Getting our tongues round the vagaries of local language
Getting our tongues round the vagaries of local language
‘Just a couple of haddock fillets please, I'm bothying this week."
Jason, the ultra reliable and cheery fish bloke from Eyemouth looked at me with a wrinkled brow. "What`s bothying then?" he asked, fearing this was another Pilgrim wind-up.
I explained to him that the term was loosely used by men who for the time being were fending for themselves while a wife, partner or whatever is away for any reason. As Wee Paper readers all know, the term originally relates to long ago farming days when young, and occasionally not so young single men employed on the land would lodge in a small house or bothy tacked on the end of farm buildings, preferably out of sight and earshot of the main habitation. Such places were rarely the last word in luxury, but usually good enough for their purpose, although now a thing of the past.
Regardless of the meaning of the word, it surprised me to learn my good friend had not heard the term before, and I am given to wonder how much of the common Border tongue is slipping away from us as time goes by. I should hunt through the Pilgrim archives to see when I last had a look at the subject of vernacular as it applies to Border Scots, as it is something I consider fairly important.
Somewhere in the darker regions of my computer there is such an archive, which, for lack of sensible indexing, is difficult to search. For years there has been a small but vociferous faction demanding that Gaelic be brought back into mainstream education for Scotland, something I find rather odd. At a guess I fancy a wide variety of languages have been in common use in the Borders over the ages although Gaelic has never been commonly spoken or written in the South of Scotland and there seems little sensible reason for starting now.
It's a bit like learning Latin just in case the Romans invade Britain again. Better then maybe to gather the casual vocabulary used in specific localities over the centuries, and rather than teaching it in our schools make it available to students to add a little flavour to the more formal language currently taught and used in the curriculum.
The most reliable way to get kids to do something is to forbid it, so that might be the way. I imagine many areas already practice this idea because modern youngsters are still reluctant to discard words and mannerisms used by their near relatives and peers, although this is gradually fading as they lift mumbo jumbo quasi American or Australian lingo and profanity peddled daily on our TV screens.
So why bother? That is the difficult question and so far I have found no clear answer.
I do however have a feeling we might benefit from getting a rich selection of the old words back into common use. It might even lure our youngsters away from their persistent use of the half dozen most used swear words in circulation, so one day quite soon we might hear the cry of "Awa wi' ye, yer scunner" or similar instead of the more commonly used expression which is of two words one of which is "off".
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Selkirk
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: North west
