Our bonnie tongue – use it or lose it

November 2003

I had an appointment every second Friday night throughout the 1980s. After another draining week in the office, I would get home, have my tea and, instead of collapsing comatose in the sofa, would haul on my coat and head across the village to see Annie.

Annie was nearing 80; a Deesider exiled on Donside for more than 50 years, and one who had the air of someone who thought she was putting up with a geographical misfortune fairly well, thank you. I know this because she told me often.

I visited Annie not because she was lonely and needed the company, but because I had never met anyone with such a colourful turn of Doric phrase. Far from being a duty visit, the Friday soirées were hugely entertaining and I know I got the better end of the deal. More heartening still, she didn’t know she had the talent and would often demand to know why I was grinning.

To her, the sayings of her youth tripped naturally from her tongue. Where others might have described a surly neighbour as being ‘an affa soor wifie’, Annie would opine: “She’s got a face like a hen layin razors.” When news broke in the vale of one man’s rumoured sixth child to a fourth different woman, Annie snorted disapprovingly: “It’s high time he put his brikks on back tae front.”

After the devastating storms of 1987 which embarrassed BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish and flattened large swathes of southern England (which Annie felt was probably no great loss), she noted that gales had clocked 70mph on the Buchan coast and had been nearly as vigorous inland.

“Michty,” she said. “It near blew the spokes fae the postie’s bike.”

This is the richness of language that the North-East is losing as the clock keeps rolling and our elders weer awa. Their words, phrases and sayings are not being passed down with any great success, and it pains me sometimes, when walking through the village at lunchtimes, to hear that many of the youngsters out from the academy in their daily search for a bradie are talking English. Worse, it’s often English with not even a hint of country cadence.

This is a feature of many north-east towns and villages, particularly those unfortunate enough to be within commuting distance of Aberdeen. Perhaps that’s why, the farther out you go, the broader and more cherished the Doric becomes. On a Saturday trip to Fraserburgh five or six years ago, Mrs Harper and I ventured into a tearoom in Cross Street, I think it was, to sample the ‘good home cooking’ that had been promised by the blackboard standing on the pavement.

We couldn’t fault the good home cooking. Nothing had been near a tin opener, freezer or microwave oven, as far as we could tell. What I really liked, though, was the unabashed way that the teenage lassies on their Saturday jobs as waitresses used the Doric as it should be used: perfectly naturally. It was their first language and they saw no shame in that.

Our waitress couldn’t have been more than 15, but she appeared at my shoulder with her wee pad and pencil, smiled at both of us and said, with great courtesy: “And fit wid ye be sikkin?” My heart soared.

I know that we can’t all talk in our native tongue all the time; language’s sole purpose is to be understood by its audience. Since not everyone is blessed with the Doric, most of us have to pan-loaf it at times, and I have to pan-loaf it more often than I would like since my trade is to make myself understood by everyone.

Some of us are more adept at this than others, and many examples of faain doon throwe’t have passed into north-east folklore. We men and women of the North-East have no problem with our compatriots who are doing their best to make an English-speaker understand them, but who can’t quite manage it. Those are noble and honest efforts.

We reserve our displeasure for those who think that English confers greater social status and that using the dialect is strictly low-rent. Oh, to take them down a peg or two.

There are many such tales. Robbie Shepherd once told me of a north-east woman explaining to several English speakers at a social gathering that her sister had been unable to attend because, while walking to her car that had been parked in the fairm close, she had tripped and had “fellen sklyte among the dibs”.

I’ve heard a well-known north-east wifie at a reception in Aberdeen Town House explaining to American oil executives that her husband would be late because of weather problems at London Heathrow and that: “I cannot be sure if his aeroplane has even tooken off yet”.

My favourite, however, concerns the country wifie who married well and who found herself transported from a humble farm existence to the lofty granite heights of Rubislaw Den. Anxious to make her social mark, she was delighted to learn that the minister wished to call and she busied herself with a baking and with tittivating the house lest she be thought not quite in the Rubislaw Den league.

When she heard the sound of a car drawing up, her heart quickened. She took a last look at herself in the mirror, checked that the fresh flowers in the hall were everything they might be, smoothed down her outfit and headed for the front door.

On opening the door, she was horrified to find a boorach of five or six young lads kicking a can down the street and, worse, that the minister was having quite a job making his way round and through them.

“Hie! Hie!” cried out matron. “You boys. You there. Yes, you. This isn’t your street. Away home. Away home to your mithers.” Then she turned her attention to her guest.

“Come away inside, minister, and divvent bother your erse with them.”

This is an article from the November 2003 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, subscribe to Leopard Magazine.