In my six years and twelve novels since I started sending my romances out into the world I’ve set five of them in Scotland, because, quite simply, that is where I’m from.
They say ‘write what you feel’ (far better advice than write what you know, in my opinion), and I feel Scottish, and nothing reminds you quite so much of your being Scottish than living over the border in England and seeing the looks on folks’ faces when you happen to let slip a particularly brilliant Scottish word, or even an especially good Scottish swear (which we won’t be going into here; there’s not enough time to do that proud tradition justice).
I’ve seen the delight and the confusion on sticky beaks’ faces when at the cinema I’ve told the bairns to ‘Wheesht, the film’s startin’!’ (bonus points for pronouncing it ‘fil-um’ as well), or when the school sports day running race brought out an encouraging ‘Go’an yersel!’ from me, while the other mums were screeching ‘you can do it!’ at their kids (all far less embarrassed than mine).
It’s been braw to have a whole book, no, a whole new series, set in the Highlands to let loose with my favourite Scottish dialect words, knowing no one’s going to raise an eyebrow up in my fictional town of Cairn Dhu. I hope you’ll enjoy reading Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop, which was written with a genuine Scottish accent.
But, just in case anyone’s left wondering what’s being said, I’ve made you this wee glossary, and no, I havenae consulted a Scots’ English dictionary in writing this; I’m telling you what these words mean to me and the folks from my wee bit of the Lothians. Let’s get going!
So, first up, if someone warns you you’re on a shoogly peg, well, that’s the same as skating on thin ice, only much, much more fun to say.
If you want to get across the fact that you really don’t like someone while suggesting they’re wee and slight and a bit sleekit, you can call them a wee gnaff, which in a Scottish accent sounds brilliantly brutal and dismissive as you churn that ‘nya’ sound over your tongue.
Oh, and sleekit? That’s a word doing a lot of work. Picture someone (or something) sly and jumpy but also somehow slick and glossy. Robert Burns’ ‘To a Mouse’ features a ‘wee, sleekit, cowerin’ tim’rous beastie’ of a rodent upset about his destroyed nest, and that mouse is altogether a sweet wee fella, but if I was calling someone sleekit today, it wouldn’t be quite so gentle. Gray, Ally’s ex boyfriend, in Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop is the very definition of the sleekit bad boyfriend.
How about daud? A good fixing word there, meaning to thump! Used in a sentence, you might say, ‘My phone froze, so I gave it a wee daud and now it’s fine’. (Not recommended!)
Here’s an extract from a scene in the repair shop that explains the action, ‘to stoat’:
‘Form a queue for triaging,’ McIntyre instructed, and the bodies slowly moved towards Sachin’s desk in the now absolutely stoatin’ repair shed (which, for the curious, is a particularly Scottish type of happy bounce).’ It can also just mean brilliant.
Isn’t that braw? Well now you can crack on and have a stoatin’ day, mind yi dinnae get dauded by any wee gnaffs out and about, and if you do, mind and tell them they’re on a shoogly peg!
From me, and all the repair shop experts at Cairn Dhu, Cheerio!
Love, Kiley, x