Episode 9 Blethering Scots

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Probably my favourite Scots word or expression is "chanty-wrastler".

A chanty is a chamber pot,

and a wrastler

is literally...

a wrestler, or someone who grapples or shakes something.

So, as a term of abuse, you're basically saying,

"You would shake a chamber pot".

The star of stage and screen, Denis Lawson grew up in rural Perthshire.

Back then, even the children had to work for their supper.

"Tatties don't pick themselves, you know."

Come on, time to get up, we've work to do!

Another phrase that is very tied up with my childhood is

"tattie-howking".

You went tattie-howking in the tattie holidays.

The tattie holidays were a week in October when everybody across

Scotland, all the school-kids got a week off school to howk tatties.

To bring in the potato harvest, basically.

Howking is, as far as I know, lifting, pulling up,

and tatties, obviously, are potatoes, spuds.

Tattie-howking was very hard work, the tractor went up the furrow

and you're picking as fast as you can,

and it's back-breaking and unrelenting.

You've got half an eye on the tractor, and it's at the end

of the furrow, and it's starting to go back round the field.

You have to finish your bit

and be at the next furrow before the tractor gets to you.

"Tattie-howking".

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