Hou weel dae ye ken yer Spring ingans? Syboes add flavour to the Dictionary of the Scots Language in a surprisingly large number of literal and figurative quotations.

            As regards their monetary value, in 1552, The Dundee Burgh Court Records itemises the purchase of “xv dussane of beddis of sybowis for xij s. the dussane”.  They were highly valued by consumers as the Journals of Sir John Lauder (1665-7) show: “Some likes (leeks) some sibows, beets or such like things and this is their delicates”. In June 1997, the Sunday Times made mouths water with the description of ‘a really good roast quail, for example, which had been marinaded in sesame oil and soy sauce then roasted before receiving a garnish of intensely grilled syboes’.

            Less happily, Glasgow Burgh Records (1575) describes a woman’s misfortune, which resulted “In castyng of hir doune ... and skailing of hir sybois” and Northern Notes and Queries (1889) records that in 1653 “pulling sybous on the Lord's day” was a matter for reproach.

            In figurative use, there seems to have been frequent comparison between biting the end off a syboe and beheading: “I have beheaded your duke like a sybow” (1675) exemplifies this gruesome simile in W. Crammond’s The Castle and the Lords of Balveny. The crispness of the onion stem is apparent in “This day the head is as clean taken off the house of Cowthally, as you cowld strike off the head of a sybba”, as James Somerville wrote in the Memorie of the Somervilles (1679).

            Overall, syboes have very positive connotations. A. S. Robertson, in The Provost of Glendookie (1894), tells us “If mair sybies were eaten there would be fewer doctors” and Syboe is even used affectionately as a nickname for an inhabitant of Girvan in Ayrshire where growing spring onions was a speciality.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries