Essay 
 on Poetry and Music" (1778); 
 "Essay on Truth" (1770); 
 "Essays" (1776); "Evidences 
 of Christianity " ( 1 786). (Life by 
 Sir William Forbes, 1806 ; Mud- 
 ford, 1809 ; Dyce, 1831.) He 
 was part author of the beauti- 
 ful Scottish song, " There's nae 
 luck about the house." 
 Bellenden, John (or Ballenden, 
 or Ballentyne), poet and his- 
 torian. Archdeacon of Moray, 
 and Canon of Ross (i 490-1 560). 
 In 1530 and 1531 he was em- 
 ployed by command of James V. 
 in translating Bolce's * ' History 
 and Chroniklis of Scotland," 
 from the Latin into the Scottish 
 vernacular. He died at Rome 
 in 1 5 50. Among his other poems 
 as unquestionably a man of 
 great parts, and one of the 
 finest poets his country had, 
 may be mentioned ' * Vertue and 
 Vyse," "The Proheme of the 
 Cosmographe " (the most poeti- 
 cal of his works), and "The 
 Proheme of the History." He 
 also wrote the " Topography of 
 Scotland "(1577); Carmichael's 
 
 " Collections of Scottish Poems" 
 contains some specimens of his 
 style. 
 
 Bennoch, Francis (born 181 2). 
 He has published a volume of 
 " Poems, Lyrics, Songs, and 
 Sonnets, "and edited a collection 
 of Miss Mitford's tales. 
 
 Bethune, John (1812-1839), son 
 of a farm-servant, and himself 
 a labourer. In conjunction with 
 his brother Alexander he wrote 
 the " Tales and Sketches of 
 the Scottish Peasantry" (1836). 
 Two years afterwards, " Lec- 
 tures on Practical Economy " 
 appeared ; and as " A Fifeshire 
 Forester " he contributed a 
 number of poems to the Scottish 
 Christian Herald, and the Chris- 
 tian Instructor. 
 
 Blacklock, Thomas, D.D. (1721- 
 1791), a poet and divine who 
 was deprived of sight in his 
 earliest infancy. His chief 
 works are " The Graham," a 
 heroic ballad (1774); " Para- 
 celsis" (1767); and two vol- 
 umes of "Poems" (1745 and 
 1754). The article " Blind," in 
 the EncyclopcBdia Britannica, 
 was written by him. After his 
 death his writings were collect- 
 ed by H. Mackenzie (1793). He 
 was one of the eminent men of 
 letters in Edinburgh who wel- 
 comed and did honour to Robert 
 Burns on his celebrated visit to 
 that city. 
 
 Boswell, Sir Alexander (1775- 
 1822), was the eldest son of 
 James Boswell, the biographer 
 of Dr. Johnson. His writings 
 are noteworthy for their lively 
 
 2 B 
 
386 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 imagination, satire, and hum- 
 our. Many of his " Songs, 
 chiefly in the Scottish Dialect " 
 (1803), have achieved perma- 
 nent popularity, the best known 
 being "Auld Gude Man, ye're 
 a Drucken Carle ; " " Jenny's 
 Bawbee ; " ** Jenny Dang the 
 Weaver ; " and a poem, pub- 
 lished under an assumed name, 
 is entitled " Edinburgh, or the 
 Ancient Royalty, a Sketch of 
 Former Manners, by Simon 
 Gray" (1810). Another work 
 in Scottish verse is " Skeldon 
 Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted " 
 (1816), and " Clan Alpin's 
 Vow." Created a baronet in 
 1821. He received a death- 
 wound in a duel with Mr. 
 Stewart of Auldearn, after- 
 wards editor of the Courier, a 
 London evening paper, result- 
 ing from some political satires 
 published in the Sentinel. 
 Brunton, George (i 799-1863), 
 a miscellaneous writer of prose 
 and verse illustrative of Scot- 
 tish life, manners, and localities. 
 These sketches and tales ap- 
 peared in the Edinburgh Maga- 
 zine, the Scottish Literary Gazette, 
 and Tait's Magazine. In 1834 
 he became editor of the Scottish 
 Patriot, having previously edited 
 the Citizen. After the publica- 
 tion of "An Historical Account 
 of the Senators of the College 
 of Justice," in which he was 
 associated with Mr. David 
 Haig, he, in conjunction with 
 the latter, started the Scots 
 Weekly Magazine, which was 
 exclusively devoted to the eluci- 
 
 dation of Scottish history and 
 antiquities, and Scottish life 
 and manners. 
 
 Burns, Robert (i 759-1796), the 
 most popular of all the Scottish 
 poets, and whose fame has be- 
 come world-wide. The range 
 and variety of his powers are 
 unsurpassed in the literature of 
 his country ; including, as they 
 do, such different and such 
 excellent poems as the " Cotter's 
 Saturday Night," " Scots wha 
 hae wi' Wallace bled," "Auld 
 Lang Syne," "A Man's a Man 
 for a' that," ''Holy WiUie's 
 Prayer," " Tam o' Shanter," 
 " Death and Dr. Hornbook," 
 " The Twa Dogs," all of which 
 have sunk deep into the re- 
 membrance and hearts of 
 Scotsmen in every part of the 
 world, and are familiar to all 
 educated Englishmen. His name 
 and songs have become dear to 
 every patriotic Scotsman, and 
 the language of his country will, 
 doubtless, be perpetuated in his 
 works long after it has become 
 an unspoken tongue. 
 
