This is a Scots weekend at Stirling Castle, where visitors of all ages will be encouraged to explore the language through stories, clothing, food and the castle itself. I will be in the ‘dictionary corner' in what the Register of the Privy Seal (1562-3) calls the “chappell ryall of Striviling”. To prepare, I consulted the Dictionary of the Scots Language. There I found the Stirling jug, a Scottish standard measure of a pint. James Paton in Scottish History and Life (1902) says it is “so called from having been delivered by order of the Estates of Parliament into the custody of the Burgh of Stirling in the early half of the fifteenth century”. It is about three and a quarter imperial pints. The actual jug is in the Smith Museum in Stirling. It defined other measures, but the overall picture is confusing. John Chamberlayne in Magnae Britanniae Notitiae (1755) describes “The Firlot of Linlithgow, which is the standard, contains 31 pints Stirling jug, for the measuring of Wheat, Rye, Meal, Beans, White Salt, Malt, Beer, and Oats”, but the Edinburgh Weekly Journal (1800) reports new measures: “the firlot to contain 48 Stirling jugs of water, which, upon the average, will weigh 112 lbs. avoirdupois, when filled with potatoes to the edge”. Whatever measure was used, standarisation was celebrated by George Galloway in The Fatal Effects of Duelling (1795): “My sang's the gauge o' Scotland's meal, Auld Stirling's Jug”. Other dictionary snippets include the facts that Stirling natives call themselves the ‘Sons of the Rock' and William Dunbar preferred Edinburgh. He begged King James IV: “Cum hame and duell no mair in Stirling, Fra hyddows hell cum hame and duell”. John Buchan paints a more attractive picture in The Free Fishers (1934): “my father minded well when [claret] was cried through the town of Stirling at six shillings Scots the chopin”.

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