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Learning in Literature

nieve n. a fist

Categorised in:
“nieve n. a fist”

20th November 2006

Nieve, although still current in modern Scots, may be better known from literature or from the well-known children's rhyme "nievie-nievie-nicknack, which haun will ye tak" (and its variants). The word made a recent appearance in a Scots article in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, thanks to a discussion of the work of north-east poet Charles Murray. The writer remarked, "I wis aa richt wi the ell-wan - the yardstick - in's nieve tae haud the mongrel, sharger dogs at airm's linth, bit bein speirt tae read oot the hale affair as een o my contributions, I got stumpit fyles".
Nieve is a Scandinavian borrowing, found in Scots texts from the late fourteenth-century onwards. Given one of the main purposes of nieves, many uses of the word relate to acts of violence, as in the following late sixteenth-century example from Robert Bannatyne's Memorials of Transactions in Scotland: "The said George tuike him with his steikit neive upon the face". John Brand's early eighteenth-century Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth & Caithness indicates that nieve was also used as a measurement for horses, much like "hand" in English: "They have a sort of little horses called shelties, ... some will be but 9, others 10, nives or hand-breadths high".
Readers of Robert Burns may recall his use of nieve in the poem, Willie Wastle, when describing Willie's hackit spouse: "Her walie nieves like midden-creels (manure baskets), Her face wad fyle the Logan Water: Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her". Strangely, although many Ayrshire schools take part in annual Burns competitions, not all take the opportunity to examine the language of his poetry. Scotland's rich multi-cultural linguistic heritage permits the study of bards other than Shakespeare, as it includes not only English, but also Scots and Gaelic, and other languages of more recent migration such as Urdu, Cantonese, Yiddish, Italian and Polish.