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TULYIE n, v, quarrel, struggle
“TULYIE n, v, quarrel, struggle”
8th June 2009
Tulyie
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This word originates in Old French ‘toeillier’ meaning to strive, dispute or struggle. The English word ‘toil’ derives from the same source, but similar French verbs regularly appear in Scots with a ‘-lyie’ ending. In Older Scots, the sound that we would now associate with a ‘y’ spelling is often represented with a yogh, a letter like a ‘z’ with a tail and typesetters further confuse the issue by substituting a ‘z’. So we get spellings like ‘tulzie’ alongside more phonetic spellings like ‘toolie’ creating the same confusion for the uninitiated as we get with names like Menzies and Dalziel. We have to remember that these are not real zeds but disguised yoghs. Whitna tulyie!
Scotland’s turbulent past provides plenty of examples. Peebles Burgh Records (1557) attempt to keep the peace: “Gif ony suddand tulye happyng within the tovne...that the keparis of the...portis...clois...the...portis quhill cognitioun of the said tulye be tane and pvnisment maid”. King James VI in his Basilicon Doron (1598) forbids the wearing of “rapper-suordis & daiggeris, for tuillesome ueapons in the courte betaikinnes confusion in the cuntree”. His recommendations may have prevented the crimes referred to in the Irvine Muniments (1572-3) including “slauchtir mutilatioun bludes toilyeis and utheris”. There was a need for the proverb “Tulziesome tykes come limpin hame”. Another proverb, recorded by Ramsay in 1736, warns against trying to break up a fight: “He that meddles with toolies comes in for the redding-streak”. This is defined in the Scottish National Dictionary as “the blow from a combatant which is frequently the lot of one who tries to stop a fight”. A tulyie is not always bloody, however. We find it in the sense of toil in David Grant’s Lays and Legends of the North (1884): “Owre the hill he hitch’t an’ hirplet, Tulzied hame an’ wan to bed”.
This week's word is spoken by Dauvit Horsbroch, an academic from Aberdeenshire, now living in Angus
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