Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines feartie as a “coward, timorous person” and notes the combined form “feardie-coward” from Watson’s Roxburghshire Wordbook (1923).
Ten years later, the Aberdeen Press and Journal of November 1933 reproduced Kitlins, a poem by Jean R Ord describing a vigorous dance with this non-participant: “While Dreidlock, the feartie can just sit an glower some”.
A different feartie makes an appearance in Ian Rankin’s 1997 novel Black and Blue: “‘So who passed you the info?’ ‘Fergus McLure.’, ‘Feardie Fergie?’ Rebus pursed his lips. ‘Wasn't he one of Flower's snitches?’”.
And there’s this trenchant exhortation from Edwin Morgan in For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004:
“A nest of fearties is what they do not want.
A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.
A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want...”
In Carey Morning’s bairns rhyme Neeps and Tatties (2020) it’s the vegetables behaving badly:
“They flung fierce words and sometimes worse,
a stick, a stane, a sneisty curse.
Yin might yekk, ‘Haw! Feartie breeks!’
then a rammie wid stert and rin for weeks.”
In Gregor Steele’s Betty the Vampire Slagger (Scots Hoose, 2021), Betty favours insulting the vampires to impaling them and is ridiculed - until the vampires create a jag to immunize themselves against stakes and then:
“Aw o the feartie Slayers,
Shoutit fae the cludgie flair,
‘Gaun yersel wee Betty,
Slag them aff fur ever mair!’”
Perhaps sometimes discretion is the better part of valour: gaun yersel wee Betty!
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
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