Trainspotting – Blood and Porridge

January 27, 2024January 27, 2024

Favourite Scots words, S – part 1

© Channel 4 Films / PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

Hot on the heels of my post about Robert Burns, here’s the latest in my series about favourite words in Scots, the language Burns wrote in. Many Scots words begin with the letter ‘S’, so in this instalment I’m only going to list the first half of them.

Scaffy (n) – not, as you might expect, a scaffolder, but a streetcleaner or binman.

Scheme / Schemie (n) – a scheme is the Scottish word for a housing estate and schemie is the derogatory word for someone who lives on one. One long-ago Saturday evening, while I was wandering around central Edinburgh, I went past a nightclub and was suddenly accosted by an upset young woman who demanded, “Dae I look like a schemie?” Her supposed resemblance to a schemie was why the bouncer at the nightclub door had just turned her away.

Meanwhile, a much-quoted line from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) comes from Mark Renton when he turns up for a job interview: “They’d rather gie a merchant school old boy with severe brain damage a job in nuclear engineering than gie a schemie wi a Ph. D. a post as a cleaner in an abattoir.”

Scooby (n), as in ‘I havenae a Scooby’ – rhyming slang for ‘clue’. Scooby refers to Scooby Doo, the famous American TV cartoon dog who first appeared in 1969, accompanying some ‘meddling kids’, without whose investigations many, many, many criminals “would have gotten away with it.” I’ve seen arguments online about whether this started as Scottish rhyming slang and then spread to England, or started as Cockney rhyming slang and spread to Scotland. But I’m sure I heard it in Scotland back in the 1980s, and it was appearing in Scottish newspapers in the 1990s, so its Caledonian pedigree is pretty venerable.

Scrieve (v) – to write. Accordingly, a scriever is a writer. “Just been doin’ a wee bit scrievin’ you know,” says Matt Craig, the main character and aspiring scriever in Archie Hind’s Glasgow-set novel The Dear Green Place (1966), which is as good an account of the trials and tribulations facing a working-class person trying to make a name as a writer, and a living from it, as Jack London’s better-known Martin Eden (1909).

© Corgi Books

Scunnered (adj) – sickened or disgusted. During the 1980s and 1990s, this word was commonly used in Scotland on the mornings following general elections, when it became clear that a majority of people in Scotland had voted for the Labour Party and a majority of people in the south of England had voted for Maggie Thatcher’s Conservatives. Guess who ended up ruling Scotland each time? For a 21^st-century variation on this, see the Brexit vote.

Sharn (n) – dung. Yes, Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts may know Sharn as a city that ‘towers atop a cliff above the mouth of the Dagger River in southern Breland’ in the fictional world of Eberron, but in Scots sharn refers to cow-shite. That’s a warning to fantasy creators. When you dream up names for your fantasy characters, creatures and places, be sure to check they don’t also mean something embarrassing in Scots. Now please excuse me while I get back to writing my latest sword-and-sorcery epic wherein Glaikit the Barbarian rescues Princess Jobbie from the clutches of the Dark Lord Pishy-Breeks in the Kingdom of Boak.

Shauckle (v) – to shuffle along, barely raising your feet off the ground.

Sheuch (n) – a channel for removing wastewater, i.e., a gutter at the side of a street or a ditch at the side of a field. In William McIlvanney’s 1975 novel Docherty, the young hero Conn gets battered by his school’s headmaster for saying to him, “Ah fell an bumped ma heid in the sheuch.” The fact that he doesn’t use the ‘correct’ word, gutter, is seen as ‘insolence’. Early in the 20^th century, when the events of Docherty take place, Scottish schoolkids would be punished for using Scots rather than the King’s English. The only day in the year when Scots was acceptable in schools was January 25^th, Robert Buns’ birthday, when they were made to recite the poetry of their national bard.

© Canongate Books Ltd

Incidentally, in Northern Ireland, where I spent my childhood, a sheuch seemed to be only a ditch. My dad was a farmer and once or twice I heard him cry, “There’s a cow got stuck in the sheuch!” And the North Channel – the strip of water above the Irish Sea that separates Scotland and Northern Ireland – was called ‘the Sheuch’ and the land-masses east and west of it termed ‘baith sides o’ the Sheuch.’

Shieling (n) – a hut or shelter for animals, usually out in the wilds and / or up in the hills.

Shilpit (adj) – thin, pale and weak-looking.

Shoogly (adj) – wobbly. To hang on a shoogly peg means to be in dodgy, precarious or dire circumstances. Since the arrival of the ineffectual and accident-prone Humza Yousaf as First Minister of Scotland, it’s fair to say the peg the electoral fortunes of the Scottish National Party hang on has been pretty shoogly.

Skean–dhu (n) – the Anglicised (or Scotticised) version of the Gaelic term sgian-duhb, meaning the ceremonial dagger that’s tucked behind the top of the hose in male Highland dress. Considering the popularity of Highland dress at Scottish weddings, and the amount of alcohol consumed at them, it’s always surprised me that the country has avoided having a sky-high death-toll of wedding guests stabbed with skean-dhus in drunken altercations.

From wikipedia.org / © Stubborn Stag

Skelf (n) – a splinter.

Skelp (n / v) – to slap or a slap. Skelps were often administered by parents and teachers to wayward kids back in the days, fondly remembered by the Daily Mail and Daily Express, when it was believed that assaulting children was good for them.

Skite (n / v) – also to strike someone or the blow thereof. However, a skite is more likely to come from a sharp, stinging cane or stick than the open hand that delivers by a skelp. Both are nicely onomatopoeic words, in their different ways.

Skoosh (n / v) – a squirt or spray of liquid. A commonly heard exchange in Scottish pubs: “Dae ye want water in yer whisky?” “Aye, but just a wee skoosh.”

Sleekit (adj) – according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, either ‘sleek’ and ‘smooth’ or ‘crafty’ and ‘deceitful’. Presumably it was with the first meaning that this word got immortalised in a line of Robert Burns’ 1785 poem To a Mouse: “Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie…” Nowadays, it’s used mainly with the ‘crafty’ and ‘deceitful’ application. I can think of many politicians I’d describe as sleekit, but I won’t mention any names.

From members.parliament.uk

Smeddum (n) – in physical terms, a powder. However, smeddum has also come to mean the kernel or essence of something, and presumably from that to mean its vigour, spirit, determination or grit too. Robert Burns – him again – had the first meaning in mind when he wrote about ‘fell, red smeddum’, possibly referring to red precipitate of mercury, in his 1785 poem To a Louse. Whereas Lewis Grassic Gibbon was thinking of smeddum’s spiritual denotation when he made it the title of his most famous short story, about a hard-working Scottish matriarch called Meg Menzies who takes no shit from anyone. As Meg herself says: “It all depends if you’ve smeddum or not.”

Smirr (n) – a drizzly rain falling in small droplets. This sad, ghostly word perfectly describes the sad, ghostly semi-rain that sometimes seems to envelop Scotland’s landscapes 365 days of the year.

Snaw (n) – snow. Like snaw aff a dyke is a simile commonly used to describe something that disappears, or is disappearing, super-fast: for example, jobs for life, polar icecaps, cashiers in supermarkets, CD and DVD drives in laptops, Twitter’s credibility after Elon Musk took it over, and Liz Truss premierships.

© Canongate Books Ltd

November 30, 2023December 2, 2023

Favourite Scots words, P-R

From pixabay.com / © Dimitris Vetsikas

Today, November 30^th, is Saint Andrew’s Day, the national day of Scotland. Also, I’m in the middle of reading Douglas Stuart’s 2022 novel Young Mungo, which is set in Glasgow during the 1990s and is choc-a-bloc with cherishable Scots vocabulary: bevvy, chib, doo, midden, schemie, sook, smirr, tattie–bogle, wean, winchin’… Thus, this seems an opportune time to post the latest instalment of my attempt to catalogue my favourite words from the Scots language.

Patter (n) – A long time ago, I remember Iain Jenkins, my English teacher at Peebles High School, trying to explain to my class why William Shakespeare placed Mercutio’s monologue about Queen Mab in the middle of Act 1, Scene 4 of Romeo and Juliet. After all, the monologue didn’t have any bearing on the plot that came before or after it. It was merely Shakespeare showing off his own verbal flamboyance and inventiveness. Eventually, Jenkins exclaimed, “Patter! It’s just patter! It’s Mercutio indulging in a bit of patter!”

Patter, then, is smooth talk, smart talk or funny talk – often delivered by someone, like a politician or a salesman, who’s trying to sell you something. The word crops in phrases like, “I gave her the auld patter,” or “Enough ay yer patter!” And a person who comes out with it a lot is called a patter–merchant. The city of Glasgow seems full of patter–merchants, surprisingly enough.

