The Dictionary of the Scots Language provides not so much a definition as a recipe. Steep the husks or seeds of oats, with fine bran meal, in water for about a week until the mixture turns sour. Strain and squeeze to extract all the meal and leave the jelly-like liquor for a further period to ferment and separate.The solid glutinous matter which sinks to the bottom is sowans, and the liquid, swats. Boil with water and salt, and eat it like porridge. The word comes from Gaelic ‘subhan’ and makes its first documented appearance in Scots in the late sixteenth century. George Ridpath in An Answer to the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence (1693) assures us "That sowens are good victuals both for body and saul". Sowans keep well, according to William Leslie in his General View of the Agriculture of the Counties of Nairn and Moray (1813): "In this country sowins are prepared at short intervals of about a week. In Caithness more art is displayed, the whole stock for half a year or more being made up at once; and similar to starch, is preserved, instead of the bran, in the form of dry paste; in which state it is sent to families resident in Edinburgh". Drinking sowans was taken warm, often sweetened with treacle and thin sowans was used for scones. Yule sowans were prepared for the festivities of Christmas but, if they don’t appeal to your taste, another use is described by William Watson in Glimpses of Auld Lang Syne (1903): "It was then quite a common practice to go with a pailful of sowens, and with a white-washing brush ‘sklaich’ the doors and windows of dwelling-houses after the inmates had retired to their beds. The houses selected for ‘sowening’ in this way were usually those of the ‘near-b’gyaun’ and unsociable folks, who never gave nor accepted of invitations for ‘Yule sowens’."

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

This week's Word is spoken by Dr Dauvit Horsbroch.