 Callander, John (—1789). An 
 antiquary born about the be- 
 ginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. His best known work is 
 " Two Ancient Scottish Poems" 
 (1782); beside this he trans- 
 lated Brosse's " Terra Australia 
 Coqueta" from the French. 
 He also projected, but did not 
 carry out, works on the " History 
 of the Ancient Music of Scot- 
 land," and a " Scoto-Gothic 
 Glossary." He was accused of 
 plagiarism in connection with 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language, 387 
 
 some "Annotations to Milton's 
 Paradise Lost," which it would 
 appear without some reason. 
 
 Campbell, Alexander(i 764-1824). 
 His first literary effort was " An 
 Introduction to the History of 
 Poetry in Scotland" (1798), 
 together with ** Songs of the 
 Lowlands." This was followed 
 in 1802 by "A Tour from Edin- 
 burgh through Various Parts of 
 North Britain," generally con- 
 sidered to be his best work ; 
 " The Grampians Desolate " 
 {1804), showed a diminution of 
 power. His last work (1816), 
 was "Albyn's Anthology," a 
 collection of native Highland 
 music to which Sir Walter Scott 
 and others contributed verses. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas (i 777-1 844), 
 author of " The Pleasures of 
 Hope," and the spirited songs 
 and ballads "Ye Mariners of 
 England," " The Battle of 
 Hohenlinden," "The Exile of 
 Erin," " Lochiel's Warning," 
 " The Soldier's Dream," and 
 " Lord Ullin's Daughter." He 
 was one of the originators of 
 the London University, and 
 afterwards Lord Rector of the 
 University of Glasgow. He is 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Carrick, John Donald (i 787-1 837), 
 best known as the author of 
 "The Life of Wallace," was a 
 voluminous miscellaneous writer 
 of considerable repute. He was 
 deeply read in old Scottish 
 literature, and became succes- 
 sively editor of the Scots Times, 
 the Perth Advertiser, and the 
 Kilmarnock Journal. His latest 
 
 work, " The Laird of Logan," is 
 a well-known series of Scottish 
 sketches, to which work he was 
 the largest contributor. 
 
 Chalmers, George (1742-1825), a 
 historian and antiquary, whose 
 principal production was his 
 " Caledonia" (1807- 1 824). He 
 also wrote a "History of Scottish 
 Poetry," a " History of Printing 
 in Scotland," Lives of Defoe 
 (1785), Mary Queen of Scots 
 (i8i8),ThomasRuddiman(i794), 
 and several other works, one of 
 which was an illustrated edition 
 of the poems of Allan Ramsay. 
 
 Chambers, Robert, LL.D. (1802- 
 1871), a voluminous, historical, 
 miscellaneous writer, and one of 
 the founders of the great pub- 
 lishing firm of William and 
 Robert Chambers. During his 
 forty years of literary labour he 
 produced no less than one hun- 
 dred volumes, the most notable 
 of his works being " Popular 
 Rhymes of Scotland" (1826), 
 "Pictures of Scotland" (1827), 
 ' ' Histories of the Scottish Rebel- 
 lions," and a " Life of James I." 
 His "Book of Days," "Biogra- 
 phical Dictionary of Eminent 
 Scotsmen," and his various 
 educational works for " the 
 entertainment and instruction 
 of the people. " Since his death, 
 his authorship of the celebrated 
 "Vestiges of the Natural His- 
 tory of Creation " has been pub- 
 licly avowed. 
 
 Cunningham, Thomas (1776- 
 1834), a lyric writer of great 
 merit, and a constant contri- 
 butor to the Edinburgh Maga- 
 
388 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 zine, to which he sent not only 
 poems and songs but miscel- 
 laneous sketches and stories, all 
 characterised by a somewhat 
 rare vein of pathos, oddity, and 
 humour. 
 
 Cunningham, Allan (1784- 1842), 
 one of the first of Scottish song 
 writers. His literary productions 
 were extremely numerous, but, 
 perhaps, apart from poetry, his 
 " Life of Burns " is the master- 
 piece. 
 
 Douglas, Gawyn or Gavin ( 1474- 
 1522), styled "the most clas- 
 sical of Scottish poets." He 
 was Bishop of Dunkeld, and 
 translated into the Scottish ver- 
 nacular the ** JEneid " of Virgil, 
 prefixing a poetical introduction 
 of his own to each book. 
 
 Drummond, William, of Haw- 
 thornden (i 585-1 649), author of 
 " History of the Five Jameses, 
 Kings of Scotland," which is 
 strongly tinged with royalist 
 principles. His poems and songs 
 are characterised by delicacy 
 and tenderness of treatment. 
 
 Dunbar, William (1465 ), 
 
 one of the chief of early Scotch 
 poets. His "Thistle and the 
 Eose " is a poem of surpassing 
 beauty. Others are entitled 
 " The Golden Targe," " The 
 Twa Married Women," and 
 "The Weds." He interwove 
 Latin with Scottish verses in a 
 very fantastic manner. 
 
 Ferguson, Robert (1750-1774), 
 Born and educated at Aber- 
 deen, most of his poems had 
 appeared in Kuddiman's Weekly 
 Magazine before he had at- 
 
 tained his twentieth year. A 
 monument to his memory was 
 erected over his grave in Edin- 
 burgh at the expense of Robert 
 Burns, out of the profits of 
 the Edinburgh edition of his 
 " Poems and Songs." 
 
 Finlay, John (1782-1810). The 
 chief poems of this writer are 
 " Wallace, or the Fate of Ellers- 
 lie," and "Scottish Historical 
 and Romantic Ballads," both 
 of these works displaying con- 
 siderable knowledge and re- 
 search. 
 
