"
_Kail_ in England simply expresses cabbage, but in Scotland represents
the chief meal of the day. Hence the old-fashioned easy way of asking a
friend to dinner was to ask him if he would take his kail with the
family. In the same usage of the word, the Scottish proverb expresses
distress and trouble in a person's affairs, by saying that "he has got
his kail through the reek." In like manner haddock, in Kincardineshire
and Aberdeenshire, used to express the same idea, as the expression is,
"Will ye tak your haddock wi' us the day?" that fish being so plentiful
and so excellent that it was a standing dish. There is this difference,
however, in the local usage, that to say in Aberdeen, Will you take your
haddock? implies an invitation to dinner; whilst in Montrose the same
expression means an invitation to _supper_. Differences of pronunciation
also caused great confusion and misunderstanding. Novels used to be
pronounced no_vels_; envy en_vy_; a cloak was a clock, to the surprise
of an English lady, to whom the maid said, on her leaving the house,
"Mem, winna ye tak the _clock_ wi' ye?"
The names of children's diseases were a remarkable item in the catalogue
of Scottish words:--Thus, in 1775, Mrs. Betty Muirheid kept a
boarding-school for young ladies in the Trongate of Glasgow, near the
Tron steeple. A girl on her arrival was asked whether she had had
smallpox.
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