The earliest instances of cantrip in the Dictionary of the Scots Language are quoted from John Stuart (ed.) The Miscellany of the Spalding Club (1597), as in: “Thy vytchcraft, cantrepis, and inchantment”, placing cantrips firmly in the realm of magic. Early examples indicate magic of the malevolent or harmful kind, as in this 1649 extract from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland: “She had wronged Thomas Webster … by casting ane cantrop before his doore”.

You had to take care when casting cantrips, as the results could be worse than you bargained for.  In such circumstances drastic remedies were sometimes required, as shown by this example from the Edinburgh Magazine (1820): “The career of their misfortunes was only checked by their ... taking out, and burning the heart of one of the horses that had died through their mischievous cantrips”.

Cantrip-time was the season for practising the magical arts, so that there was a greater risk than usual of falling victim to them. There is reference in Blackwood's Magazine (1820) to the need for protection at this time: “I mauna cast thee awa on the corse o' an auld carline [witch], but keep thee cozie against cantrip-time”.

But cantrips could be used for beneficial purposes as well, as in this quote from Galloway Gossip by Robert De Bruce Trotter (1901): “There use't tae be lots o' cantraips cairry't on for curin orra bits o' troubles an complents”.

In more recent times a cantrip came also to mean a trick or piece of mischief. In James Thomson's Recollections of a Speyside Parish (1887) we read that “He's nae the first ane that she's played her cantrips wi” and in Neil Munro's The Daft Days (1907) that: “… she'll skin me alive for letting you play such cantrips with her candles”.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries