A cruisie is not a diminutive ocean voyage but an old-fashioned iron lamp, typically with a rush wick, although strips of cloth were also used. One typr described in the Dictionary of the Scots Language was formed of two boat-shaped bowls placed one above the other and attached to a bar suspended from a nail in the wall. Oil, originally fish or whale oil, dripped from the reservoir bowl into the other. Blackwood’s Magazine (Oct 1892) describes: “a triangular metal saucer with an upright hook at the base to be hung by”. Another definition from Dumfries in the early nineteenth century describes “A sort of triangular candlestick made of iron, with one or more sockets for holding the candle, with the edges turned up on all three sides”. From Banffshire we have an account from James Taylor’s Cabrach Feerings (1920) of light for poaching salmon “given by a ‘cruisie’, an iron basket in which ‘knabs’, resinous fir roots dug out of the moss, were burned”. Whatever the cruisie’s shape or fuel, the light was welcoming. As Alexander Maclagan writes in Sketches from Nature (1851): “The ingle cheek is bleezin’ bricht, The croozie sheds a cheerfu’ licht”. A cruisie provides a guiding light in W. D. Latto’s Tammas Bodkin (1864): “My mither had agreed wi’ him to place the cruzie in the gavel winnock to guide him through the mire.” It could even provide light to work: “Thrashing in the barn with flails by the light of the cruizie”, as recalled by James Ormond in Orkney 80 Years Ago (1912).

 With origins in Latin ‘crucibulum’, it appears in Old French as a ‘creuset’ (crucible) and ‘croiseul’ (lamp). Middle Dutch also has a hanging lamp called a ‘kruysel’. Interestingly, cruisie also appears in Scots as a crucible for melting lead for making shot.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.

This week's word is spoken by Sheena Blackhall from Aberdeen.