The Scottish National Dictionary entry for ‘birse’ starts with a puzzling saying from James Kelly’s Complete Collection of Scotish [sic] Proverbs (1721): “The Sowter gave the Sow a Kiss. Humph, quoth she, its for a Birse”. Why a shoemaker should kiss a pig for the sake of a bristle becomes clear when the dictionary cites John Marwick’s The Orkney Norn (1929): “Biss, a bristle; spec. of a bristle on a pig and of the bristles used by shoemakers for fixing on the end of a thread”. Other quotations showing birse as a verb confirm this use of pig bristles. James Colville in Studies in Lowland Scots (1909) writes: “He [the sutor] beat the bend-leather on his lap-stane, drew his thread across the roset ..., deftly birsed a fresh lingle end, or passed the gleaming elshon (awl) through his hair” and the Times (20 June 1932) reports; “The Duke of Buccleuch and his co-freemen [of Selkirk] went through the ceremony on Saturday of ‘licking the birse.’ This is a sheaf of bristles from a wild boar skin and was used by the Souters in making their noted soled shoon. The Duke dipped the birse in wine and drew it between his lips. This was the symbol of his initiation as Souter.” Birse is not restricted to pigs. Alexander Wardrop writes in 1887, “The tousie-tailed collie lap richt on the tap o’ me, cockit his birse, showed his white teeth, an’ barkit like fury”. Where in English you might say that someone’s hackles are raised, in Scots his birse is up. John Galt in Sir Andrew Wylie (1822) offers “Ye’re a deevil at a paik, when your birsies are up” and D. M. Moir gives us the verb in Mansie Wauch (1839): “’Haivers, haivers,’ said Nanse, birsing up like a cat before a colley”.

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