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Learning in Literature

keek v. peep, glance, watch surreptitiously, etc.

Categorised in:
“keek v. peep, glance, watch surreptitiously, etc.”

24th March 2008

Keek has been recorded in Scottish sources since the late fifteenth century, and is probably a borrowing from Middle English. A fair bit of keekin goes on in William Dunbar’s poem, The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo (a1508), for example: “As the new mone … Kythis quhilis (reveals sometimes) her cleir face, through cluddis of sable, So keik I through my clokis, and castis kynd lukis To knychtis, and to clerikis, and courtly personis”.



Keekin can imply clandestine activity or it may indicate that the keeker wishes to remain concealed. Familiar Illustrations of Scottish Character (1861), by Charles Rogers, includes the following: “O Lord, Thoo is like a moose in a dry-stane dyke — aye keekin’ oot at us frae holes an’ crannies, and we canna see Thee”. Being seen to keek can have adverse affects, as noted by Thomas Manson, in his Shetlandic tale, Humours of a Peat Commission (1908): “If ye bit raise yere ee and kyke at dem [auctioneers], dey tak it fur a bid”.



The Dictionary of the Scots Language records a number of now rare compounds and phrases. A keek-in-the-coag, or keek-in-the-stoup is a surreptitious investigator, a keekin-glass is a mirror, and a keek-the-vennel is a truant officer. Keek is also used as a noun meaning a glance or look, which may be quietly furtive, as in Alan Warner’s novel, Morvern Callar (1995): “I plucked up courage to take a keek ... Lanna and the two disciples were bare on the bed”. In other instances, though, no secrecy is involved, and the eyes are not necessarily prying. For example, as reported in the Sunday Herald in November 2006, the genealogy website Ancestor.co.uk was “allowing free keeks at the passenger lists of ships which took Scottish emigrants to the Americas over the centuries”.