Of obscure origin, wallie is often used to describe anything fine, beautiful or excellent, as in: “Thanks to ye, sir, for your mony wally words” from Hew Ainslie’s A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns (1822), and in: “Wae a’ hid a wally supper” from C M Costie’s Benjie’s Bodle (1956). It is unlikely that such a supper would be cuisine minceur, as wallie could also mean large, ample or strong.  Burns refers to “Her walie nieves [fists] like midden-creels” in Willie Wastle (1792), and in a 1957 edition of the Mearns Leader the writer describes “Lookin’ doon at the wallyest cabbitch I’d ever seen”.

It has a similar sense of sturdy or strapping when applied to people or animals, as shown by this example from Allan Ramsay’s Poems (1722): “She was a winsome Wench and waly” and this: “The lambs in April micht come loupin’, Baith vast and wally” from Thomas Murray’s Frae the Heather (1898).  

From indicating general spendidness, wallie came more specifically to mean decorative or fancy, and is especially used of china ornaments such as “wally dugs on the mantelpiece” mentioned in Erchie, my Droll Friend (1904) by Hugh Foulis (Neil Munro). From there it was applied to many other items of glazed chinaware or porcelain, including false teeth.  In the same work by Hugh Foulis we read of “A new grate wi’ wally sides till’t … A wally door-knob … Wally jaw-boxes [sinks] and tiled closes”.  

The ‘tiled closes’ are, of course, the passageways of tenements, and a wally-close with its glazed tiles is seen as socially superior to one that’s merely painted.  This is sharply illustrated by Liz Lochhead in Bagpipe Muzak (1991): “It’s all go the sandblaster, it’s all go Tutti Frutti, All we want is a wally close with Rennie Mackintosh putti.”

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