Pawkie (adj) – used to describe a person possessed of a dry and quietly mocking sense of humour.

Pech (v) – to gasp or wheeze breathlessly. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s short supernatural story Thrawn Janet, you get the line: “Even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds an’ lay pechin’ for their breath.”

© Kypros Press

Peely-wally (adj) – looking pale and sick-looking. That’s why in Solo (2013), the James Bond ‘continuity’ novel written by William Boyd, there’s a bit where an injured Bond is scolded by May, his formidable old Scottish housekeeper, for looking ‘awfy peely-wally’.

I’d assumed this was derived from ‘peeling wall’, something that obviously doesn’t look healthy. But I’ve recently learnt that peely comes from an early 19^th century word peelie, meaning ‘a gaunt, pale person’. And wally is a Scots word meaning ‘made of china’. Even now, people refer to an ornamental china dog as a wally dug and to false teeth (once made of porcelain) as wallies. So peely–wally really means ‘as pale as china’.

Peep (n) – the lowest level at which you can set a gas flame before it goes out. To ‘put someone’s gas at a peep’ is to seriously knock them out of their stride or deprive them of their vigour.

Peewit (n) – a lapwing.

Pieces (n) – sandwiches. Years ago, while I was living with my Dad, I got a job at a local warehouse. I needed to make myself a packed lunch every morning, to eat during the short break I got in the middle of the day. My Dad would always inquire before I left the house if I’d remembered to get my pieces together.

Pisht (adj) – drunk. Just as the Eskimos are said to have a hundred words for snow, there must be at least a hundred words in Scots for being inebriated. See also arsed, bevied, bleezin’, blootered, buckled, fou’, gubbered, hingin’, minced, mingin’, miraculous, miracked, mortal, reekin’, reelin’, steamboats, steamin’, stocious, wellied, etc. This, of course, is a tragic reflection on the state of the Scottish psyche… I wrote, whilst sipping a large whisky.

From pixabay.com / © rebcenter-moscow

Plook (n) – the curse of many a Scottish person’s adolescence, plooks are pus-filled pimples. It was rumoured at my school that every time you ate a Mars Bar, you got a plook. The adjective is plooky and, predictably, this figured in countless playground insults: “Ye plooky bastart, ye!”

Plump (n) – as in ‘a plump ay rain’, i.e., a sudden downpour.

Poke (n) – a small paper bag. I suspect this word is most commonly heard in Scotland’s chippies, where people request ‘a poke ay chips’.

Poultice (n) – an arsehole. For example, “Thon Boris Johnson is a right poultice, so he is.”

Puddock (n) – a frog.

Pure (adv) – popularised by the actress Elaine C. Smith, whose character in the Glasgow-set comedy TV show City Lights (1984-1991) used the catchphrase, “Pure deid brilliant!” Placed before adjectives to amplify their meaning to the nth degree, it crops up in phrases like ‘pure mental’, ‘pure radge’ and ‘pure sleekit’.

Puggled (adj) – exhausted.

Quaich (n) – in the words of the Meriam-Webster dictionary, ‘a small shallow drinking vessel with ears for use as handles.’ These days, ornate quaichs are often used as pint-sized trophies at Scottish sports events.

Quine (n) – a girl or young woman. This is commonly used in Scotland’s North-East, where boys and young men are also described as loons, so you hear a lot about quines an’ loons. In the early 1990s, a group of Scottish feminists, including the journalist Lesley Riddich, started up a magazine called Harpies and Quines – harpy being a word commonly used in Scotland to describe a grumpy, ill-tempered and mean-minded woman. The famous high-society magazine Harpers and Queen failed to see the joke and attempted to sue them.

© Channel Four Films / Polygram Filmed Entertainment

Radge (adj) – violently wild and crazy. Used as a noun, it refers to a mad hooligan. It had humble beginnings in Eastern Scotland, where it may have come from a Romany word with a similar meaning, ‘raj’, but radge was for a while a trendy term used the length and breadth of Britain. This was because of its copious use in Danny Boyle’s hit movie Trainspotting (1996), where it was associated with Robert Carlyle’s ultra-violent character Frank Begbie. I seem to remember the author Irvine Welsh, on whose novel the film was based, remarking disgustedly that he’d heard Hooray Henrys using the word radge in London wine bars. And I also remember Q magazine running an interview with Robert Carlyle under the memorable headline RADGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.

