SCOTTISH DIALECT

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 2

SCOTTISH DIALECT

MEANING IH RHYMES The following was written by a Scottish poet, Robert Leighton, to illustrate Scottish dialect: — They speak in riddles north, beyond the Tweed, The plain pure English they can deftly read; Yet when without the book they come to speak, Their lingo seems half English and half Greek. Their jaws are shafts; their hands, when closed, are neives; Their bread’s not cut in slices but in shelves; Their armpits are their oxters; palms are hnfs; Their men are chields; their timid fools are cuilTs; Their lads are callants, and their women kimmers; Good lasses denty queans, and bad ones limmers. They thole when they endure, scart when they scratch; And when they give a sample it’s a swatch; Scolding is flytin, and a long palaver Is nothing but a blither or a haver; This room they call the but and that the ben, And what they do not know they dinna ken; On keen cold days they say the wind bluws snell, And they have words that Johnson could not spell. To crack is to converse, the lift’s the sky; And bairns are said to greet -when children cry; When lost folk ever ask the way they want They speir the gate; and when they yawn they gaunt; Beetle with them is clock; a flame’s a lowe; Then straw is strae; chaff cauf, and hollow home; A pickle means a few; muckle is big; A piece of erockoryware is called a pig.