A Word of Ulster-Scots 4

Liam Logan takes another humourous look at the many ways of ‘takkin’ in Ulster-Scots

This month, rather than focus on one single word, I’d like to concentrateon a part of the body. The ‘heid’, perched atop ‘yer shoothers’, is recognised as the seat of reason. Or perhaps more frequently, as the seat of unreason.

An individual attracting the description ‘aff yer heid’ or indeed ‘awa in the heid’ might have been brought to this pass by a situation or a person who might very well ‘pit ye wrang in the heid’. This may also have the result of identifying you as a ‘heidcase’ or a ‘madheid’. Or perhaps evidenced that you had suffered a bout of the ‘heid staggers’.

Hunger was not a factor if somebody ‘ate the heid aff ye’ rather a verbal exchange of a pointed nature was indicated. This might also be rendered as ‘ate the face aff’ or indeed ‘ate the bake aff’ but more of this later. All the foregoing could result in you getting ‘yer heid in yer han’.

If a matter was deemed to be ‘ower the heid o’, this was not to suggest that an overly intellectual argument was beyond the grasp of an interlocutor but that the present circumstances has arisen due to this particular cause.

Those who propose an unwise or irrational course of action or adopt a stance, which could reasonably be called unreasonable, might attract the comment ‘yer heid’s cut’, but not in a way that requires bandages.

People lacking any modicum of shame, modesty or tact would oft times be asked ‘hae ye nae skin on yer face’ and a smiling hypocrite might be named ‘oul fair-face’. If a young man were to ask a young lady to a social engagement as part of a courtship ritual, he (or indeed, she) could be said to be ‘facing’ a girl (or a boy).

If you ‘gether the broos’, you make a scowl or a frown. Your ‘ee’ or perhaps more accurately, your ‘een’, are not only a window on the soul but could be used for the production of crocodile tears drawing the comment ‘yer blether’s near yer een’. Accidental or deliberate observational failures could be ascribed to an individual being ‘blin o an ee’.

Ears are ‘lugs’ and were most often employed as a disciplinary adjunct, as in ‘a clash on the lug’.

The ‘mooth’ or the ‘bake’, the mouth, also had physical force references such as ‘a slap in the mooth’, usually resulting from a predilection for ‘takkin when ye should hae bin listenin’. Such uncouth folk might be asked to ‘shut their bake’ or indeed, more politely, ‘howl their wheesht’ before they passed a remark they might live to regret and had to ‘tak oot wi yer teeth what ye put in wi yer tongue’. The selfish and greedy might be in danger of ‘takin the bite oot o yer mooth’ in their anxiety to sate their own appetites, even if the tiny morsel were only sufficient to ‘taste yer mooth’. And if the food were sufficiently tasty to provoke excess salivation, the overflow might be said to be ‘rinnin doon the weeks o yer mooth’.

But not in polite company. Unless you had ‘nae skin on yer face’.

(All references from the marvellous James Fenton’s The Hamely Tongue’ USAP)