Lexie Conyngham's Blog: writing, history and gardening.

Friday, 30 August 2013

Scots words in Knowledge of Sins Past




Some of these are duplicated from Death in a Scarlet Gown, but there we are: this maybe makes it easier!

Ashet: a large serving dish
Birl: spin round or over
Brose: usually barley broth, sometimes oatmeal in water. Athol Brose is whisky, cream and oatmeal as a pudding and can be very fine (and indeed very alcoholic)
Corbie: crow
Craik: croak
Creepie stool: a small stool made usually by amateur carpenters, suitable for kitchens http://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/woodbgood/index.asp?pageid=1045
Crusie lamp: a wall-hanging oil lamp with a wick, cheaply made and used often in cottages http://www.ramshornstudio.com/early_lighting_4.htm
Dominie: schoolmaster (this time from Latin, dominus)
Feart: afraid
Gar me grue: give me the creeps
Gey: very
Girdle: griddle
Gob: mouth, or more generally face
Greet: cry, sob
Guddle: confusion, mess
Hapeth: halfpennyworth (that is, not much)
Heidyin: head one, chief
Hirple: to limp
Howff: a low drinking establishment
Ken: know
Kirk: church
Kist: chest. In the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, there’s a group of Episcopalian Church papers known temptingly as the Jolly Kist – but it’s just a chest of papers that once belonged to Bishop Jolly. Ah, well.
Lum: chimney
Midden: dungheap
Neep: turnip, swede
Nyerps, give you the: annoy you, bother you, disturb you
Precentor: in the Scottish church, one who leads the singing of the psalms
Rammy: scrap, fight
Skelp: slap, spank, cane, generally for disciplinary purposes
Unchancy: unlucky
Wean: child, infant

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