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DOOK v, n to plunge in water; a soaking
“DOOK v, n to plunge in water; a soaking ”
27th July 2009
DOOK
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The summer holiday is the time to don your dookers for that annual dook in the sea or hotel pool, if you are like Robert Henryson’s “paddok ... Quhilk be nature culd dowk and gaylie swym”. In the leisurely days described by A. M. Williams in A Bundle of Old Yarns (1931) “It was not unusual, on a fine summer day, to find a certain hatter’s shop closed in the forenoon, and a paper on the door with the intimation, ‘Doon for a dook, back at twelve’”. Even bad weather does not deter ardent dookers. In the sixteenth-century Flyting between Montgomerie and Polwart: “In dubbis dowkit duikis and draikis”.
Less enthusiatic swimmers might recognise themselves from J. Wilson’s description in Noctes Ambrosianae (1826): ‘He durstna gang into the dookin aboon his doup, for fear o’ drownin’. For some, dookin is a punishment. One wrongdoer, in The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (1564), was “To be tane to the depast (deepest) and fowlest pule of wattir of the toun ..., thair to be thryse dowkit”. The Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery, and Synod of Aberdeen (1602) reveal that Jonett Scherar was “to be ... put in the kirk wolt (vaults), and thairefter to be doukit at the cran (crane, ducking stool)”. Habakkuk Bisset in his Rolment of Courtis (1622-6) suggests a deterrent for acts of violence: “He that strekis any person ... salbe plundged or douked our the heid thrie sindrie tymes or doukes in the sea”. Dookin was particularly associated with witches and, on the most witching night of the year, dookin for aipples is still an essential part of any Halloween party. Dookin can even mean baptism by immersion. Hence, Baptists were once known as ‘dookit folk’ and occasionally referred to themselves in that way.
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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