A new celebration of 1,000 Scots words and what they tell us about our country

Robin A Crawford's new book is out today

The words we use reveal a lot about ourselves. This is true of nations as well as people. The written word is at the very heart of Scottish culture and of my book Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers. I wanted a title that reflected the Jekyll and Hyde nature of our language, a key quality of our Scottishness we recognise in Stevenson’s classic novella, in Hogg’s Justified Sinner, Rankin’s Knots and Crosses – what C Gregory Smith in Scottish Literature (1919) termed antisyzygy – the supposed duality in the character of the Scots.

So the blast is either a violent wind or a blow on a trumpet, notoriously both in the polemic The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women published by John Knox in 1558. It is, however, used more tenderly 200 years later by Burns.

‘Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,

On yonder lea, on yonder lea;

My plaidie to the angry airt,

I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee.’

Burns and his language lies at the core of the book. Today Burns’ work continues to speak to people at home and around the world, a truly national poet. His poems, songs and language contain an immutable Scottishness that touches the soul like no other. Burns of course had a great sense of fun reflected in the other half of the title Clishmaclavers – the passing on of idle gossip, sometimes in a book.

Scots infuses our lives from the cradle to grave. The ‘Bairn’, the unnamed youngest of The Broons, is the child in us all – ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns’.

From its beginning to end Scots words accompany us in each year’s journey:

First foot. The first visitor over the threshold after the bells at Hogmanay; traditionally a tall, dark male bearing a gift, sometimes of coal or black bun; 2. the act of visiting on Ne’er Day (note the the duality, noun and verb).

Fiere friend, equal, companion. The Scots Makar Jackie Kay’s poem Fiere was inspired by the novelist Ali Smith singing Auld Lang Syne down the phone to her one Hogmanay.

And there’s a hand my trusty fiere And gie’s a hand o’ thine...

Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne, 1788

Scots conveys the aspects that define our national character: to dree one’s weird, to endure whatever fate has predestined for you.

But wha shall speak tae these fair maids,

Aneath the waning moon;

They maun dree a waesome weird,

That never will be doone.

James Hogg, Collected Novels, c. 1830

Dreich is grey, miserable, tedious; usually applied to weather but indicative of the Scots temperament, hence it being voted Scotland’s favourite word in a recent poll (or perhaps indicative of the temperaments of Scots who feel the need to participate in online polls).

Scots tells us of our past, how lives were lived, how they continue to be lived.

In the city: kettle-biler: a Dundonian husband who bides at home while his wife goes out to work. Female employment in the city’s Victorian and early-20th-century jute mills was high – women could be paid less than men for doing the same job (not much has changed, then).

Or in the countryside: bothy originally, communal accommodation for agricultural workers hired on a season-by-season basis; now, basic accommodation in remote locations for free use by outdoor walkers, hikers and cyclists.

The country’s architecture is a storehouse of Scots: Iron Age brochs are defensive structures built of stone, double walled, and found in coastal areas, predominantly in the western and northern Highlands and Islands.

Dun (Gaelic) fort: usually from the Iron Age (1000 bce-500 ce). Found in many Scottish place names, where Gaelic is no longer spoken: Dundee, Dunshalt, Moredun.

Craw-step gable: a Scottish architectural style in which blocks of squared stone are placed one on top of another, like steps, at the top of the gable ends of buildings, showing influence of the Low Countries and the Baltic states.

Post-Second World War housing multis and schemes are blighted by wider post-industrial social problems yet are hotbeds of vibrant contemporary Scots words and usage.

Historically a midden was a rubbish, refuse or dung heap. Archaeologically, the source of many historic objects now in the country’s museums. Contemporary Scots teenagers would feel culturally deprived if their parents or carers did not regularly shout at them, ‘This bedroom’s a midden!’

