Slater

One of several senses given in Dictionaries of the Scots Language is:

“the slate-coloured insect frequently found under flat stones, the wood-louse or sow-bug”.

An early example comes from this revolting remedy, recorded in E D Dunbar’s Social Life in Former Days (1736):

“Give him, twice a day, the juice of twenty slettars, squeezed through a muslin rag in whey”.

In April 1945 the Weekly Scotsman reported, possibly unnecessarily, that:

“The woodlice that lurk beneath big stones he called ‘slaters’”.

Following lockdown, this observation appeared in The Glasgow Times (October 2020):

“Creaking open the old laptop again for the first time in about seven months was a bit like lifting up a fusty plant pot from a forgotten corner of the garden and disturbing a variety of slaters, worms and other wriggling, scurrying inhabitants of such dark, damp nooks and crannies”.

A sympathetic treatment of slaters comes from the Strathearn Herald (1980) in the form of a poem by Tom Shaw to The Wood Louse:

“Slater, we slater, aye crawlin’ aboot,
In ablow staines an’ rotted tree-root,
Nae use at sclimmin’ – aye fa’ain doon!
Helpless on back, legs flailin’ abune,
Birthing live bairnies – (nae eggs for you),
Slater, wee slater, tak’ tent how ye go.”

But here’s an attitude some readers may relate to better (from Stuart A Paterson’s poem Slater in Wheen: New and Collected Poems, 2023):

“Oan the flair o ma cludgie Ah fin a slater,
it isnae there ten meenits later.
Ah’m feart o speeders an alligators,
but mair than thon Ah’m feart o slaters.”

This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.

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