A reminder of the word list here for Scotstober, where Scots words are explored through writing.
Word of the Day 10: 'sprauchle' - means to move slowly and awkwardly or a person who does so. I have to admit I hadn't come across this poem before and struggled to find anything. It didn't help that it could be several ways. As Scots fell out of use and Scots speakers discouraged from using it because it was seen as uneducated or coarse, it became primarily a spoken language. This is reflected in the spelling which is erratic because people spell it how they say it.
Even the Scottish Poetry Library didn't have an entry that used sprauchle, so I did some deeper internet diving and through the DSL (Dictionary of the Scots Language/Leid) found a poet called Henry Scott Riddell (1780-1870) who wrote a poem that used the word in a song. Even the poem was hard to find, buried in an internet archive.
Geordie
Tair’s Courtship
Air — "Willie was a wanton wag"
A wilfu' man maun
hae his way,
At least, if he's
like Geordie Tait,
Ae night when
lately he wad gae
To court his
curlie-headed Kate.
The rains rushed
doun spate after spate,
• And murky were
the moorlands grey.
Yet manfully he
took the gait —
A wilfu' man maun
hae his way.
He thocht to loup the Bogle syke.
But landed in it
to the chin,
And seiched, and
said, Do as ye like.
Ye canna cool the
love within.
Near was he borne
out-owre the linn,
Ere he gat
spraugheled to the brae ;
But then, my sooth
! how he did rin ! —
A wilfii' man maun hae his way.
And if you're interested in the song he based the words on here's a wee link.
Day 11: 'bourach'. I knew the word, meaning 'a mess, confusion, a crowd', but finding a poem wasn't that easy. It's hit mainstream media lately as it was used in politics as 'clusterbourach' to describe an absolute mess, as in Brexit. But finding it in a short Scots poem. I branched out and found it in a translation by Robert Forbes in the mid-1700s of Ajax's Speech from Ovid's Metamorphoses, describing the moment when his men settle down to listen to him.
The wight an’ doughty Captains a’
Upo’ their doups sat down;
A rangel o’ the common fowk
In bourachs a’ steed roun.
The use of bourach here is brilliant because it shows the disorganised mess of the common soldiers beyond the Captains - an English translation describes it as "when the captains were seated, and the rank and file were standing, in a circle, around them".
I think the Scots does so much more, using bourach.
Little is known about Forbes other than he was a hosier based in London, but what this wee stanza reminds me, and I think it's often forgotten, that Scots used to be a language used broadly enough that it needed classics translated into so they could be understood by those who could read, Gavin Douglas' translation of the Aeneid for example in 1513.
I'm really enjoying all this research, it's been a while since I've read older versions of Scots.
