Ceilidh house is defined in the new edition of the Concise Scots Dictionary as follows: “a house which is frequently visited (where ceilidhs are held)”. The term was not just confined to indoor spaces as shown in this example from the Dundee Evening Telegraph of 13 April 1887: ‘There once stood a kiln on the South-West coast of Mull, where men and boys were accustomed to meet for the purpose of playing cards, telling stories, singing songs, and other amusements. It was, in fact, a rough kind of “céilidh” house.’

The term is not used exclusively in the Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland. In 1990 in the autobiographical Red Rowans and Wild Honey the home of Betsy Whyte was described thus: “But a traveller home is no haven for a writer: hers was a ‘ceilidh hoose’, where friends and neighbours dropped in for a ‘crack’, at any time of the day and night.” And from further afield a writer in The Belfast Telegraph of 8 September 2013 informs us: “We grew up in a ceilidh house. Every night there would be musicians and singers coming over.”

Finally, in the Gaeltacht there are still fond memories of ceilidh houses as in this example from The Herald of 18 October  2013: “Jonathon MacDonald, at the Skye Museum of Island Life, communicated a sense of deep happiness in his childhood memories of the ceilidh house; there, older men moved from talking about the daily news, into ghost stories, and legends, and tales of those who had been lost in the wars of the past.”

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries 9 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7AL (0131) 220 1294,  www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk, mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk.