KEELIE, n.2, v.

The entry for keelie was written in 1960, which probably explains its rather prim definition in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL):

“A male city-dweller of the rougher sort, specifically of Glasgow and district, occasionally of Edinburgh, an uncouth rowdy fellow, a ‘tough’. Originally it implied thievish or criminal propensities”.

[Illustration by Bob Dewar]

The term’s origins in nineteenth-century Edinburgh can be seen in the following from the Scots Magazine of April 1812:

“He knew of a number of lads who used to meet at the bottom of Niddry Street when they came from their work … He has heard them called Keellies”.

This example doesn’t seem to show any sign of criminality. This aspect is covered in the North British Daily Mail of August 1863:

“The defender… said that I was a Saltmarket Keelie, a fighting man, a thief”.

In the twentieth century, J B Symons, writing under the pseudonym of Restalrig (a district in Edinburgh), in his At the Sign of the Sheep’s Heid (1922) gives us:

“Jist yin o’ thae Leith Coalhill keelies oot for a nicht’s batterin”.

The twenty-first century supplies us with much evidence that the term is still used even in douce Edinburgh. This example comes from a description of a lunch in the Edinburgh Evening News of December 2013:

“Tom was in steak pie mode, like me. It’s in our genes. Leith keelies do adore steak pie. We do love our scran”.

Perhaps the writer could have been better described as a former keelie.

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

Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.