Rammy (n) – a fight or brawl. A stairheid rammy is a brawl that breaks out among the womenfolk in the staircases and on the landings of Scotland’s urban tenement buildings. During the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, a heated television debate between then-SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon and then-Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont was described afterwards by journalist Ruth Wishart as “a right good stairheid rammy” that “made strong men avert their eyes”.

Randan (n) – a drunken knees-up, as in “He’s away oot on the randan!”

Rector (n) – the Scottish term for headmaster.

Redd (v) – to tidy up. I’ve rarely heard this verb used in Scotland, or at least in the parts of it I’ve inhabited. But I frequently heard it during my childhood in Northern Ireland, where a good number of the people are descended from Scots. My Mum would frequently explain, “Get this room redd up!” or “Give that place a wee redd!”

Riddy (n) – an embarrassment. As in: “Liz Truss! What an absolute riddy!”

Right (adj) – uttered with the appropriate intonation, right becomes a contemptuous response, dismissing something that another person has just said. Though for maximum impact, use the phrase Aye, right. “Maggie Thatcher wis the best prime minister since Churchill? Aye, right.” And indeed, Glasgow’s annual book festival is called Aye Write.

© Glasgow Life

Rone (n) – the length of guttering along the edge of a roof for collecting and removing rainwater.

That’s all for now. More Scots words, and more example-sentences that insult famous Conservative Party politicians, will come shortly…

December 10, 2022December 10, 2022

Remember the Ally-mo

© BBC

It’s come to my attention that a football World Cup is in progress. Time, then, to dust down and repost the following item, which surfaces on this blog every four years when the competition is underway to decide the global champions of the ‘beautiful game’.

One unsettling feature of growing older is that when an anniversary arrives and you think back to the original event, you feel shocked when you realise how much time separates now and then. The other week, the 2022 World Cup competition began in Qatar, and it’s just occurred to me that the 1978 World Cup in Argentina took place 44 whole years and eleven whole World Cups ago. It’s almost traumatic to realise how much time has elapsed.

However, if you’re old enough to remember the 1978 Argentinian World Cup and you were in Scotland at the time, you’ll testify that the event itself was traumatic.

For those of you who’re unacquainted with the topic… What happened in 1978 was that of the four national football teams in the UK, Scotland was the only one to qualify for Argentina. And the country had a team that, on paper, looked like it might achieve something. It boasted players from some of the mightiest football clubs in Britain: for example, from Manchester United (Martin Buchan, Gordon McQueen, Lou Macari, Joe Jordan), Liverpool (Graham Souness, the legendary Kenny Dalgleish), Glasgow Rangers (Derek Johnstone, Tom Forsyth, Sandy Jardine), Nottingham Forest (Kenny Burns, John Robertson, Archie Gemmill) and, er, Partick Thistle (Alan Rough). And in charge of these remarkable players was a manager called Ally MacLeod, who was remarkable in his own way. Though not necessarily in the right way.

From the Independent / © Getty Images

Ally had been emboldened by wins in 1977 over the European champions Czechoslovakia and over the Auld Enemy, England. The game against England concluded with the Scottish fans swarming onto the pitch at Wembley and digging up clods of the turf and breaking the goalposts into wee pieces to bring home as souvenirs, much to the horror of the English commentators and much to the hilarity of everyone in Scotland. He then began to talk up his team’s chances in Argentina. When early in 1978 Scotland failed to win the Home International championship involving England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ally shrugged it off with the tantalising comment that the championship’s title “could be dwarfed by the World Cup.” Such statements, and Ally’s general air of swagger and optimism – “My name is Ally MacLeod,” he announced when he became Scotland manager, “and I am a born winner!” – acted like catnip to both football fans and the hacks working on the sports pages of Scotland’s newspapers.

As the World Cup approached, a heady sense of expectation began to infect the Scottish population. Folk started to believe that the Argentinian World Cup would be a jamboree of Scottish footballing genius, culminating in Ally and the gang lifting the trophy. No wonder a carpet company cannily signed Ally to do a commercial where he sat on one of their rugs whilst dressed as a gaucho, which was 1970s Britain’s idea of what everybody in Argentina looked like. This led to a priceless incident where, just before he departed for Argentina, Ally was accosted by an exuberant fan who announced, “Ally, see the day after your commercial? My ma bought one o they carpets!”

