Categories
Food and Drink

Augustine Nectar

Between 1986-1995, Fort Augustus man, Jerry Johnson made a drink called “Augustine Nectar” that was made from heather and thistles. Touted as a non-alcoholic alternative to whisky, the vast majority was drunk by Mormons in Utah and California.

Categories
Crime and Punishment Rural Life

Lay Miserables

In 1631, the Burgh of Peebles made it illegal to let your chicken eat your neighbours thatched roof. In 1656, the Burgh ordained that all chickens must wear wooden clogs to prevent them flying up onto rooves.

Categories
Words

CATKYNDNESS

n. Selfishness, opportunism; cupboard-love

“He wis aa catkyndness – paws the day, cleuks the morra”

Categories
Food and Drink

Bells and Girders

In 1996 United Distillers teamed up with A.G. Barr to produce an alcopop: Bell’s Whisky and Irn-Bru. Notoriously disgusting, it was soon discontinued.


Categories
Uncategorized

The Road Bridge to Bonnie Dundee

In August 1966, tenor Dennis Clancy released a single to commemorate the opening of the Tay Road Bridge and it was *chef’s kiss*.

Categories
People

“The best lady driver that ever lived”

Muriel Thompson (1875-1939) was a Scottish racing driver, suffragist, an WW1 ambulance driver. In 1919, she was known as “the best lady driver that ever lived”. She was the undefeated champion of “reverse-start high-speed blindfold racing”.

Categories
Crime and Punishment

Dundee diplomacy

In March 1875, after a workplace disagreement, Dundee millworkers Elizabeth Melville and Gordonia Skinner met during their lunch break for a square-go in front of a large crowd. Elizabeth won by KO after 3 rounds then the two went back to work.

Categories
Folklore Rural Life

Beds are burning

In parts of the Highlands, if a crewmember of a herring boat was suspected of having brought bad luck on board, his crewmates would steal his bed, tow it out to sea, then set fire to it.

Categories
Medicine

Miracle healer

In July 1563 surgeon Robert Henderson was awarded 20 merks by Edinburgh’s town council for “healing” a man whose hands had been cut off, a couple who’d been run through the body with swords, and a woman who’d suffocated and lain dead in her grave for two days.

Categories
Words

OOSHIN-GOOSHIN

n. festering matter or purulence from a wound and by extension: sin, ill thoughts.

“O Lord! Squeeze the ooshin-gooshin oot o us!”