 Gall, Richard (i 776-1 801). His 
 principal poems were "Farewell 
 to Ayrshire" (erroneously attri- 
 buted to Burns), and " My only 
 Jo and Dearie O ; " besides 
 which, "The Braes of Drumlee," 
 and " Captain O'Kain," merit 
 special mention. 
 
 Galloway, Robert (i 752-1 794). 
 The " Poems, Epistles, and 
 Songs " of this poet were chiefly 
 written in the Scottish tongue. 
 A shoemaker by trade, he sub- 
 sequently became a bookseller 
 in Glasgow. His poems were 
 published in that city in 1 788. 
 
 Gait, John (i 779-1839), a writer, 
 whose productions consisted of 
 poems, prose essays, and a large 
 number of novels, in all upwards 
 of fifty volumes. The following 
 are his principal works : — Lives 
 of Cardinal Wolsey (181 2), 
 Benjamin West (18 16), Lord 
 Byron (1830); "The Players" 
 (1831); "An Autobiography" 
 (1833) ; " Literary Life and Mis- 
 cellanies" (1834); " Ourand- 
 logos" {1833); "Voyages and 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 389 
 
 Travels" (1812); and "The 
 Wandering Jew." His best no- 
 vels were entitled "Annals of 
 the Parish " (1821)," and "Ayr- 
 shire Legatees " (same year). 
 
 Gilfillan, Robert (1798-1850). 
 This writer's lyrical produc- 
 tions were gathered in a volume 
 published in 1831, entitled 
 " Original Songs." In 1835 ^^^ 
 1839 enlarged editions were 
 issued. 
 
 Glen, William (1789- 1826), a 
 lyrical writer, some of whose 
 productions have found their 
 way into every Scottish home. 
 His Jacobite song, " Wae's me 
 for Prince Charlie," was one of 
 the most touching and popular 
 of the songs of the time. 
 
 Grant, Joseph (1805- 1835). The 
 tales and poetry of this writer 
 were principally in the Scottish 
 language. His latest work, pub- 
 lished posthumously, was "Tales 
 of the Glens" (1836), with a 
 memoir by Eobert Nichol. 
 
 Hamilton, William (i 704-1754). 
 A native of Bangour, he received 
 a liberal education, and early 
 cultivated a taste for poetry. The 
 Jacobite song, " Gladsmuir," his 
 first success, was due to the 
 part he took in the rebellion of 
 1745. On "The Braes of Yar- 
 row," however, is based his 
 chief claim to remembrance. 
 His works were collected and 
 published in Edinburgh in 1766. 
 
 Hamilton, William. Born at 
 Gilbertfield, he, after some years 
 of military service, left the army 
 to devote himself to literature. 
 He was a friend and corres- 
 
 pondent of Allan Kamsay. 
 Watson's " Choice Collection of 
 Scots Poems " contains his chief 
 writings. In 1722 he issued, 
 rendered into modern Scotch, an 
 edition of Blind Harry's "Life 
 of Wallace," a work which has 
 been frequently reprinted. 
 
 Harry the Minstrel, or Blind 
 Harry, as he is more popularly 
 called. His history is obscure, 
 but he wrote in the vernacular 
 the achievements of Wallace, 
 the champion of Scottish In- 
 dependence. So little is known 
 of him that his surname has 
 never been ascertained. It 
 seems, however, that he was 
 blind from his birth, and that 
 he followed the occupation of a 
 wandering minstrel. His only 
 poem now extant is entitled, 
 "Ye actis and deidis of ye 
 illuster and vailzeand campioun 
 shyr Willam Wallace," the MS. 
 of which is now preserved in 
 the Advocates' Library, bearing 
 the date of 1488. 
 
 Hedderwick, James, LL.D., a 
 well - known journalist and 
 poet, in early life sub-editor of 
 the Scotsman. He subsequently 
 started the Glasgow Citizen and 
 other periodicals. His principal 
 work is "Lays of the Middle 
 Ages." 
 
 Henderson, Andrew (i 783-1 835). 
 author of a " Collection of 
 Scottish Proverbs " published 
 in 1832, to which William 
 Motherwell contributed an in- 
 troduction. 
 
 Henryson, Robert, who flourished 
 in the fifteenth century. The 
 
390 
 
 Dictionayy of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 date and place of his birth 
 are unknown. His "Robene 
 and Makyne" is thought to 
 be the earhest specimen of pas- 
 toral poetry in the Scottish lan- 
 guage. Examples of his verse 
 are included in Irving' s " Lives 
 of the Scottish Poets," Hailes' 
 " Ancient Scottish Poems," 
 Ellis' " Specimens," and Sib- 
 bald's " Chronicle of Scottish 
 Poetry." His chief works are 
 "The Bludy Serf," "Fabils" 
 (printed 1621 ) ; " Orpheus Kyng, 
 and how he yeid to Newyn 
 and to hel to seik his Quene" 
 (printed 1508); "Tailes of the 
 Uplandis Mons and the burges 
 mons" (printed 1815), and the 
 "Testament of faire Crescide " 
 (printed 1593). 
 
 Herd, David (1732-18 10). Sir 
 Walter Scott, in his " Minstrelsy 
 of the Scottish Border," speaks 
 of Herd as "the editor of the 
 first classical collection of Scot- 
 tish songs and ballads," and 
 further acknowledges his in- 
 debtedness to those manuscripts 
 entitled "A Collection of An- 
 cient and Modern Scottish Songs, 
 Heroic Ballads," &c. This was 
 published in 1769. Herd also 
 wrote concerning Scottish poetry 
 and antiquities in the periodicals 
 of his time. 
 
 Hogg, James (1782-1835), who is 
 more popularly known as the 
 Ettrick Shepherd, was born on 
 the banks of the river of that 
 name. Entirely self-taught, he 
 seems, like many others of the 
 national poets, to have been 
 early attracted by the beauties 
 
 of Blind Harry's "Life of Wal- 
 lace," and Allan Ramsay's 
 " Gentle Shepherd." " Donald 
 M'Donald," his first published 
 song, soon became very popular, 
 and was speedily followed by 
 " When the Kye Come Hame," 
 which remains a choice favour- 
 ite among all who love Scottish 
 lyric poetry. From this time 
 his reputation increased. In 
 all he wrote about twenty 
 volumes, the chief of which are 
 " The Forest Minstrels " (a 
 volume of songs, 18 10), " Mador 
 of the Moor "(1816, written 
 in Spenserian stanzas) ; " The 
 Mistakes of a Night" (1794); 
 "The Mountain Bard" (1807; 
 "Pilgrims of the Sun" (181 5); 
 "The Poetic Mirror" (1814); 
 " Queen Hynde " (an epic poem, 
 1825); "Queen's Wake "(1813); 
 and " Scottish Pastorals, Poems, 
 and Songs" (1801). Besides 
 these, he published several prose 
 works, the chief of which are 
 "The Altrive Tales" (1832); 
 " The Brownie of Bodsbeck " 
 (a tale of the Covenanters, 1 8 1 8) ; 
 "Lay Sermons" (1834); "Life 
 of Sir Walter Scott," "Mon- 
 trose Tales " (1835) ; ** The 
 Shepherd's Guide (1807) ; " The 
 Three Perils of Man" (1822); 
 "The Three Perils of Woman: 
 Love, Teasing, and Jealousy" 
 (1823); "Winter Evening Tales" 
 (1820), and a comprehensive 
 collection of Jacobite songs and 
 ballads. 
 Hume, Alexander (1560-1609), a 
 sacred poet whose writings were 
 much appreciated by the Pres- 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 391 
 
 byterians. Some of his works 
 have been reprinted by the 
 Bannatyne Club. Amongst the 
 chief may be named, " Hymnes 
 or Sacred Songs " (1599); " Flyt- 
 ing betwixt Montgomery and 
 Polwart ; " " Triumphs of Love, 
 Chastitie, and Death," pub- 
 lished posthumously in 1644. 
 
 Hume, Alexander (i 809-1 851), 
 one of the "untutored" muses 
 of Scotland, many of whose 
 songs have been set to music. 
 His "Wee, wee Wife ; " " Menie 
 Hay;" "Oh! Years hae Come," 
 and "My Mountain Hame," 
 were especial favourites. 
 
 Inglis, Henry, for many years a 
 leading member of the legal 
 profession in Edinburgh. He 
 published "Marican, and other 
 Poems" in 185 1, and the "Briar 
 of Threave" in 1855. 
 
 Inglis, Sir James, a poet and 
 man of letters of the early part 
 of the sixteenth century. It is 
 generally supposed that " The 
 Complaynt of Scotland," the 
 earliest Scotch prose work ex- 
 tant, was written by him. It 
 contains a minute account of 
 the manners, customs, and 
 popular literature of Scotland 
 of that period. He filled the 
 posts of Secretary to Queen 
 Margaret, 151 5, and Chancellor 
 of the Royal Chapel of Stirling, 
 1527, subsequently becoming 
 Abbot of Culross. He met with 
 a violent death in 1530. 
 
 James I. of Scotland. After 
 passing nineteen years of his 
 earlier life in Windsor Castle, 
 where he was held in captivity 
 
 by the English monarch, he 
 ascended the throne of Scotland 
 in 1424. This royal poet ranks 
 high among old Scottish au- 
 thors. The MS. of his chief pro- 
 duction, the " King's Quhair," 
 an allegorical poem, was dis- 
 covered in the Bodleian Library 
 at Oxford, and was pubhshed in 
 1783. Two other poems, deal- 
 ing humorously with the rural 
 manners and customs of his 
 day, are also attributed to this 
 monarch. These bear the titles 
 of " Christ's Kirk on the Green," 
 and " Peblis to the Play." " The 
 King's Quhair " is a production 
 of the highest poetical merit, 
 and was inspired by his love 
 for a beautiful English lady of 
 noble birth, whom he saw for 
 the first time in his youthful 
 captivity in Windsor, and whom 
 he afterwards married and took 
 to Scotland as his queen. He 
 was assassinated by a company 
 of aristocratic murderers, who 
 slew him before her eyes, dur- 
 ing a struggle in which the 
 tender, affectionate, noble wo- 
 man displayed in his defence 
 the most touching and romantic 
 heroism. 
 James V. of Scotland (15 12- 1542), 
 a monarch who so endeared 
 himself to his people that he 
 bore the name of " King of the 
 Poor." Being fond of romantic 
 adventure he is reported to have 
 often disguised himself and 
 wandered through the country 
 under the name of " The Gude- 
 man of Ballangeich," the name 
 of a pass on the rock on which 
 
392 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Stirling Castle is built. His 
 adventures formed the basis of 
 two well-known ballads and 
 songs attributed to and possibly 
 written by him, the most popular 
 of which is still current and 
 often sung in Scotland, under 
 the title of "We'll gang nae 
 mair a Kovin', a Rovin' in the 
 Night." 
 
