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Learning in Literature

scran n. food (scraps); refuse; odds and ends

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“scran n. food (scraps); refuse; odds and ends”

22nd April 2008

Scran is a word found in Scotland and in dialects scattered throughout the British Isles and beyond. The term appears in a late Victorian glossary from Kent, defined as “a snack of food; the refreshment that labourers take with them into the fields” and in the late twentieth century it turns up in Canada’s Ottawa Sentinel (1974): “the chief cook on board [is] responsible for the preparation and serving of food—or ‘scran’, according to the hands”.

The first known Scottish examples date from the early nineteenth century. In his collection of poems, Fruits of Time Parings (1801), William Beattie writes,: “Now ilka ane took up a cutty (spoon), To prie’ gin (find out whether) aunty’s scran was lucky”. The word is also found in John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808). Jamieson notes the use of scran “offals or refuse of human food”, the phrase fine scran, “a phrase used by young people when they meet with any thing, especially what is edible, which they consider as a valuable acquisition”. He also describes how the term scran-pock was explained, “at the time of the trial of the Radicals at Falkirk”, as a bag “for receiving the spoil or plunder of the dead who may have fallen in battle, when it is gathered by the women who follow the army”.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jamieson’s dictionary, which in many ways became the template for later historical dictionaries including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Scottish National Dictionary, with its explorations of word origins and extensive use of supporting quotations. Given the wider impact that his methodology has had on the development of lexicography nationally and internationally, it is perhaps surprising that this pioneering Scot is one of the nineteenth century’s lesser-known linguistic heroes.