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CREESH n., v. grease

“CREESH n., v. grease”

27th October 2008

creesh

Creesh is grease or fat in general, but the word is often specifically used to mean the fat of fowls, as in the Aberdeen Press and Journal of 21st March 1992: “Creesh was the lump of fat from the inside of a hen; and when rubbed liberally on leather it made a first-class water repellent”. An Aberdeen informant (1940) confirmed the efficacy of rubbing boots “with fat in winter to keep out the sna’ bree”. A different kind of creesh, but still useful, was described by J. Firth in the Orkney and Shetland Miscellany (1913): “When wool was being prepared for a web a mixture of whale-oil and tar melted together, and called creesh, was sprinkled out of an old cruizie lamp on the heap of wool laid on the floor”. A. Hislop in The Proverbs of Scotland (1870) claims, “Butter’s the king o’ a’ creesh” and the lubricating powers of butter are well attested; the 1527 Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland show an entry “For Orkney buttir to creische the quhelis (wheels)”. J. Kelly in A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs (1721) is less appreciative, claiming Orkney butter is “neither good to eat, nor to creich wool”.

A tasty dish creeshes the tongue or teeth. This was the sense used by Robert Henryson in his retelling of the Aesop fable in which the town mouse and the country mouse ate “A quhyt (white) candill out of a coffer stall, In steid of spyce to cresch thair teithis withall”. Creeshing someone’s luif (greasing someone’s palm) can imply payment for a service, but may carry undertones of bribery. Of a miserly person, one might say as J. Service did in Dr. Duguid (1887): “He would have skinned a loose for the creesh o't and socht candy for the banes”.