 Jamieson, John, D.D. (1758- 
 1838). This writer takes one of 
 the first places amongst Scottish 
 authors. Entering the ministry 
 early in life, his first work con- 
 sisted of two volumes of " Ser- 
 mons on the Heart " ( 1 789). 
 This was followed in the same 
 year by a poem in blank verse 
 entitled " The Sorrows of 
 Slavery," and in 1798 by an- 
 other poetical work "Eternity." 
 The publication of various theo- 
 logical volumes was followed 
 by " The Etymological Dic- 
 tionary of the Scottish Lan- 
 guage" (1809-10). A supple- 
 ment to this was issued in 
 1825. Amongst other volumes 
 from his pen may be mentioned 
 " Hermes Scythicus, &c." {1814) 
 *' Historical Account of the An 
 cient Culdees of lona" (181 1) 
 * ' Historical Account of the 
 Royal Palaces of Scotland 
 (1818). 
 
 Kennedy, Walter. Douglas calls 
 this poet, who lived in the six- 
 teenth century, ' ' The great 
 Kennedy." His chief work was 
 " Flyting." Only two other 
 short poems have been pre- 
 served, the rest having unfor- 
 tunately been lost. These are 
 
 " Invective against Mouth- 
 Thankless," and " Prais of Age." 
 
 Laidlaw, William, Born in 1780, 
 died 1845. He was the farm- 
 bailiff, amanuensis, and cher- 
 ished friend of Sir Walter Scott 
 during his residence at Abbots- 
 ford. He was the author of 
 several admired songs, amongst 
 which the best known is 
 '* Lucy's Flittin', " which ap- 
 peared originally in the " Forest 
 Minstrel" of the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd. 
 
 Lapraik, John, described by 
 Robert Burns, who greatly ad- 
 mired his poetry, and wrote a 
 rhymed epistle to him, as "a 
 worthy facetious old fellow." 
 He, was owner of a small farm in 
 Ayrshire. The date of his birth 
 is unknown. He died in 1807. 
 His principal and most popular 
 poem is " Matrimonial Happi- 
 ness," addressed to his wife — 
 which Burns says " thrilled 
 through his heart-strings a' to 
 the life." 
 
 Lauder, William (—1771). This 
 author is chiefly known by 
 his attempt to fasten a charge 
 of plagiarism upon Milton, and 
 although at the instance of Dr. 
 Johnson he withdrew it, he sub- 
 sequently retracted his denial. 
 He wrote a well-known work on 
 Scottish literature, bearing the 
 title of "Poetarum Scotorum 
 Musae Sacrae." 
 
 Leighton, Robert, born in 1822, 
 is the author of "Rhymes and 
 Poems by Robin " (1855). 
 
 Leighton, Alexander, uncle of 
 the above Robert Leighton, 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 393 
 
 and author of an excellent 
 humorous poem, " The Bap- 
 teezement of the Bairn." 
 
 Lesley, John, Bishop of Ross, a 
 champion of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, and the author of a 
 " History of Scotland." 
 
 Leyden, John, M.D. (1775-1811), 
 a distinguished poet, linguist, 
 and traveller. His works are 
 numerous, and in their time 
 were very popular. The blunt- 
 ness and independence of man- 
 ner, which met with little favour 
 in society, served him in good 
 stead in his literary labours. 
 He visited the interior of Africa, 
 India, and accompanied an ex- 
 pedition to Java, where he died. 
 His most valuable work was 
 " Discoveries and Travels in 
 Africa" (1799); "Poems and 
 Ballads" (posthumous, 1858); 
 "Poetical Remains" (posthu- 
 mous, 1819) ; " Scottish De- 
 scriptive Poems" (1803). His 
 life was written by Rev. J. 
 Morton (1819), and Sir Walter 
 Scott (1858). 
 
 Lindsay, Lady Anne, daughter of 
 the Earl of Crawford and Bal- 
 carres, afterwards Lady Ann 
 Barnard. She is best known as 
 the authoress of the exquisite 
 and universally popular song of 
 " Auld Robin Gray," which she 
 published anonymously in 1772, 
 when yet a young girl. She 
 first avowed the authorship to 
 Sir Walter Scott in her old age. 
 
 Lindsay, Sir David (1490-1569 ?), 
 an eminent poet, whose chief 
 works are" The Dreame"( 1528), 
 in which he applies the lash 
 
 with great truth and force to 
 abuses in Church and State, 
 wtiich had arisen from the licen- 
 tious lives of the clergy and the 
 usurpations of the nobles ; "The 
 Complaynt of the King's Pas- 
 sings," another satirical pro- 
 duction of extreme pungency ; 
 a drama bearing the title of " A 
 Satyre of the Three Estaties ; " 
 " The Supplication against Syde 
 Taillis," a satire on woman's 
 dress ; " Kittie's Confession," 
 ridiculing auricular confession ; 
 " The History and Testament 
 of Squire Meldrum" (1550, the 
 most pleasing of his composi- 
 tions), and the last and greatest 
 of his works, " The Monarchic " 
 (1553). The whole of these 
 books were written in the Scot- 
 tish tongue, and are marked by 
 strong satire and broad humour. 
 Many of his moral sayings have 
 passed into proverbs. 
 
 Lockhart, John Gibson (1794- 
 1854), best known as the bio- 
 grapher of Sir Walter Scott, 
 whose daughter he married. 
 He was for many years and 
 until his death the editor of the 
 Quarterly Revieio. His humor- 
 ous and quaint lament on 
 ' ' Captain Paton " is well known, 
 and a great favourite in the legal 
 and convivial circles of Edin- 
 burgh and Glasgow. He also 
 wrote lives of Burns and Na- 
 poleon the First, in addition to 
 several novels, and a very popular 
 volume of Spanish ballads. 
 
 Logan, John, a clergyman of the 
 Church of Scotland, born 1748, 
 died 1788. He is known by 
 
394 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 several favourite songs, but 
 more especially by his beautiful 
 ballad " The Braes o' Yarrow." 
 
