The Little Book of Scottish Rain

Ron Butlin

Though Inuits might rejoice in having fifty words or more for snow, Scots can boast of getting on for seventy for rain. And such wonderful words they are! It is rare that writing a book is ever non-stop fun all the way through, but The Little Book of Scottish Rain was a pleasure to work on from start to finish. First there was the sheer joy of discovering new words, from the familiar dreich, drookit, smirr, haar and the like, to the truly exotic that name the all-too-familiar: gandiegow (a heavy rain), daggle (to rain in torrents), plype (sudden rain). Then there are the words describing the many, many varieties of rain, such as huther (intermittent rain), yillen (a shower with wind), scudder (a shower that is ice-cold). As I worked I relished the musicality of the harsh sounds, the clash of hard consonants, and took great pleasure in saying them aloud to myself, then to our dog, my wife and, after a few glasses, to my friends. The sound of these words really captures the imagination. Consider the cadence of watergow (a rainbow), its calmness perfectly suggesting the divine blessing that follows a storm; of smue, whose open-ended vowels evoke a dense drizzle, and fiss whose lingering ‘ss….’ conjures up a drizzle that is relentless. Unsurprisingly, many of the words come from the north of Scotland, from Orkney and Shetland in particular. Up there they have words for every possible stage in every possible kind of downpour: rogs (the lines of cloud portending rain), haggar (rain drifting down as a very wet caress), driv (vast quantities of falling rain). There’s even a special word, aflak, for a brief pause in a rainstorm!

The publisher asked me to make a selection of forty to fifty Scots words that spoke deeply to me about our rain and weather, then write a short verse on each. As a poet and novelist more often engaging with the darker side of things this was a real treat, a holiday almost. The artist Tim Kirby then added the most delightful illustrations. I hope our sense of being at play shines through, as in the verse for kaavie (driving rain):

“To be hatless in the driving rain is really most refreshing –the freezing water cools the brain, each ice-cold drop’s a blessing.”

Not quite a perfect rhyme, I agree, but it did feel so irresistible. I hope you can share in our enjoyment as you scan the selection here – and when next it’s dingin doun around you perhaps you’ll also share our belief that Scottish rain can be inspiring. For a short time at least!