Editors of the
Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is:
LUCKEN
closed, joined, fastened
Derived ultimately from Old English, the most common usage of lucken in modern times is in the compound luckenbooth. Luckenbooths – booths or shops in a market which could be locked up – were common in Scottish towns.
The luckenbooths of Edinburgh were referred to in somewhat uncomplimentary terms by Sir Walter Scott in
Heart of Midlothian (1818): 'A huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town'.
Applied to the hands, lucken meant clenched into a fist, as in the vivid: 'Mine armes being broake, my hands lucken and sticking fast to the palmes of both handes, by reason of the shrunke sinewes', from William Lithgow's
Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations (1632).
But lucken-fittit was evidently no bad thing according to Walter Gregor's
Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland (1881): '
Lucken toes, that is, toes joined by a web, indicated luck'.
A lucken-gowan is a flower such as the globe-flower, whose petals are drawn together like a bud. Lucken is also used of vegetables that have a firm, close heart, like cabbage. A lucken haddock or whiting is a fish that is cut open and cleaned but not split down to the tail – so, more closed than open.
Leather described as lucken had been consolidated and thickened by tanning and hammering. So we read of 'twenty-three Hydes Lucken-leather in whole Hydes' in a 1758 edition of the
Caledonian Mercury.
Figuratively, lucken could be used of anything drawn together, contracted, or close-joined. Thus lucken-brows or browed referred to close-knit or frowning brows. In an 1832 edition of
Fraser's Magazine, we read of someone 'knitting her thick lucken brows, till they stood mingled'. No doubt we all recognise that look.
Scots Word of the Month is written by editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language. You can sponsor a word from this national archive as a special gift for a loved one or friend. More information about word sponsorship can be found here.
