DOWIE
IN the coming Mental Health Awareness week, it perhaps should remind us to think of those of us who have been feeling a wee bit dowie during these past months. Dowie, as the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) remind us, means: “Sad, melancholy, dreary, dismal; dull, dispirited; used both of persons and of places, weather, etc. Sad, melancholy, dreary, dismal; dull, dispirited; used both of persons and of places, weather…”.
Burns captures the mood of a lovelorn lass in Highland Harry Back Again (1789) with: “When a’ the lave [others] gae to their bed, I wander dowie up the glen”.
One of the earliest references we have describes a place and it comes from the poems of Robert Sempill (1581): “Out of his dowie den Maist lyke a fox thay fyrit [set on fire] him in his nest”.
It can also mean, “ailing, sickly, weak”, as in the description of this unfortunate from Watson’s 1903 Auld Lang Syne: “He was a cripple from infancy, and was known in the district as a ‘peer, dowie breet’”.
The poet and novelist Sheena Blackhall used it to describe language in Wittgenstein’s Web from 1996: “Nae Inglis wird alane can convoy the multiplicity o thocht ahin thon ae wird dreich. Dreich is a cauld, mochy, jeelin, dowie wird”.
More recently, a journalist from the Press and Journal of December 2019 records his own sadness at the loss of friends throughout the year: “Lookin back throwe the columns I hae screiv’t es past eer, I get dowie bein remindit on mony weel-kent freens o’s aa nae langer wi’s…”.
Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel, Dictionaries of the Scots Language https://dsl.ac.uk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here