BIG v to build

The Old Norse verb ‘byggja’ means to inhabit or build. Traces of the first of these carry on into Older Scots but it is to build that is the most common meaning of the descendant this word in Modern Scots. Many biggins refer to places of habitation including dwellings of the nobility like “The Duches” who “did big ane gret castell” as recorded in Pitscottie’s sixteenth-century History and Cronicles of Scotland. Bigger projects took a while, as Alexander Montgomery, a contemporary of Pitscottie, reminds us: “Rome wes not biggit all vpon ane day”. The frequency of Newbigging as a place-name speaks of a thriving building industry. As undertaking a biggin project is a matter of some significance, it is no surprise that there are proverbs surrounding these enterprises. Andrew Cheviot’s collection (1896) warns “If he’s biggit in the moss, he maun gang into the mire”.
An example of building in the wrong place comes from an Act of Parliament (1425) concerning “Rukis bigande in kirk yairdis, orchardis, or treis”. The Act decrees that the owners of the trees let them build and then destroy both nests and rooks.
Not all biggins are for living in though. Gavin Douglas in his early sixteenth-century translation of the Aeneid writes of: “Thy funeral fyre with thir handis biggyt” and, a few years earlier, John Rolland of Dalkeith in The Buke of the Sevyne Sagis refers to a more welcome blaze: “I causit to big ane fire to yow, To mak yow cherie”. From fire to water, Edwin Muir (1925) describes how “Noah took a plank o' ark, Anither o' the pine, And bigged a house for a' his folk”. Biggin can even be prophetic. The Roxburgh poet, Alexander Scott, foretold in 1846 that “Ships will be biggit that can sail i’ the air”.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.

This week's Word is spoken by Dr Dauvit Horsbroch.