Editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is:
TULYIE
quarrel, struggle
Scots tulyie (pronounced tool-yee) 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 which looks rather like a ‘z’ with a tail, and typesetters further confuse the issue by substituting yogh for a ‘z’. So we get spellings like ‘tulzie’ 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. Edinburgh Burgh Records (1560) concerns itself with: ‘the disobedience of officiaris, stopping of tulyeis, suddand debaittis, and stancheing of wrangis’. 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’. The latter 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’.
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 is here .
By Dictionary | 22 June 2021
