Scots Word of the week
waith n. a piece of property which is found ownerless
Waith is related to the word waif, which started out as a legal term with the same meaning, but is now more often used to conjure images of Dickens...
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Reproduced with kind permission of The Herald Newspaper
Scottish Word of the Week is written by Maggie Scott of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk
Latest Scots News from around Scotland
Reading Bus launches Doric books
03rd July
In 2007 Aberdeen City Council’s ‘Reading Bus’ sent out an appeal for writers to contribute poems in North East Scots – the Doric – for ch...
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New Chair at Shetland ForWirds
02nd July
The dialect promotion group, Shetland ForWirds, has a new convener and vice-convener following its recent AGM.
Writer and former teacher, Lauree...
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MSP Asks About the Use of Scots Language in Scottish Schools
23rd June
Dr Bill Wilson, SNP MSP for the West of Scotland, has written to the education directors of all of Scotland’s cooncils to ask whether in-service ...
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Ballads, Ridings and Truces
Summer time in Scotland marks the celebration of the Common Ridings during which some towns – particularly in the Borders – organise ceremonies to confirm the boundaries of the town and other lands. In former centuries the local landowners were often asked to inspect boundaries which were in dispute or follow the course of parish or town boundaries to ensure that no one was encroaching upon them who shouldn’t. The boundary inspection was also carried out at national level between England and Scotland with sets of commissioners appointed by each country’s king. Indeed, a section of territory, which included Gretna and Langholm on th...
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Up wi’ auld Hawick
For an example of a modern Common Riding ballad please follow this link to hear Iain Scott leading others in singing ‘Up wi’ auld Hawick’ which also includes shots of the riders:
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Border Ballads
The publication of Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ in 1802 was the foundation for the belief that the ballads of the Scottish Borders constituted the greatest ballad tradition in Scotland. In fact, the North East of Scotland also ranks equally with the Borders in ballad making. Nonetheless, the Borders have provided some of the most memorable of ballads in the Scots language which may be divided into ballads about historical events, or supernatural stories. Ballads often survive in several versions since the ballad singers often added their own verses but we can trace some of the versions to the 13th and 14th c...
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Oldest Diplomatic Act in Scots
The background to the Common Ridings was the lawless nature of the borderlands which persisted between the 13th and 17th centuries. There were often feuds between kindreds and frequent raiding by armed gangs known as reivers (‘thieves’). On a national scale, Scotland was often at war with England during the period beginning in 1296 and not finally ending until 1652. The wardens of the marches – those lords appointed to defend and administer the frontier regions – often had to conduct diplomacy with their opposites and frequently to appoint truces. One such truce, agreed on 27 June 1386, at Billymire (between Reston and Chirnside in...
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