In the days of routine home birth the howdie or howdiewife was a woman who tended mothers at the birth of their children. Sometimes the howdie would also have other nursing duties but their main work was with pregnant women.

The earliest example in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) comes from the Register of Interments in the Greyfriars Burying-ground, Edinburgh and dates from the late 17th century.

That the howdie's job was a somewhat thankless task is attested by Burns in his poem Scotch Drink written at Ayr in 1786: “When skirlin weanies see the light, Thou maks the gossips clatter bright…Nae Howdie gets a social night, Or plack frae them”.

John Buchan, writing in 1927 notes that the howdie is busy at particular times of the year: “It was the season of births, too, as well as of deaths, and the howdie was never off the road.” from The Witch Wood.

The term, if not still used in these times of modern obstetrics, seems to be still known as shown by this use of a derived term by Sheena Blackhall in the The Singing Bird: “Ae day, gin Science takks ower, Aa bairns will hae a howdiein like Jesus — Bi the Virgin and the Speerit, in a test tube.” (2000).

The etymology of the word is obscure although the DSL suggests that it was originally an Edinburgh word and possibly originally a cant term. It was certainly used by Travellers into the 20th century as attested by Stanley Robertson in Scottish Traveller Dialects edited by Jess Smith and Robert Dawson (2002). Because of their lifestyle the experienced but untrained howdie may well have been in service to this community much later than the population in general.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries