n. the water shrew
In Caithness, it was thought that its breath could kill a cow at 100 paces and it could poison you just by looking at you. The cure was to make a soup from its head.
Tag: Caithness
In May 1895, 3 men broke into several Windygate businesses. Items stolen were:
20lbs of polony sausages
4lbs of steak
a box of railway lamp matches
They planned to feed 40 rough sleepers in the old brickworks at Muiredge. One man testified for the prosecution, one got 6 months, one got 3 months.
Polony here refers to Scottish polony a traditional sausage once common in the Northeast (and not baloney, bologna sausage etc.). More info (and source of pic) here: https://macdonaldbutchers.co.uk/scottish-polony-online-butchers/
Someone from Caithness on Twitter was surprised to hear about polony being eaten in Fife and Dundee (a polony supper is apparently worth a trip to Caithness!) As MacDonald Butchers note on their site, it’s not easy to find information on polony, and certainly it appears that polony in this sense of the word isn’t in the Dictionary of The Scottish Language (dsl.ac.uk).
References
Dundee Advertiser, 18th June 1895, pg. 2.