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BEAR, BERE n barley
“BEAR, BERE n barley”
30th March 2009
bear,bere
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Dr William Singer in his General View of the Agriculture in the County of Dumfries (1812) explains: “Under this designation [barley]...are comprehended the finer species, with two rows of grain on the ear...and also the coarser species, with four rows, which has of late got the name of bear, though this was the old Scotish [sic] name for the genus”. Actually, bear goes back to Old English, although, from the fifteenth century onwards, the word has survived only in Scots. The grain can also be in six rows.
One of Scotland’s bear (usually rhyming with cheer) products is lauded by Burns in Scotch Drink (1786) “I sing the juice Scotch bear can make us”. Bear was also used more wholesomely in the baking of bear bannocks and bear baps. P. Forbes in a poem published in 1812 reminisces: “In the days o’ lang syne, when I liv’d in the east, Rampin’ milk an’ bear-baps, we then counted a feast”. Although puir folks farin, they were not despised by Scott in Redgauntlet (1824) either: “He would have found enough among the shepherds to hide him, and feed him, as they did me, on bear-meal scones and braxy mutton”. So, when Charles Murray wrote in The Sough o’ War (1918): “We’ve wantit bear-meal for oor bannocks this fyle”, life was hard indeed. The humble barley bread was even the subject of a miracle as translated around 1520 from the New Testament by Murdoch Nisbet: “Jesus feade fyfe thousand men with fyue beare laiffis”.
It has become proverbial. John Jamieson in the 1825 edition of his dictionary offers the following: “He pays nae green bear for that” denoting that a person inherits a particular defect from his parents; an allusion to someone who possesses property without paying any duty in kind for it to a superior.
This article was written by Chris Robinson of Scots Language Dictionaries. www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk
This week's word is spoken by Katrina MacLeod. Katrina grew up in Falkirk but now lives in Perth and works in the information sector.
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