Word of the week

• waith n. a piece of property which is found ownerless
• sourocks n. a general name for various kinds of sorrel; a sulky person
• begrutten adj. tear-stained, sorrowful
• scart v. scratch, scrape with the nails, claws; mark with a scratch etc
• jink v. turn quickly, move or dodge nimbly; evade, elude
• plunk v. to play truant, absent oneself (from school) without leave
• tawse n. a leather punishment strap with thongs, formerly used in schools
• darg n. (the result of product of) a day’s work
• braw adj. very good, excellent; handsome; splendid; brave
• scran n. food (scraps); refuse; odds and ends

Words by month

• Jul 2008
• Jun 2008
• May 2008
• Apr 2008
• Mar 2008
• Feb 2008
• Jan 2008
• Dec 2007
• Nov 2007
• Oct 2007
• Sep 2007
• Aug 2007
• Jul 2007
• Jun 2007
• May 2007
• Apr 2007
• Mar 2007
• Feb 2007
• Jan 2007
• Dec 2006
• Nov 2006
• Oct 2006
• Sep 2006
• Aug 2006
• Jul 2006
• Jun 2006
• May 2006
• Apr 2006
• Mar 2006
• Feb 2006
• Jan 2006

Sponsored by

Supporters of

darg n. (the result of product of) a day’s work

“darg n. (the result of product of) a day’s work”

12th May 2008

Darg (also sometimes dark) is often used in contexts that hark back to an age when agriculture and manual labour engaged a larger proportion of the population than today. In his book, Riot, Revelry and Rout: Sport in Lowland Scotland Before 1860 (2000), John Burnett remarks that William Alexander’s Victorian tales of contemporary life in Buchan "contain individuals who begin as penniless farm loons … who rise through solid hard work. The interminable darg dominated North-East farming life".

Darg has been in use in Scottish texts since at least the sixteenth century, and is shortened from Older Scots dawerk or daywerk, literally "a day’s work". In Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1540), Sir David Lyndsay penned such lines as: "We sall nowdir spair for wind nor rane, Till our day wark be done". Darg also refers to the product of a day’s work, often measured in terms of bales of hay gathered, quantities of coal mined, and so on, and many of these uses continue into the modern period. The Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland (1803), for example, notes: "A darg of peats is as many as a man can cut in a day".

John Jamieson’s early nineteenth-century Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language records the use of darg-days, "days during which cottars had to work for their landlord, in lieu of rent". Under rather different circumstances, workers might also undertake a love-darg, which Jamieson defines as "a piece of work or service done, not for hire, but merely from affection". A more modern translation might be "a labour of love". An illustration appears in an article in the People’s Friend from September 1938: "Our Love Darg is the effort made every autumn by the People’s Friend and its readers on behalf of child patients in hospital".