Stour (stoor)
If ye are reddin up yr hoose, ye wull create some stour. The Herald newspaper of the 13th March 2000 yaises this wird:
A slight shadowing on the wall above one radiator prompts skoosh with spray bleach cleaner followed by creation of astonishingly obvious circles of cleanliness --- and correspondingly blatant clinging stoor.
The wird stour his been wi us for centuries as illustatit in follaeining quotation frae the 15th century Buik of Alexander:‘Sic ane stour attour thame stude That euin vp to the lyft it ƺude’.
It gies ye a sense of speed. J. H.Bone yaises it in The Crystal Set (1924): ‘Ye couldna see him for stour when the polis arrived.’
In anither quotation frae Edinburgh, ye get a rael sense o speed tae:
‘He gaed stoorin alang on his bike’ (1940).
In the warld o wark, stour aften comes wia healthwarning as this quotation shows:
Children in Mines (1842): ‘I left the factory work, as the stour made me hoarse.’
In the Herald(1992):
Yet about a quarter (up to 50,000) of the one-time population were engaged in that stoorie industry. It affected every aspect of city life. Jute made Dundee a divided place of rich and poor.
Anither interestin yiss o the wird is for fowk that are fykie. The example fraeA. G. Murdoch’s Lilts on theDoric Lyre (1873) illustrates this: ‘Tween stoorie-woorie wife an' weans, Wow! but I'm corner'd fairly’.It wis common in Dumfries tae,wi J. Paton indicating inCastlebraes (1898)that the laddie wis ill-trickit:
‘Syne as a stoorie laddie I began tae speel the Auld Castle Wa’s’.
Stourie fitaften meant a dust-stained traiveller or a stranger.
A modren coinage is stour soukin for vacuum cleaning. Leuk at Ellie McDonald’s wark (Pathfinder,2000):
This is yer Muse talkin.
Ye're on yer final warnin.
Nae mair sclatchin i the kitchen,
nae mair hingin out the washin,
nae mair stour soukin.
This is yer Muse talkin
fae the wyste paper basket.
The wird’s origins are Old Scots anit is relatit tae the Middle English as st(o)ur an the Old French estour. It is relatit tae the English wird ‘storm’.
Ye micht ken the Scottish fairy tale Whuppity Stoorieis in William an Robert Chambers’ buik Popular Rhymes, Fireside stories and Amusements, of Scotland(1842). A mither his tae fin the broonie’s nem tae kep her bairn. The broonie’s nem in coorse isWhuppity Stoorie. You micht ken ither versions o this tale. Let us ken if ye hae ither interestin examples o the wird stour or stourie.