Maukin n a hare

This is the month of mad March hares. There are several names for the hare in Scots, such poosie or pussie, baud, Betty and maukin. As early as 1470, Makyne was recorded as a form of Matilda or Maud and, in sixteenth-century English, Malkin was quasi-proper name for a cat. There seems to be a curious crossover between words for cat and hare. Maukin can mean a cat, an awkward, long-legged half-grown girl, a weakling or even the female pudenda, but in Scots it is more usually applied to a hare. Hares have long been the focus of superstition. Dougal Graham’s eighteenth-century Collected Writings report the widely held belief that “Maukens are most terrible, and have bad luck, none will go to sea that day they see a Mauken, or if a wretched body put in a Mauken's fit in their creels, they need not lift them that day”. John Galt reports another common superstition in The Steam-boat (1822): “It is...believed ...that the witches are in the practice of gallanting over field and flood, in the shape of cats and mawkins”.
One positive reference is the saying that if the maukin is gaun up the hill, business is prospering, but several of the quotations in the Dictionary of the Scots Language portray the maukin as a poor creature. John Monteath in Dunblane Traditions 1835 uses “maukin-hippit” in the sense of emaciated and Olive Fraser in Poems of the Scottish Hills (1982, edited by Hamish Brown) suggests “The maukin o' Creagan Alnack Has snaw for meat”. The madness of hares is proverbial and this is illustrated in a quotation from A. M. Bisset’s Spring Blossoms (1890): “Maist Englishmen wad jist as lief Gang maukin-mad as want their beef”. As to the truth of that, I’ll “let the maukin sit”, or preserve a diplomatic silence.

This article was written by Chris Robinson of Scots Language Dictionaries. www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk

The word this week is spoken by Bill Wilson MSP, SNP member for the West of Scotland.