CRANREUCH

THE Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) describes cranreuch as “hoar frost”. It’s from Gaelic crion-reòthadh, which has the same meaning.

An early example in DSL is from a poem published in the Scots Magazine of 1740: “The winter now doth cauldly glowr, And crandroch spreads the meadows o’er”. The early 20th century produces this observation from R B Cunninghame Graham’s Scottish Stories (1914): “The snow drifted half a yard upon the ground, the trees all white with cranruch like the sugar on a cake.”

DSL also gives us some examples of figurative uses, such as this description of old age in a play called John o Arnha by George Beattie (1816): “Full eighty winters thick hae spread Their cranreughs o’er my palsied head.” Cranreuch can also describe a person’s cold-heartedness, as here in Robert Buchanan’s London Poems (published in 1866): “He … tried tender words, but they were spent Upon a heart where the cold cranreuch grew."

I’m glad to say that the word survives into the 21st century. The National of December 2017 comments on the New Year Loony Dookers’ dip thus: “The Loony Dookers tak tae the snell, cranreuch watters o South Queensferry an hae a soom tae raise siller fir chusen charities.”

Finally, also from the National of December 2017: “The waither wis gey reuch fir traivellin; snell, cranreuch condeetions; the Crawfordjohn road icy an treacherous!”. I had friends in the village of Crawfordjohn and usually confined my visits to the summer months, but from the few winter sorties I made I can certainly relate to this description of the wintry conditions.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel, Dictionaries of the Scots Language https://dsl.ac.uk.