 Mackenzie, George, author 
 of " Lives and Characters of 
 the most Eminent Writers of 
 the Scots Nation." This work 
 is one of great research, and 
 was published in three volumes 
 folio. 
 
 Macneil, Hector (1746-1818), a 
 popular poet and song writer, 
 his love-songs in the Scottish 
 language having speedily be- 
 come favourites with all classes. 
 When only fourteen he went to 
 the West Indies, remaining 
 there until 1 789. His principal 
 poem, " Scotland's Skaith," ap- 
 peared in 1795. So popular did 
 it become that it passed through 
 fourteen editions in twelve 
 months. A complete collection 
 of his poems was issued in 
 1 80 1, and these were followed 
 by two works in verse entitled 
 "Town Fashions" and **By- 
 gane Times." He also pub- 
 lished a novel entitled "The 
 Scottish Adventurers," and for 
 a time was editor of The Scots 
 Magazine. His best known 
 song, entitled " Saw Ye my Wee 
 Thing," is still highly popular. 
 
 Mayne, John, a poet and miscel- 
 laneous writer who died in 1836. 
 His chief work, " Glasgow " 
 (1803), has passed through seve- 
 ral editions, but his strength lay 
 principally in ballad poetry, his 
 " Logan Braes " and " Helen of 
 Kirkconnell Lea" being inferior 
 to no poems of their kind in the 
 language. His " Siller Gun," 
 
 published in 1808, with notes 
 and a glossary, was at one time 
 very popular, and contains many 
 vigorous scenes and sketches of 
 character. 
 
 Miller, William, born at Parkhead, 
 Glasgow, about 18 12, chiefly 
 known as a writer of nursery 
 songs and tender lyrics in the 
 well known collection entitled 
 " Whistle Binkie." 
 
 Moir, David Macbeth (1798- 
 185 1 ), a poet who wrote under 
 the celebrated pseudonym of 
 " Delta" in Blackwood, his chief 
 works being " Bombardment of 
 Algiers" (1818), "Domestic 
 Verses" (1845), ^-^i^ "Sketches 
 of the Poetical Literature of 
 the Past Half Century" (1851). 
 
 Montgomery, Alexander. No 
 details have come down to us 
 concerning this celebrated poet. 
 He is best known by his alle- 
 gorical poem " The Cherrie and 
 the Slae," which subsequently 
 formed the model for Ramsay's 
 " Vision." He also wrote " The 
 Minde's Melodic," and a large 
 variety of sonnets in the Scot- 
 tish language. A MS. collection 
 of his poems is preserved in the 
 Edinburgh University, and a 
 complete transcript was pub- 
 lished in 1822. 
 
 Moore, James,LL.D.( 17 12-1779), 
 a Greek scholar and librarian 
 to the University of Glasgow, 
 subsequently becoming a pro- 
 fessor and vice-rector of the 
 same institution. Besides several 
 classical works he contributed 
 largely to the Edinburgh Maga- 
 zine and Review. The Scots 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 395 
 
 ballad, " The Chelsea Pensioner," 
 is also attributed to him. 
 
 Motherwell, William (1797- 
 1835). The first work of this 
 highly gifted poet was a col- 
 lection of ballads, " Minstrelsy 
 Ancient and Modern," a very 
 valuable and interesting pro- 
 duction. He became editor 
 successively of the Paisley Ad- 
 vertiser, Paisley Magazine, and 
 Glasgow Courier, besides contri- 
 buting prose and verse to The 
 Day, a Glasgow periodical. Con- 
 jointly with Hogg he edited an 
 edition of Burns's poems. The 
 most noteworthy of his own 
 songs are "Jeanie Morrison," 
 "My Head is like to Kend, 
 Wilhe," and " The Sword 
 Chant." 
 
 Murray, Alexander, D.D. (1775- 
 1813), an eminent philologist, 
 who was entirely self-taught. 
 His chief works were a volume 
 of poems principally in the Scot- 
 tish language, "Outlines of 
 Oriental Philology," and a 
 " History of European Lan- 
 guages," published posthum- 
 ously. 
 
 Nairn, Carolina, Baroness ( 1 766- 
 1845), the gifted authoress of 
 the inimitable "Laird o' Cock- 
 pen," and the touchingly pa- 
 thetic " Land o' the Leal," 
 songs which still retain their 
 early popularity. Most of her 
 verses appeared in "The Scot- 
 tish Minstrel " under the signa- 
 ture B. B. She, however, in 
 later years abandoned her in- 
 cognito. She left a large number 
 of unpublished songs. 
 
 Nicoll, Robert (1814-1837), a fa- 
 vourite Scottish poet ; his first 
 volume, "Poems and Lyrics," 
 was published in 1835. In the 
 following year he became editor 
 of the Leeds Times, the circula- 
 tion of which he quadrupled 
 during his one year tenure of 
 office. 
 
 Outram, George (1805-1856), who 
 from 1837 to the date of his 
 death edited the Glasgow Herald. 
 His best known song or ballad 
 is the inimitable "Annuity," 
 which is often recited or sung in 
 Scottish society, and is a great' 
 favourite in all legal circles. 
 
 Picken, Andrew (i 788-1 833), a 
 miscellaneous writer, whose 
 first attempt at authorship was 
 "Tales and Sketches of the 
 West of Scotland." The " Sec- 
 tarian " (1828, a novel) exhi- 
 bited great skill in delineating 
 mental psychology ; he excelled, 
 however, in his portraits of 
 humble Scottish life, especially 
 in his "Club Book," "Tradi- 
 tionary Stories," and the " Black 
 Watch." 
 
