A Green Yule

A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch
Charles Mackay, LL.D,
Whittaker and Co
London 1888


This title was spotted by a friend in a charity shop on Clapham High Street. A wonderful find! Includes handwritten notations by a previous owner, a resident of Edinburgh in 1890, who has added definitions of Scotch words Mackay seems to have left out. High percentage of words are linked to drinking, several terms for favourite cows but I found a few relating to my theme for the month - the weather.

Ourie or oorie, cold, shivering.
This word, peculiar to Scotland, is derived from the Gaelic fuar, cold, which, with the aspirate, becomes fhuar, and is pronounced uar.

I thought me on the ourie cattle.
-Burns: A Winter Night.

The English, hoar-frost, and hoary (white, showy) hair of old age, are traceable to teh same etymological root. Jamieson, however, derives oorie from the Icelandic ur, rain, and the Swedish ur, stormy weather, through the origin of both is to be found in the Gaelic uaire, bad weather or storm.

Uppil, to clear up; applied to the weather.

When the weather at any time has been wet, and ceases to be so , we say it is uppled.
-Jamieson.

From the Teutonic aufhellen - auf, up; hellen, to become clear, to clear up.

'A green yule makes a fat kirk-yard' - one of the many Scottish proverbs at the back of the book.

And my favourite drinking term:
Ultimus eekibus, the very last glass of whisky toddy, or eke, one drop more at a convivial gathering before parting for the night: the last of the ekes.