A Word of Ulster-Scots 1

Druth – thirst, pertaining to dryness

One of the most attractive aspects of the ‘hamely tongue’ as James Fenton, the poet and lexicographer, christened Ulster Scots, is the richness that the tongue gives to everyday speech in Northern Ireland or Ireland or Ulster or whatever your preference happens to be.

When I was younger, the only heat in winter was from peats cut in the summer. Coal was a luxury undreamt of. The work of cutting peats (for which, by the way, one required a Lurgan spade, longer than an ordinary spade, hence the expression ‘a face like a Lurgan spade’) from the bank and stacking them in castles to dry was an activity always carried out in the moss. Inevitably this distant place was far from potable water, running or otherwise. If you felt a druth, and believe me you did (because no matter what the Met Office may tell you, the summers were warmer) you could slake it with cold buttermilk. I’ve shown this delightful drink to my children on a number of occasions but they have reacted with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Actually, they have fled screaming. Indeed, suggestions about imbibing this elixir of the gods have been met with requests for the local social services.

But no matter how refreshing the buttermilk may have been, it was nothing to the heady nectar of cold sweet milky tea drunk from a milk bottle stopped with a clean rag, usually a bit of a Morton’s flour bag. I’ve never even tried to introduce the offspring to this.

That was how I recall druth being dealt with. But this wasn’t for everyone.

It could be that one of your neighbours (or God forbid, one of your (usually wide) family circle, was known and described as a bit of a druth. This indicated his (for it was inevitably a he) preference for a different solution to the problem of thirst, one which involved waters of a stronger nature. Waters, in fact, of an alcoholic nature. And not always in the moss. Indeed, infrequently in the moss and more often in one of the local hostelries, spartan all male establishments, far removed from the theme pubs of today. Oft times there were other druthy individuals present, so, inevitably, he had companionship.

My mother’s relationship with druth had a lot less to do with liquid refreshment, fortified or otherwise, and much more to do with the weekly wash or more exactly, the drying thereof. A day with a bit of druth was a lot more likely to dry the clothes on the line. ‘There’s great druth the day’ or more often, given our prevailing climate during most of the year, ‘There’s not much druth the day’. Though obviously not in the summer.