 Pinkerton, John, F.S.A., anti- 
 quary and miscellaneous writer 
 (1758-1826). "The Runes," 
 " Select Scottish Ballads," "Let- 
 ters of Literature," "Walpoli- 
 ana," "Ancient Scottish Poems," 
 "Treasury of Wit," " Icono- 
 graphia Scotica,"and the "Scot- 
 tish Gallery" are his principal 
 works. His compilations, how- 
 ever, are marked by self-con- 
 fessed forgeries. 
 
 Pringle, Thomas (1789- 1834), a 
 poet whose "African Sketches," 
 
39^ 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 
 
 " Ephemerides," and " Scenes of 
 Teviotdale " achieved a per- 
 manent popularity. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758). This 
 distinguished poet ranks next 
 to Burns and Scott in the favour 
 of the Scottish people. His 
 pastoral, * ' The Gentle Shep- 
 herd," is perhaps the finest 
 poem of its kind in any lan- 
 guage. His two great compila- 
 tions, " The Evergreen" and the 
 better known " Tea Table Mis- 
 cellany," are essential to the 
 completion of every Scottish 
 library. He was originally a 
 barber and wig maker in the 
 High Street of Edinburgh, and 
 is reported to have been the 
 founder of the first Circulating 
 Library ever established in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Ramsay, Dean (i 793-1872), will 
 be long remembered by his "Re- 
 miniscences of Scottish Life and 
 Character." He was for some 
 time Secretary of the Anti- 
 Slavery Society. 
 
 Rodger, Alexander (i 784-1846). 
 The "Poems and Songs" of this 
 writer are well-known. Among 
 the more popular is " Behave 
 Yourself before Folk," which 
 first appeared in "Whistle 
 Binkie." He was for many 
 years connected with the Glas- 
 gow newspaper press. 
 
 RoUand, John, the romancist in 
 the Scottish vernacular of the 
 " Seaven Songes" (1578), a col- 
 lection of stories similar to those 
 told in the "Arabian Nights." 
 
 Ross, Alexander (1699-1784), a 
 poet whose "Fortunate Shep- 
 
 herdess " is almost as popular 
 as the works of Ramsay or 
 Burns. 
 
 Rymer, Thomas, commonly called 
 "Thomas the Rhymer," whose 
 patronymic is unknown, was 
 born somewhere about 1226, 
 and died in 1299. The most 
 popular of the writings attri- 
 buted to him are to be found in 
 the " Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border." 
 
 Scot, Alexander, a poet attached 
 to the court of Mary Queen of 
 Scots. Specimens of his poems 
 will be found in various col- 
 lections, notably in Allan Ram- 
 say's ** Evergreen." 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter (i 771-1832), a 
 celebrated poet and the most 
 distinguished novelist of the 
 age, whose works in prose and 
 verse at once achieved a popu- 
 larity which they have ever 
 since retained. Scott, perhaps 
 more than any other author, 
 familiarised the people of the 
 sister kingdoms with Scottish 
 life, scenery, and literature. 
 His admirable works are too 
 well known to need a detailed 
 description, and have been 
 translated into many European 
 languages. 
 
 Sibbald, James (174 7- 1803). He 
 wrote chiefly on the antiquities 
 of Scotland, in the Edinburgh 
 Magazine, which he owned and 
 edited. His principal work, a 
 " Chronicle of the Poetry of 
 Scotland," appeared in 1802. 
 
 Skinner, Rev. John (1721-1807), 
 a poet whose songs have at- 
 tained a lasting popularity, the 
 
The Principal Writers in the Scottish Language. 397 
 
 best known being the " Keel of 
 Tullochgorum," and the "Ewie 
 wi' the Crookit Horn." 
 
 Skirving, Adam, a farmer in Had- 
 dingtonshire, born 17 19, died 
 1803. He was a staunch Jaco- 
 bite, and is principally known 
 by his spirited ballad, " Hey ! 
 Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin 
 yet ? " written in a fit of joyous 
 exaltation in 1745, when Sir 
 John Cope, the Hanoverian 
 general, was so signally de- 
 feated at Prestonpans by the 
 forces of Prince Charles Ed- 
 ward Stuart, called by his 
 adherents the "lawful king," 
 and by the partisans of the 
 Guelphs "the Pretender." The 
 ballad still continues to be popu- 
 lar in Scotland. Skirving wrote 
 other songs, but they have fallen 
 into oblivion. 
 
 Stoddart, Thomas Tod, born in 
 1810 ; he published, in 1831 
 " The Death wake, or Lunacy ; ' 
 "The Art of Angling," in 1836 
 and others of the same type 
 which have since been remo 
 delled in the "Angler's Com 
 panion," a work still much in 
 request. He died in Kelso, where 
 he had long resided, in 1880. 
 
 Stone, Jerome (1 727-1 757), a self- 
 taught scholar and. poet, who, 
 from an itinerant pedlar, be- 
 came assistant -master at the 
 Dunkeld Grammar School. He 
 translated several poems from 
 the Gaelic, but his great work 
 (unfinished) is "An Enquiry 
 into the Origin of the Nation 
 and Language of the Ancient 
 Scots." 
 