Ally was indeed a great salesman. He could truly market the brand. Unfortunately, that was not quite the same as delivering the goods.

Even one of my favourite rock bands, the Australian (but mostly Scottish-born) AC/DC, got in on the act and played a gig in 1978 at Glasgow Apollo Theatre wearing Scotland football strips. Also getting in on the act was the Scottish comedian Andy Cameron, who recorded a song called Ally’s Tartan Army that soon rode high in the charts. It contained such catchy, if posthumously cringeworthy, lines as: “And we’re fairly shake them up / When we win the World Cup / Cos Scotland’s got the greatest football team!”

From pinterest.co.uk

Being in Scotland in the spring of 1978 and watching this happen was disconcerting for me. The year before, my family had moved from Northern Ireland and taken up residency in a farm near the Scottish town of Peebles. I’d assumed that the Scots were a stoical, down-to-earth lot, not given to flights of fancy. But then, all-of-a-sudden, they’d succumbed to this madness about Ally MacLeod, winning the World Cup and having the greatest football team in the universe. What was going on? I found it particularly noticeable the day before Scotland played Northern Ireland in the Home Internationals. When I walked into a meeting of the local Scouts that evening, all the other (Scottish) scouts had an insane glint in their eyes and were gleefully predicting how Scotland was going to slaughter, dismember and stomp on the grave of poor, lowly Northern Ireland the next day. As it turned out, all Scotland could manage with Northern Ireland was a 1-1 draw, much to my satisfaction.

Still, over time, the madness seemed to seep into even my non-ethnically Scottish soul. Hey, I thought, it would be cool to live in the country that’d won the World Cup, wouldn’t it?

After a delirious send-off at Hampden Stadium where 30,000 Scotland fans whooped and screamed as if their team had just come back from Argentina clutching the World Cup trophy, Ally’s Tartan Army flew out and got ready for their first game of the competition’s first round, which was against Peru. The evening that the game was on TV, I missed the beginning of it for my dad had sent me out to move some cows from one field to another. I was in the middle of moving those cows when I heard a huge rumbling roar. It was like how I’d imagine the approach of a tsunami to sound. I needed a few seconds to realise I was hearing cheering coming from the town, a half-mile away beyond the last of my parents’ fields. It was the sound of 5000-odd people in Peebles celebrating Joe Jordan knocking in a first goal for Scotland in the game’s 14^th minute. Gosh, I thought, it’s started. Scotland really are going to win the World Cup!

I completed my task, hurried back to the house and hunkered down in front of the television next to my younger brother, who’d really caught the Scotland World Cup bug and was watching the match with avid excitement. Scarcely had I arrived there when, just before half-time, Peru equalised. Then in the second half Peru scored two more, so that by the game’s end Scotland had been beaten 3-1. In a pathetic attempt to hide my disappointment, I pretended that, being Northern Irish, I hadn’t really been supporting Scotland and I thought their defeat was funny. So I turned around and started laughing at my brother. I stopped, though, when I realised he was in floods of tears. However, my mother had already seen me laughing at him and she gave me a deserved bollocking for making him even more upset.

Next up for Scotland was Iran, an unstable country in the early throes of a revolution. Scotland was surely going to win this one, right? Wrong. The team played so badly that they scraped a 1-1 draw and that was only because an Iranian player called Eskandarian scored an own-goal. This game was famous for its images of a totally-deflated Ally Macleod sitting hunched over in the Scotland dugout, his hands clamped over the top of his skull in an attempt to shut out the world – “Ally trying to dismantle his head,” as one wag described it later.

© Daily Record

To heighten the misery, the Scottish striker Willie Johnston was sent home after failing a drugs test. Other football players have suffered drugs scandals, most notably the cocaine-snorting Diego Maradona. But the hapless Johnston wasn’t even caught taking a glamorous, hedonistic drug. He tested positive for Reacitivan, a medication prescribed to him because he had hay fever. Poor old Willie might as well have been busted for taking Benylin Chesty Cough Mixture.

By now the Scotland situation was looking grim. Also grim was the atmosphere at Peebles High School. One guy in my class told me there was a record shop in Glasgow that was now selling copies of Ally’s Tartan Army by Andy Cameron for a penny each, so that disgruntled punters could make a public display of smashing them into vinyl slivers on the pavement outside. Meanwhile, a girl told me she couldn’t bear to drink Scotland’s national fizzy drink Irn Bru any more, because its name sounded it too much like ‘Iran Peru’. Lessons with our English teacher, Iain Jenkins, strayed off the topic of Shakespeare and became lengthy post-mortem discussions about what was going horribly wrong in Argentina.

