CUDDY n donkey

These gentle beasts are not generally associated with intelligence, hence the transference of the word cuddy to refer to a foolish person, as in the proverb quoted in the Scotsman (1910) 'A cuddie should never handle tocher (money)'. They are not known for their speed either, giving rise to another proverb, preserved in Hislop?s collection (1868), 'A cuddy's gallop's sune done'. This could be why it is sometimes jocularly applied to race horses as in Archie Hind's The Dear Green Place (1984): 'Been on the cuddies' You always were an awful man for the long shots.' The strength of cuddies, however, led to small powerfully built horses occasionally being called cuddies.
There are other kinds of horse which go by the name of cuddy. A sawing horse is a cuddy, as is the vaulting horse in the gymnasium.
Miners might remember a cuddy as 'a weight mounted on wheels; a loaded bogie, used to counter-balance the hutch on a cuddie brae,' as it is defined in J. Barrowman's Scottish Mining Terms (1886).
A Scotch cuddy is a pedlar as G. Douglas in House with Green Shutters
(1901) explains: 'so called because he is a beast of burden, and not from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman'.
There were also plenty of cuddies in the school playground in rhymes, riddles and games such as 'skin the cuddy', a boys' game in which one boy had to pass over the backs of others, to snatch a cap from the head of the boy at the end and 'cuddy-loup-the-dyke' (leap-frog). If a child wanted exclusive rights over some found object, they would shout 'nae halfers, nae quarters, nae cuddy bites', which established the claim unless another child could shout 'halvers' first. It's a wee word with a heavy burden of meanings.

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

This week we have descriptions of cuddy by the Ayrshire poet Rab Wilson, and by the MSP Alasdair Allan who is from the Borders. We also have Joyce Falconer singing the traditional bairn rhyme 'Hey Jock ma cuddy'.