Editors of the
Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is:
METHERY
The numeral four
Now that 'spring' lambs are starting to appear, it is perhaps a good time for those other than insomniacs to think about sheep-counting traditions.
One such noted in the
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) is the special numbering system used for the task, with entries for baombe 'five', daover 'nine', dek 'ten', hecturi 'six', and today's word, methery 'four', described as 'a corrupt variant in a child's counting-out rhyme of the numeral PETHERA, four'.
DSL's earliest example ('Eenty, teenty, tethery, methery, banful, eetful, over, dover') dates from the early 20th century, but back in the 1870s the linguist Alexander Ellis published a comprehensive article on such usages in the
Transactions of the Philological Society.
Drawing on his correspondence and discussions with a wide range of local informants, including 'a niece of my wife, who had learned it herself from her nurse in Swaledale, Yorkshire', Ellis recorded a variety of related sheep-counting practices, mostly from northern England but also including usages transferred from there by settlers in New England.
Comparable forms were also recorded from Roxburghshire and Renfrewshire. A Dr Henry Muirhead of Cambuslang reported to Ellis that forms such as a mether 'four' and a bamf 'five' were part of 'a rhyming formula which half a century ago himself and the children in Pollokshaws, three miles south of Glasgow... were in the habit of employing for
counting out'.
Methery (along with the form pethera from which it derives) seems to come from Brittonic, the variety of Celtic from which modern Welsh is descended (compare modern Welsh pedwar). Brittonic was once widespread across the island of Britain, leaving its mark in place-names as widely separated as Penzance in Cornwall and Penicuik in Midlothian.
Methery is a relic therefore of a language once spoken in what is now modern Scotland, but which has since almost entirely disappeared.
Scots Word of the Month is written by editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language. You can sponsor a word from this national archive as a special gift for a loved one or friend. More information about word sponsorship can be found here.
