Scottish patter

I remember the time I asked the ER nurse for a “torch.” She seemed to panic. For those of us of Scottish descent, there is a vocabulary that differs from our Canadian brethren. No, one doesn’t have to be a member of the tartan mafia to speak this language, but knowing what we mean might save your life. I was a visiting medical student in Winnipeg General. I was completing a neurologic exam in a stroke patient. In those days, the light reflex was still in vogue, and I needed a flashlight—a torch. Lacking one, I turned to the nurse with this request. Fearing some sort of Ku Klux Klan incendiary event, she retreated, muttering something in a thick Ukrainian accent. It was just one of many faux-pas I committed, inadvertently, on my locum journey. Read: Dr. Hector Baillie: All in the family I was making notes in my diary in the University library. I made a spelling error, and keen to make an erasure, I leaned over the table and asked my student colleague for “a rubber.” She smiled, and said, “Shh ... get your own.” Definitely a missed opportunity there. I told Dr. Roger Grant, my co-resident, that we could attend morning rounds if someone pounded on the dorm’s door at 7. “Don’t worry,” I said “I’ll knock you up at 6:45.” Colour drained from his face, and he seemed quite distant thereafter. Strange, because I met him one day outside the main building, and asked if he could find me a “fag” seeking a cigarette. There were some advantages to knowing another language. “That head nurse is a right besom” seemed to generate a sea of smiles and approving head-nods from the Scottish mafia on the ward. “Hey, this staff-room is a midden” created a sea of smiling confusion. An “RTA” was now an “MVA,’ and an “articulated-lorry” became a “semi.” When I heard that a heavy-set lady had slipped and “fallen on her fanny,” I didn’t know where to look (an example of reverse colloquial discrimination). There were times when I just lost it: “Oh gies-a-brek, hen, ya wee daftie” was about as productive as “help FIRE!” delivered in a rare Chinese dialect. Then there was that popular accent-recharging-event, the annual gathering of clansmen, the Robbie Burns celebrations. This popular bard and womaniser is celebrated around the world—in poetry and whisky—every Jan. 25. He truly was a man of the world, gifted in his observation powers and lyrical prose. As I launched into the head table speech The Immortal Memory, it struck me he maintained a high promiscuity index, probably more so than most libertarians in the audience would accept these days. Oh well. I love his description of lawyers, “the hell-hounds of the kennels of justice.” I’m just waiting to meet a lawyer I don’t get on with. Recently I spoke to a lady in her 80s, on the phone. She was from Giffnock, south of Glasgow. After she said “Aye,” it was clear she was (a) wise (b) bonnie, and (c) a down-to-earth-common-sense lassie. “How you doin’, hen?” went over well. We talked about the old country as if we lived off haggis-and-neeps, and wore the Royal Stuart tartan every day. There are Scottish words with such strength, such character, that translation is just a waste of time. Driech, meaning grey and drizzling weather. Mawkit, meaning dirty or filthy. Fankle, meaning tangled up, and Ejit, meaning a dim-witted character. Sometimes patients comment on my “strong accent” (usually those elderly patients with a Dorset pedigree, maybe partly deaf and lacking hearing aids, who are reluctant to follow dietary instruction). After 40 years in Canada, surely I am fluent in English diction? Nonetheless, I am willing to accommodate by slowing down, and enunciating clearly in louder tones. Sometimes, I just beat my hairy chest. Pass me my Claymore!

Casebook of a Community Internist

Scottish patter

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Hector Baillie

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