SARK n shirt, chemise

This word appears as ‘serk’ in Old English and Old Norse. The earliest recorded usage in Scots means the male or female body-garment worn nearest the skin. So the person described in John Barbour’s Legends of the Saints as “Al nakit, bot sark & breke” was scantily attired. Early quotations show sarks being given as payment. In the Records of  Perth Kirk Session (1623) we are told “ The said Margaret...ressaueit for waigeis, ane sark and ane pair schone”. Sarks could also be the wages of sin. The Accounts of the Burgh Treasurer of Dumfries (1650) record  “When the hair sarkes war put wpon the wyfes [witches] in the touboth”. The sark of God might mean a surplice but it could also be a penitential shirt in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-table Miscellany (1724): “Jockey shall wear the hood, Jenny the sark of God”.  Even less comfortable was the shirt worn by Hercules in the story retold by G. Myll (1492) in The Spectakle of Luf: “Hercules...was...slane be his lady Dyonera throw the inuennomyt [envenomed] serk scho maid him to weir”. Sarks could be made of flannel, linen or in David Lindsay’s Squire Meldrum (c1550) ,  “Of yallow taftais ... Begaryit all with browderit wark”.  Another fancy sark is listed in the Inventories and other Records of the Royal Wardrobe (1587): “Ane hieland syd serk of yallow lyning pasmentit with purpour silk and silver”. Less affluent circumstances obtain in John Mayne’s The Siller Gun (1808): “Turning coats, and mending breeks, New-seating where the sark-tail keeks”. By this time, sark was often being used of men’s shirts. An interesting extension of the meaning relates to the sarking of roofs, which T. Pennant informs us in his Tour in Scotland Tour (1771) “are sarked, i.e. covered with inch-and-half deal, sawed into three planks, and then nailed to the joists, on which the slates are pinned”.

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