Rummle
At its simplest, rummle is the Scots for “rumble”. However, the Dictionaries of the Scots Language offers more: agitation, jumble, shake up, jangle etc. A rather macabre example comes from Robert McClellan in the magazine Chapman Number 43-44 (1986):
“Ye’ll hae to fill the coffin to the richt wecht wi stanes, but wrap them weill roun in case they rummle”.
More poetically, there’s this from Lillias Forbes in Turning a Fresh Eye (1998):
“‘Twixt Ruberslaw an Warbla Knowe Yince, Christopher we’d meet For ae sicht o’ the tither Asklent burn water rummlin at oor feet!”.
Brian Holton also used the word to evoke the sound of water in his prize-winning elegy In Memoriam Cyril Stanley Holton (2017):
“ye tuik the simmer’s lang white road
whaur lichtsome hills is daft wi sang
an siller watter rummles doun the linn
the herd hed come ti lead ye in
to set ye on yir auld white road”
Rummling as an aid to digestion features in a report of a party (John O Groat Journal, 1891):
“After the edibles had been consumed, a young lady was heard to say, ‘I think we’ll jist rise an try to rummle hid doon’”.
More recently, this hazard from the days of coal fires was recorded in the Daily Record (2022):
“Sometimes if we had the fire stacked up a red-hot coal would rummle right out on to the hearth”.
Finally, from Contermacious Temerity (Keeks Mc, 2023), a description of ADHD:
“It’s gie haurd fur thay wi’oot a jumblt brain
tae unnerstaun whit it’s like tae be a rummle”.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
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