The origin of hantle is uncertain, but it may be a reduced version of handful.  However, whereas the modern usage of ‘handful’ implies a few, hantle refers to many, perhaps equivalent to ‘quite a few’ or ‘a good few’.  The earlier examples in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) show it in a plural context, as in “A great hantle of bonnie braw well fac’d young lasses” from Jacob Curate’s The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence displayed…(1692), or “… a hantla stories O’ blood, and dirt, and ancient glories” from Allan Ramsay’s Poems (1876).  

In the latter quote, the word ‘of’ has been reduced to an ‘a’ a the end of hantle, and often it is completely absent.  Examples include this from John Learmont’s Poems (1791): “Thae, an’ a hantle scenes that I cou’d name, Sal ay mak mine to me a happy hame” and this from Walter Scott’s The Black Dwarf (1816): “They believed a hantle queer things in thae days, that naebody heeds since the lang sheep cam in”.

Hantle can also be used on its own to indicate an unspecified number of people, e.g. “A hantel speak o’ my drinking, but few ken o’ my drouth” from John White’s Jottings in Prose and Verse (1879).  This meaning is often used by Travellers, as in “The hantel aa celebrated with the laddie’s nesmore [mother], who wis completely overjoyed” from Stanley Robertson’s Fish-Hooses (1992).

Hantle can also be an adverb, often before a comparative.  Thus we find “It’s a hantle caulder here than in London” from J M Barrie’s A Window in Thrums (1889), and, from Andrew J Armstrong’s Friend and Foe (1885), the rather understated: “But to be strung up by the neck for the thing ye never did is a hantle waur [worse] than the maist o’ folk wad care to thole”. 

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk, 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN (0131) 650 4149 mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk. For £20 you can sponsor a Scots word.