March 11th.Anglo Saxon heresy (ASH- see Section) is back in the Herald! This weeks word is OXTER, ‘armpit’. Maggie Scott of DOSL says from OE (Old English) oxta, ohsta ‘armpit’. ‘Arm’ is Norse ARM(r), OE is EARM. This Scots word ‘oxter’ comes from Norse, Hostr... the aspirated initial is borne out by the kindred words hósta, hósti ‘to cough, a cough’ :-- the throat,the upper part of the chest and the lower part of the throat...from C/V, Norse Dictionary. The ‘armpit’ is the hole, N. Hol, ‘cavity’ of the OXTER!- the upper part of the chest. The ‘X’ in Scots comes from the aspirated ‘H’. Dr. Scott cites Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s, ‘Sunset Song’ where 2 guys were ‘oxtering’ to keep warm and thinks this is a new verb ‘to embrace’. It is 2 guys pressing their chests together to keep warm, NOT their armpits. The English dictionaries say ‘Oxter’ is from Scotland, and Northern England. These are the areas that had extensive NORSE settlements and provided the base for our Scots non-Celtic tongue, NOT Anglo/Saxon, as proved by Scotland’s place names AND History. It is a pity a ‘Scots’ dictionary seems to try at every chance to show an Old English base for Scots, where none exists. ASH. Hoast, Scots ‘cough’as used by Burns and many others, is from N. Hósta, ‘to cough’ from HOSTR, as above! There is NO A/S word like it!!! The A/S oxta, was
obviously taken from Old Norse!-but without its proper meaning.

Feb 25th ‘Clype’. Claims it was Scots clep meaning ‘to name, address etc’ which comes from Old English cleopian, ‘to call, summon’. Only example of cleopian in OE Dictionary, is ‘Call upon God’. Quotes Skene, late 16th c. ‘the persewer did clep...the defender etc.’ Did NOT say the words after ‘clep’ which were ‘and cal’, which is ‘call’ which comes from Norse Kall, ‘cry, appellation, name etc.’ AND nothing to do with CLYPE, ‘tell tales, inform etc.’. This comes from Norse, Klýpa , ‘a bit pinched out of another’. This by extension has come to mean taking a piece of news, gossip, from somewhere and taking or putting it somewhere else!!! There is NO CLYPE in English Dictionaries. Why mention ‘English’ at all????
March 4th No ASH deposit on view- at least in The Herald! However,
BBC2 28th Feb started a 4 part series on Scots Tongue. It is based on an unexplained assertion of Anglic settlement in Scotland stretching from Glasgow to Stirling, southwards to the border, according to the map they showed. No mention is made of Norse settlement in the same area. They mention Barbour, 14th c. author of The Bruce, without explaining the Norse derivation of much of his work. George Tobias Flom did. Look him up.
It is a poor start and English academics do not help.

‘8th April ELDRITCH. ELRICH, eldritch, comes from Norse, ÁLFREK, a form of Elf contamination,ATTESTED in Old Icelandic dictionaries. Ms. Scott says it is ‘conjectured’ ELDRITCH comes from Old English ĆLFRICE meaning elf kingdom, UNATTESTED, or as it says in the Oxford Dic., UNRECORDED! Now since there were NO substantial Old English settlements in Scotland, our History proves it as do the Place Names, we must conclude that DOSL and Dr. Scott are propagating English origins for Scots words for OTHER reasons. What is RECORDED is that there was an archbishop of Canterbury, ĆLFRIC, died 1006. Imagine, an English ‘Elf’ a bishop. This should have been last weeks joke.

15thApril ‘SCOTS’ WORD of the WEEK- Stour as featured in THE HERALD, Glasgow. Each week it publishes, under its Editorial, selections by Dr Maggie Scott of the DOSL, which often claim that the Scots Tongue came from variants of Old English. This is known in Scotland as the Anglo Saxon Heresy, a phrase used by Robert Louis Stevenson.The Herald will not publish any alternatives to ASH (to date). If you want to know why, ask them! Stour they claim today is from Old French, estour, ‘battle, strife, conflict’ and nowadays ‘dust’ etc. in Scots. THEY DON’T SAY THAT IN THEIR DICTIONARIES, DOSL,SND etc. IT CLAIMS FROM MIDDLE ENGLISH and other such tripe. IT IS FROM OLD NORSE STYRR, ‘BATTLE, BRAWL,TUMULT etc.’ and the French would have soon discovered this word when the Norse invaded France in the 9th c. and gave them many words like STYRR, which was pronounced STOOR! until the French, under Charles the Fat, after 885 eventually gave them the north of France, Normandy.
22 April. Scots Word of Week, ‘crabbit’-Scots ‘eqivalent’ of English crabbed. Poor fare from DOSL and Maggie. Norse Krabbi, ‘crab’, nickname recorded by Sturluson, early13th c.Originally from Greek, karabos.

29th April ‘SCOTS’ WORD of the WEEK-VOAR, from VAR, Norse ‘Spring’ according to DOSL, in The Herald. Of course they get the Norse word wrong. This is elementary my dear Watson.VAR is a Norse Goddess of treaties, mentioned in a Norse placename near Whittinghame above and in my book. Norse for Spring is VÁR, which makes a great difference in pronunciation-and meaning.The Herald in Glasgow, REFUSES, to date, to countenance criticism of the DOSL and their ASH version of the Scots tongue (presumably for unionist purposes), and stick the DOSL column under their Editorial. My book, Scots Place Names of Scotland, will be published soon and this week will be the last (I think) crit of this series before publication. I have included an Anglo Saxon Heresy Chronicle (ASH) section in my book of most examples of the DOSL and ASH articles for the last year. Readers can judge.

My book shows Norse etymologies of names like Stirling, Spartleton, Monynut, Bemersyde, Fattlipps,Carlops, Ninewar, Kelvin, Bowling, Glazert, and thousands more that a 1000 years of ASH and the DOSL are unable to provide proper answers.

May, 6th. Pathetic. Not this week’s word, that is SLATER, ‘wee grey beastie’. No etymology, very little. Old Norse Sléttr, ‘smooth’, probably where the Old French ésclat, ‘slate’ came from. N. Slétti-baka ,’type of whale’, probably ironically, transferred itself to this wee beastie.

Scotland deserves better.
May 13th. When the DOSL is not giving ‘English’ derivations of Scots words it turns to French! This week it is DOUCE. Now they tell us the English used this French word years ago and is now obsolete, but the Scots carried it on! ‘Gentle, soft etc.’ Scots Place Names of Scotland, ‘Fact and Fraud’, published by Tarmagan, is due out shortly-Watch this space!
May 20th. Word this week is Byke, ‘beehive etc’. DOSL don’t know its etymology-but they think its Scots. Mention an OE beo ‘a bee’. No, I don’t know why either. Anyway its simple Old Norse that developed into Scots.
May 27th. Word this week is Scots gleg, ‘sharp, lively etc.’ From ON Gleggr and DOSL(Dictionary of Scots Language) state from M.E. in 1300. Seem shy to mention this in The Herald. Their dicts. give a gleg-hawk which they say is from OE heafoc-but don’t say ON Hauk. Usual.