FLOUR in the Dictionary of the Scots Language covers both the baking necessity and the decorative blossom. Only since the mid-eighteenth century have the spellings diverged. Originally the word denoted the finer portion sifted from meal, and that has given us the sense associated with the spelling ‘flour'. However, the ‘flower' still refers to the choicest part, the finest person, the ‘pick of the bunch' and the reproductive part of a plant. In Scotland, to take a flower with you when you go visiting is not miserly, because here a flooer can be a whole bouquet. In William Blair's Kildermoch (1910), the funerary requirements “To steek his e'en an' streak his corp, an' pit a bit flo'er on his grave”, include a wreath rather than a flower fragment. The flowers of Edinburgh were the smells of garbage and night-soil thrown into the street at night. The expression is used by Robert Fergusson in Auld Reikie (1773) and it may be a pun between Older Scots ‘flewers' (flavours or odours), and ‘flowers'. The tune, The Flowers of Edinburgh (ca1740), probably celebrated the city's beauties, just as the Flowers o' the Forest lamented the finest youth of Ettrick Forest killed at Flodden. Francis Drake-Carnell in It's an Old Scottish Custom (1939) tells us: “water drawn at midnight before New Year has peculiar luck-bringing qualities and will undoubtedly help a girl who draws it to find a husband before next Hogmanay. The first jugful is termed the ‘flower' or the ‘cream'”. Let's hope the successful girl was as well prepared as this bride in O. Douglas's The Setons (1917) “I made this goon when I was a lassie for ma marriage. They ca'ed this ‘flowering.' I mind fine sittin' sewin' it on simmer efternunes”. Ayrshire was famous for the white embroidery known as flowering.
Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.