7. Introductory handsel
A Scots word and example sentence to learn:
Hind [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
Definition: A farm-servant, a ploughman, a married skilled farm worker who occupies a cottage on the farm and is granted perquisities in addition to wages.
Example sentence: “The smell o’ neeps is i’ the wund; Hinds roond the doors are crackin’.”
English translation: “The smell of turnips is in the wind: Farm workers round the doors are cracking’.”
Activity 2
Click to hear the sentence above read by a Scots speaker.
You can then make your own recording and play it back to check your pronunciation.
Transcript
Listen
The smell o’ neeps is i’ the wund; Hinds roond the doors are crackin’.
Model
The smell o’ neeps is i’ the wund; Hinds roond the doors are crackin’..
Go to the Dictionary of the Scots Language for a full definition of the word
Guthrie’s painting
The picture ‘A Hind’s Daughter’ is a famous Scottish painting by Sir James Guthrie (1859 – 1930). Guthrie became one of the leading painters in the group of artists called The Glasgow Boys.This painting is one of the artist’s most distinguished and well-known works. Apart from the skill exhibited in the painting, the content of the work is notable.
Here is a girl in the middle of a cabbage or kail patch. She stares confidently out despite the fact that her standing in society will be from the poorer farm workers; a group of workers more likely not to meet the ‘camera’ eyes rather than gaze back. She grips her knife solidly and seems to have been disturbed at her job, seeming as though, after ‘we’ have looked, she’ll get back to work.
She is not posing for the artist, she stops naturally without any artifice. You may wonder: Is this painting making a statement about Scottish confidence?
“The small girl has just straightened up after cutting a cabbage and looks directly at the viewer. Girl and landscape seem inextricably merged in this essentially Scottish scene. A hind was a skilled farm labourer, and cabbage (or kail) a staple diet of Scottish hinds and their families.
Guthrie painted the picture in the Berwickshire village of Cockburnspath, where he opted to stay during the winter, unlike his Glasgow friends who returned to the city at the end of the summer. The warm earth colours and distinctive square brush strokes confirm the profound impact Bastien-Lepage's painting made on Guthrie.”
Related word:
Definition: broad, flat leaf, as the outer leaves of cabbage or lettuce, the leaves of rhubarb, tobacco, etc.
Example sentence: The bairns geed tae scuil wi only a cauld kale blade ta aet fir thir piece.
Go to the Dictionary of the Scots Language for a full definition of the word.
Activity 3
Part 2
Now click to hear the example sentence read by a Scots speaker. You can then make your own recording and play it back to check your pronunciation.
Transcript
Listen
The bearns tae scuil wi a cauld kail blade in their pockets for a piece.
Model
The bearns tae scuil wi a cauld kail blade in their pockets for a piece.
Language links
The Scots word blade has a close connection with the German language, in which a broad leaf is a blatt. The word for leaf in old Norse was blað, old high German blada and old Dutch blad. The word evolved in the German language and in medieval times, the word for leaf was blat, yet in some areas it remained blad. In the Dutch language to this day a leaf is a blad.
Introduction