The house and home and its practices give rise to more unique words: hamefare the celebration of a bride’s move into the marital home in the Northern Isles; hameldaeme a holiday at home (usually brought about by lack of funds to do anything else and/or by a pandemic); and hamesucken the criminal offence of entering a person’s home and assaulting them.

Along with the law and education, religion has been one of the mainstays of the language: a manse being the house provided by a parish for the minister of the kirk. A daughter (or son) of the manse is a child of a minister, the stool of repentence a seat in a kirk where those found guilty of sinning – usually illicit fornication or houghmagandie – would be made to sit apart from the rest of the congregation and then lectured on their lack of morals by the minister at the end of a Sunday service. Fear and shame of it led many women to conceal their pregnancies, with tragic results.

The sectarianism that still blights our society can be found in words like dunce: its meaning of the bottom of the class, stupid is derived from the enemies of philosopher John Duns Scotus (c1266-c1308), especially later Protestants who disliked his assertion of papal authority. Vestiges of older pre-Christian religions can be found in words like cantrip 1. tricky, unnatural, supernatural; 2. a spell or magic trick.

‘Coffins stood round, like open presses,

That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses;

And by some develish cantraip slight,

Each in its cauld hand held a light.’

Robert Burns, ‘Tam o’Shanter’, 1790

Glamour/glamer/glawmir is witchcraft, to cast a spell, enchant. Other Scottish words – exported around the globe, like her people, include golf: a 1457 Act of Parliament under James II is the earliest written example, banning the game so as not to distract men from military training:

‘At the futbal ande the golf be vtterly cryt done and nocht vsyt’

[‘Football and golf be utterly cried down and not used’].

Slogan: a Highland clan or family war cry, hence the modern universal meaning as a strapline or motto to identify a brand.

‘The name of Hume have for their slughorn (or slogan as our southern shires terme it) “a Hume”, “a Hume”.’

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, The science of herauldry treated as part of the civil law and law of nations, etc 1680.

Whisky (Gaelic, ‘the water of life’), has a whole vocabulary of its own from malt, dram, Scotch, etc. (but never whiskey.)

‘Ach, he’s feeling the shortage of whisky. We’re all feeling it, Sergeant. Never mind. Good things will come again, and we’ll have whisky galore. Uisge beatha gu leoirl.’

Compton Mackenzie, Whisky Galore, 1947

Scots continues to develop and adapt often in surprising ways. Brigadoon a mid-20th-century musical and Hollywood film, centred on a mythical Scottish village is synonymous with a false and idealised vision of Scotland’s past. Outlander, once the term for a foreigner is also the title of the extremely popular historical romance TV series, based on the books by American Diana Gabaldon, in which a 20th-century nurse is transported back to 18th century Scotland at the time of the Jacobite uprising. Tourists from around the world flock to visit the film locations all over Scotland where real and Outlander history mix like some psychedelic tartan. Up-Helly-Aa is the Shetland festival held on the last Tuesday in January celebrating the island’s Norse heritage; guisers in Viking costume elect a ‘jarl’ to lead the ‘jarl squad’ with flaming torches thrown into a reconstructed longship after a night-time parade through Lerwick. A 19th-century construct – like its ‘men-only’ rule.

And what of Scots in the 21st century? It has proven itself remarkably adaptable and resilient. While we may think that the descriptions of the weather are stagnated in traditional agricultural terms like yowe trummle (unseasonably cold weather in early summer to make a ewe shiver) a 2011 storm was quickly christened ‘Hurricane Bawbag’ on urban social media. The language thrives because it expresses our Caledonian world view without always needing to use a complex range of historically ‘Scots’ words. While numpties, eejits and the glaikit have been the pride of Scotland for years a protestor’s placard during President Trump’s recent visit to Scotland read, ‘Yir maw was an immigrant ya roaster.’

Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers: A Treasury of 1,000 Scottish Words by Robin A Crawford is out today in hardback published by Elliott and Thompson, £9.99

A new celebration of 1,000 Scots words and what they tell us about our country

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