Before white vans took over, hurlies were many and various. A happy picture is conjured up in James Ballantyne's The Gaberlunzie's Wallet (1843) of “Hurlies fu' o' chirry-cheekit apples an' brown speldings”. They came with two wheels or four. F. Sutherland avers in Sunny Memories of Morayland (1883), “Oor toonsman Tam, wi' his machine, Can beat yon fower-wheel'd hurley clean” and, in the Weekly Scotsman (1918), we read “In a side alley a two-wheeled hurly flanks the kerb”. The Royal Mail website (2013) reports excitedly “new trolleys allow Royal Mail's people to carry more items without returning to the Delivery Office or waiting for extra mail to be dropped off to them whilst out in their rounds. ... The new trolleys help take excess weight off of peoples' shoulders”. So what's new ? Seventy years ago, in Allan Fraser's Herd of the Hills (1943), “The postman came running down with his rattling hurley”. In The Industries of Scotland (1869), David Bremner evokes a bleak Victorian childhood in the pits: “The coal was drawn in ‘hurleys', or wheeled boxes to which boys and girls were yoked by a rude kind of harness”. Later, more fortunate children would put a different interpretation on the word. By the 20th century, a hurley made from some old bits of wood, rope and discarded wheels provided hours of joy and not a few bruises. This youthful form of locomotion was also called a guider or a piler and could be put to practical use too. David Phillips in The Lichty Nichts (1962) writes of “Takn claes t' the wahshie on m' piler”. Raymond Vettese in The Richt Noise (1988): calls it a cairtie, “made “oot o orange-boxes an' pram wheels”. What was it called in your part of the country?

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