In fact, I remember us doing some creative writing one day and then Iain Jenkins reading out a poem that a mischievous pupil from south of the border – England – had just penned about Scotland’s faltering World Cup campaign. It contained the memorable line, “Poor Ally will have to emigrate to the moon” and the even more memorable couplet, “Willie Johnston is over the hill / That’s why he’s on the pill.”

To get through to the World Cup’s next round, Scotland now had to beat the Netherlands… and beat them by three goals. There seemed zero chance of that happening. From the dire way the Scots were playing, it looked much more likely that the Dutch would murder them. Yet it was against the Dutch – who’d eventually make it to the competition’s final – that Scotland managed a victory. Indeed, they were 3-1 up at one point in the game and if they’d knocked in another goal they could have lived to fight another day. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The Dutch eventually pulled one back, making the final score 3-2. Scotland had won, but not by enough to stop them going home early.

Still, the game produced a brilliant Scottish goal by the diminutive Nottingham Forest player Archie Gemmill. It was the best goal of that World Cup and possibly the greatest World Cup goal ever. Incidentally, it’s also the goal whose footage is intercut with the hectic sex sequence in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1995). No wonder a dazed Ewan MacGregor murmurs at the end of it, “I haven’t felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored against Holland in 1978!” Though I’m pretty sure that back in 1978 the Scottish football commentator Archie Macpherson didn’t really exclaim, as he does in Trainspotting, “A penetrating goal for Scotland!”

Thus, Scotland was out of the World Cup but with, technically, a wee bit of pride salvaged. Sadly, such was the hype that’d accompanied them to Argentina that their campaign didn’t feel like anything other than an absolute disaster. The day after the Holland game, I remember a classmate, the local postman’s son, coming into class. He pulled out a tartan scarf, waved it around for five seconds and said flatly and unenthusiastically, “See that? We beat Holland. Magic.” Then he put the scarf back in his bag and zipped it up again. And nobody at school seemed to talk about Scotland, Argentina and the World Cup ever again.

Mind you, later that summer, I returned to Northern Ireland for a holiday. People there seemed to view me as 100% Scottish now and they didn’t stop tearing the piss out of me about how crap Scotland had played in Argentina.

From twitter.com

But let’s be fair to Ally MacLeod, who died in 2004. In popular Scottish mythology he’s often depicted as a vainglorious balloon, bragging that his team would win the World Cup, and then win the next World Cup, and probably the Ryder Cup, the Stanley Cup, the America’s Cup, the Ashes and the Tour de France as well. But I’ve scoured the Internet and been unable to find most of the hyperbolic quotes that I’ve heard attributed to him. It’s fairer to say that he made a few tactless comments and exuded a lot of optimism, which the overheated imaginations of fans and journalists turned into mass hysteria. In the dispirited environment of post-World Cup Scotland, though, nobody wanted to admit their own culpability and poor Ally became the scapegoat.

Anyway, if you can ignore the hubris and focus only on the football, Ally’s 1978 squad didn’t do that badly. Yes, they had two duff games but they only lost one of those, and then they achieved a win against the eventual finalists. If the cards had fallen differently elsewhere in their first-round group, they might have got through to the competition’s next stage; and, having had their wake-up call, performed better. Other teams in other World Cups have done so with the same first-round record of one win, one draw and one defeat – including England.

Much has been blamed on that ill-fated World Cup campaign. People have found significance in how it came shortly before the 1979 referendum on creating a devolved Scottish parliament, which died a death because of apathy. The Scottish public voted for the parliament, but not in sufficiently high numbers. It’s tempting to join those two dots, but I’m inclined to blame this collapse in Scottish political willpower at the end of the decade on factors a lot more complex than Ally MacLeod bullshitting us a bit about football in 1978.

One thing that can be attributed to 1978 is the evolution of the Scotland football team’s travelling support, the Tartan Army. Thanks to the bitter lessons learnt then, modern Scotland fans have dumped any belligerent, nationalistic sense of expectation and have gone about the (often thankless) task of supporting Scotland with humour, irony, self-deprecation and a determination to have a good time no matter how bad the results. As a result, they’re now one of the most popular sets of fans in the world.