 Tannahill, Robert (i 774-1810), a 
 writer of songs and ballads, 
 some of the best of which were 
 composed whilst working at the 
 loom. Some of them attained 
 a wide popularity, as, e.g., 
 " Jessie, the Flower of Dum- 
 blane," " The Braes o' Bal- 
 quither," and "Gloomy Winter's 
 now Awa'.", 
 
 Walker, Charles, a travelling 
 mendicant and ballad singer of 
 the last century, well known 
 and highly esteemed by all 
 classes in Aberdeenshire and the 
 East Coast of Scotland, and as 
 welcome to the rich as to the 
 poor in all the districts that 
 he favoured with his visits. He 
 attained the great age of 105 
 years, and is said to have been 
 present at the battle of Culloden. 
 He was a fervent Jacobite, and 
 author of the admirable but 
 rough ballad of "Bonnie Laddie, 
 Highland Laddie." 
 
 Wedderburn, James ( 1500- 1564- 
 65), a religious poet and play- 
 wright. His chief work was 
 " Buike of Godlie and Spirituall 
 Songs." He also wrote two 
 plays exposing the corruptions 
 of the Roman Church. 
 
 Wilson, Alexander (1766-18 13), 
 an eminent ornithologist and 
 writer of Scottish poetry. He 
 in early life emigrated to Ame- 
 rica, where he devoted a large 
 portion of his time to ornitho- 
 logy » publishing a large and im- 
 portant work as the result of his 
 researches. Several volumes of 
 poems also appeared under his 
 
398 
 
 Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. 
 
 Wilson, John, "Christopher 
 North" (1785-1854), a popular 
 poet, novelist, and dramatic 
 writer, born at Paisley. For 
 many years he was largely con- 
 cerned in Blackwood's Magazine, 
 to which he contributed the 
 inimitable series of papers en- 
 titled " Noctes Ambrosianae." 
 He was Professor of Moral 
 Philosophy in the University of 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 Wilson, John Mackay (1803- 
 1835), the author of the well- 
 known '' Tales of the Borders," 
 and several dramas and poems, 
 the most popular of the former 
 being "The Gowrie Conspiracy " 
 and "The Highland Widow," 
 whilst his poems, entitled " The 
 Enthusiast" and "The So- 
 journer" (in Spenserian stanzas), 
 rank amongst his best produc- 
 tions. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNK, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
JUST PUBLISHED. 
 Large post 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. ; or half -bound, gilt top, 9s. 
 
 A DICTIONARY 
 
 OF 
 
 SOBRIQUETS AND NICKNAMES. 
 
 ALBEKT R FKEY, 
 
 Author of ""William Shakspeare and Alleged Spanish Prototypes,' 
 
 "A Bibliography of Junius," 
 
 " A Bibliography of Playing Cards," &c. 
 
 WITH AN INDEX ARRANGED BY TRUE NAMES. 
 
 ** Sobriquet" and ** Nickname " are two words often used as if they were 
 identical in meaning, and are as such employed without regard to the diffe- 
 rence between them. A " sobriquet," as its etymology proves, is an epithet 
 bestowed upon a person for some quality, good or bad, which he possesses, 
 or which he is reputed to possess; and a "nickname," or more properly an 
 Uke-name, is an addition, or eke, to the name by which he is legally or 
 generally known. " Sobriquet " is a French word, recently adopted into 
 English, and is of Celtic or Gaelic extraction, from so, an afl&x equivalent to 
 the Greek eu, signifying pleasant, fit, appropriate, and breach, a mark or 
 spot ; and thus signifies a fit or appropriate mark or designation of any one 
 by which he is familiarly known. An eke-name is of Teutonic origin, from 
 auch or eke, also, or additional, and has been corrupted into "nickname " by 
 the ungrammatical transference of the n in the indefinite article an to the 
 unaspirated word which follows it. Originally all names, except those be- 
 stowed at baptism and called Christian names, were properly "sobriquets " 
 — descriptive of the personal appearance, the colour of the hair or eyes, the 
 profession or trade, or the residence of those to whom they were given, as 
 Cruikshank, Longman, Short, Black, Brown, Grey, White, Green, &c. ; 
 Smith, Tailor, Carpenter, Baker, Driver, &c. ; "Wood, Vale, Forest, Rivers, 
 Hill, and many other familiar examples. Sobriquets applied in this manner 
 are by no means obsolete. 
 
 The reader of to-day, no matter to what especial branch of literature or 
 history he may devote himself, must have encountered many of such peculiar 
 sobriquets and nicknames. Frequently their origin is difficult to determine, 
 and their real force is lost. 
 
 No book has as yet been issued which is devoted to the explanation and 
 derivation of these humorous, and, in some instances, abusive appellations ; 
 and to fill this gap the present work was undertaken. 
 
IN PREPARATION. 
 
 B flew ifrencb anD Bnglisb Slang Dictionary. 
 
 ARGOT AND SLANG. 
 
 A NEW FRENCH AND ENGLISH DICTIONARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CANT WORDS, QUAINT EXPRESSIONS, SLANG 
 TERMS, AND FLASH PHRASES 
 
 USED IN THE HIGH AND LOW LIFE OF 
 
 OLD AND NEW PARIS. 
 By A. BARR£:RE, 
 
 Officier de I'lnstruction Publique, Professor RM. Academy, Woolwich. 
 
 The work treats of the cant of thieves ; the jargon of Parisian roughs ; 
 the military, naval, parliamentary, academical, legal, and Freemasons' 
 slang ; of that of the workshop, the studio, the stage, the boulevards, the 
 demi-monde. It is accompanied by an exhaustive introduction ; also by 
 numerous specimens in prose and verse of the flash tongue of different 
 periods, arranged in chronological order up to the present day, among 
 which is the autobiography in parallel columns of a thief in English and 
 French slang. 
 
 London : WHITTAKER & CO., Paternoster Square, E.C. 
 
1^^ 
 
 ^/^ 
 

 "! 
 
 Ml 
 
 
 n/ve