Parliamo Scots? - Farming and Countryside While Scotland is now highly industrialised and technically advanced, farming is still an important part of the economy. •Bothy - a hut or shelter for unmarried, male farm workers. •Byre - cow shed. •Carle - a peasant or labour, usually used in a derogatory way. •Clearances - the years during which landlords (mainly in the Highlands) removed their tenant farmers so that they could introduce sheep as this was more profitable at the time. •Corn kist or Girnel - storage bin for corn. •Corn kister - a song which was sung at the gatherings of farm workers. •Cottar - a married farm worker who is allocated a cottage as part of his wages, as in The Cottars Saturday Night the poem by Robert Burns. •Creel - a basket for carrying peat. Also a basket-shaped trap for lobsters. •Crofter - someone in the Highlands who occupies a house adjoining a small holding of land. The crofter may be an owner or a tenant of the croft. •Cromak or Crummock - a long stick with a curved head for catching sheep. •Divot - originally a thin piece of turf - as many golfers will know. •Drove road - the track used when driving cattle or sheep to market. •Dyke-louper - an animal which is prone to loup (jump) over a dyke (stone wall). •Girnel - granary. The toast May the moose neer lea yer girnal wi a tear-drap in its ee means May the mouse never leave your grain store with a tear drop in its eye. •Glebe - cultivated land or a field. •Glesca Jock - the rope used to bind haystacks. •Grieve - the head worker on a farm. •Guidman - someone who owns or rents a farm or small estate. The guidman ranked below a laird who would own a much larger property. •Gushet neuk - a triangular piece of land which was often found between adjacent properties. •Howk - to dig or dig out. Tattie howkers or potato diggers were employed to lift the harvest by hand. •Howker - anyone who digs in the fields, as in Tattie howkers who brought in the potatoes before the days of automation. •Inby - the farmland beside the farm buildings. The opposite term is outby being the land furthest from the farm buildings. •Kail yard - a kitchen garden. Kail, a kind of cabbage with crinkled leaves, was a popular vegetable at one time. Cauld kail het again meant yesterdays leftovers served again and was used eventually to describe any story which had been heard on numerous occasions. •Liggat - a self closing gate. •Lonnach - couch grass, gathered for burning. Every September for 176 years, the 200 Men of Lonach have marched on the six-mile trek round the five stops in the Aberdeenshire glen where they are given the traditional drink of whisky. One of the stops is Candacraig Castle, where the laird is now actor and entertainer Billy Connolly. •Loun - a young worker on a farm. •Mains - home farm of an estate which is cultivated for or by the owner. Many years ago there was a BBC Scotland radio programme entitled Down at the Mains. •Midden - initially this was a compost heap but it came to be the refuse heap and the term was applied in towns to the area where the household refuse was stored before being collected. •Missie - the eldest unmarried daughter of a farmer. •Moss laird - someone who was given an area of moorland at little or no rent so that he could turn it into arable land. •Muckle Friday - the half-annual hiring market for farm workers. •Neep Cleek - a hooked tool for pulling up neeps (turnips). •Nickie Tams - the pieces of string used by farmworkers to tie their trousers just below the knee, to help to keep the foot of their trousers out of the mud. •Peat - this is semi-carbonised, decayed vegetable material which has not yet been transformed into coal and which is found in boggy moorland. It was (and is) cut into brick-shaped pieces, dried on a peat stack and burnt in fireplaces all over Scotland. •Rascal Fair - the hiring market for those who had not obtained a job at the Muckle Fair. •Shaws - the stalks and leaves of potatoes. •Sheuch - a drainage ditch. •Stook - bundles of cut corn, leaning against one another in a field to encourage them to dry. Stookie Sunday was when all the corn had been cut and was standing in stooks. •Tattie-bogle - a scarecrow, especially in a tattie (potato) field. •Tryst - a market. The Falkirk Tryst was a cattle market held at the town of Falkirk which was at one time the largest in Scotland. Now were away with the birds! •Gowk - the cuckoo. Hunt the gowk is the Scottish equivalent of April Fools Day. •Blue bonnet - blue tit. It is also applied to several species of flower such as the cornflower. •Corbie - raven but sometimes refers to a crow. The corbie messenger was the raven sent out by Noah from the ark and is used to describe a dilatory messenger. •Laverock - skylark. •Hoodie craw - hooded crow. If you are shot among the craws you are involved in trouble through mixing with bad associates. •Whaup - curlew. •Doo - originally a dove but is now used also for a pigeon. Flee the blue doo is to send out a messenger surreptitiously for whisky. •Lintie - linnet. •Weet-my-fit - a corncrake (the name sounds like its cry). •Sparra or Speug or Spurgie - all words for the house sparrow. •Hoolet - owl •Sea maw - seagull
Posted on: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:01:25 +0000
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