Actually, when Scotland played England several years ago at Wembley, I saw a picture of some Scottish fans posing in Trafalgar Square with a life-sized cut-out of Ally MacLeod they’d brought along. That made me smile. With his erratic management skills and over-exuberant PR skills, the daft bugger put us through the wringer in 1978. But it’s nice to know his spirit still gets invited to the party.

January 25, 2022January 31, 2024

Favourite Scots words, G-H

From wikipedia.org / Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Today is January 25^th and this evening is Burns Night, when Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns will be commemorated at suppers across the globe with the reciting of his Scots-language verse, the playing of traditional Scottish music and the quaffing of much, much whisky.

Recently, a newspaper reported that during his lifetime Burns had been urged not to write in the Scots language because it would alienate readers who weren’t Scottish. “Dr. John Moore, a Scottish physician and travel author, who wrote regularly to Burns, warned him that London readers would not connect to his works. Burns, obviously, ignored his advice, and the rest is history.” It’s ironic that a postscript to this article, published in the London-based Guardian, stated apologetically: “This article was amended on 17 January 2022. Scots, in which Burns wrote much of his best-known poetry, is widely regarded as a language, not a ‘dialect’ as a previous version described it.” No doubt Dr. John Moore would have approved of the original article; Burns of the amended one.

Anyway, as is my custom on January 25^th, here is a list of some of my favourite words and phrases from the Scots language, originating before Burns or originating after him. This time I’m covering items beginning with letters ‘G’ and ‘H’.

Gaberlunzie (n) – a professional beggar or ‘wandering never-do-well’. It’s said that King James V of Scotland liked to disguise himself as a gaberlunzie occasionally and go wandering about his kingdom (no doubt finding out along the way what his subjects really thought of him) and he penned the famous folk ballad The Gaberlunzie Man about his experiences. A gangrel is a more general Scots word meaning ‘vagrant’.

Gadge, gadgie (n) – a man. This supposedly comes from Romany, is used in North Eastern Scotland and I heard it a lot when I lived in Aberdeen in the 1980s.

Gallus (adj) – a word much-used by certain Glaswegians when describing themselves, meaning bold, cheeky, reckless, show-offy and irrepressible. However, the online Collins Dictionary tells me that gallus is derived from the word ‘gallows’ and it originally meant ‘fit for the gallows’. Which is appropriate in a way. On several occasions I’ve tried to have a quiet, reflective pint in a Glaswegian pub, only to have my meditation disrupted and my space invaded by a would-be gallus local wanting to bowl me over with his amazing patter. With the result that I’d have liked to see him strung up on the gallows.

Gash (adj/adv) – terrible (though I’ve seen it defined as meaning ‘witty’ or ‘well-dressed’ as well). This word memorably appeared in the movie version of Trainspotting (1996) when Tommy (Kevin McKidd) recalls playing a game of pool with Begbie (Robert Carlyle). The latter plays so badly that he ends up taking his frustration out on a hapless spectator, whom he beats to a pulp: “…Begbie is playin’ absolutely f*ckin’ gash… He picks on this speccy wee gadge at the bar, accusin’ him ay puttin’ him off by lookin’ at him…”

Glaikit, also gawkit (adj) – silly, foolish, thoughtless. Like a lot of Scots vocabulary, there’s a wonderful, near-onomatopoeic quality to this word. You hear those two syllables, ‘glai-kit’, and immediately you begin to visualise a blank face, a dull pair of eyes, an expression that indicates zero intelligence. Something like…

Gloaming (n) – The period after sunset but before it gets completely dark. It inspired the famous 1911 song Roamin’ in the Gloamin’, written and performed by Sir Harry Lauder. The song’s chorus goes: “Roamin’ in the gloamin’ on the bonnie banks o’ Clyde / Roamin’ in the gloamin’ wi ma lassie by ma side!” There’s also a song by Radiohead called The Gloaming, found on their 2003 album Hail to the Thief, which you’ll be surprised to hear is a wee bit less jaunty than the Harry Lauder song.

Graip (n) – a big pronged fork used for shifting hay, silage and cut grass. Like a lot of Scots words, this one made it across the Irish Sea and I remember it being used on my family’s farm when I was a kid in Northern Ireland.

Greet (v) – to cry. A greetin’ face is a crybaby.

Grog (v) – to spit.

Guddle (n) – a confused mess (similar to a ‘muddle’). Guddle also exists in Scots as a verb and means to catch a fish with your bare hands, using the mysterious technique of tickling the fish’s belly.

Guisin’ (v/n) – what kids do on Halloween night, going around door-to-door in fancy dress, singing songs or telling jokes in the hope of getting sweets and snacks as a reward. Yes, guisin’ is trick-or-treating, long before the American term was ever heard of in Scotland.

Haar (n) – a cold, damp mist that you get creeping in from the North Sea. I’ve heard it claimed that there are over 100 Scots words for rain, although I haven’t found them listed online. This site, however, gives 27 Scots words for weather, most of it precipitation, coldness and general miserableness.

Hackit (adj) – ugly. Thus, if the third and final instalment of Sergio Leone’s epic Dollars trilogy of 1960s spaghetti westerns was ever remade and relocated in Scotland, it presumably wouldn’t be entitled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but The Braw, the Shite an’ the Hackit.

Handless (adj) – used to describe a man who’s hopeless at performing practical, manual tasks in a household, one who can’t carry out repairs and has zero DIY.

Harled (adj) – a harled building has had its external stonework covered in a mixture of lime and gravel, giving it a roughcast coating that protects it against the worst of the Scottish elements. Famous harled buildings include Stirling Castle and Aberdeenshire’s Crathes Castle.

Haud yer wheesht! (imperative phrase) – be quiet! Incidentally, Haud yer Wheesht was also the name of a rather good folk band that operated in Edinburgh in the late 1990s, headed by Jimmy the Bagpiper who used to busk around St Giles’ Cathedral. If you were familiar with Edinburgh at the time, he was the one who dressed like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Haver (v) – to talk nonsense. This is word is essential for understanding the last lines of the first verse of the Proclaimers song 500 Miles, which goes: “And if I haver, yeah, I know I’m gonnae be, I’m gonnae be the man who’s havering to you.”

Heehaw (n) – a politer form of ‘f*ckall’, as in “Ye ken heehaw aboot it!”

Heelster-gowdie (adj/adv) – a Scots way of saying ‘head over heels’.

Heidbanger, heider, heid-the-baw (n) – a nutter, a crazy person, an idiot. Heid-the-baw is a more personal, face-to-face term: “Hey, heid-the-baw, I’m talkin’ tae you!”

Heid bummer (n) – the person in charge.

Hirple (v) – to hobble or limp.

Hoachin’ (adj) – busy, crowded, infested. One of the Scottish Tourist Board’s greatest accomplishments has been to suppress the fact that Scotland is totally hoachin’ with midges.

Hochmagandy (n) – a jocular or poetic word for sexual intercourse, for recreation, not procreation, between people who are not married to each other. Unsurprisingly, Robert Burns was familiar with this saucy noun, as indicated by the final lines of his poem The Holy Fair: “There’s some are fou o’ love divine / There’s some are fou o’ brandy / An’ mony jobs that day begin / May end in hochmagandy…”

Hoolet (n) – an owl. This charming Scots word, like a number of others, is derived from the French language, where the word is ‘hulotte’.

Hoor (n) – derived from the word ‘whore’ and literally a prostitute, but generally a very nasty, abusive term for a woman. A few years back, while I was working briefly in Abu Dhabi, I was bemused to see this sign for a beauty salon. I bet it didn’t get many lady customers from Scotland.

On the other hand, the phrase ya hoor is merely an exclamation of surprise. I remember sitting in a cinema in Edinburgh in 1999 and seeing The Matrix for the first time. At the moment when Carrie Ann Moss sprang upwards, froze in mid-air, and the camera rotated around her in an early and unexpected display of the cinematic technique known as ‘flo-mo’, there was a stunned silence in the auditorium. Apart from one guy in the row behind me, who promptly exclaimed: “Ya hoor!”

Howk (v) – to dig, rake or poke around in. Once upon a time, the activity of manually picking potatoes out of the ground was called tattie–howking. A more abusive derivation is bin–howker, meaning someone who has to find sustenance by rummaging in other people’s bins.

Huckle (v) – to manhandle and move by force. My relationship with Scotland’s bouncer community has not always been a harmonious one, and I have to admit that once or twice I’ve been huckled out of a bar or club by them.

Hughie (v) – to vomit. Another Scots verb for this action is to ralph. Hence, I’ve heard people say regretfully the morning after a boozy night: “I spent the end ay the evenin’ in the company ay Ralph an’ Hughie.”