An A to Z of the Doric: an occasional series. W

Doric, the dialect spoken in the North-East of Scotland is rich in words and phrases associated with the land and the sea. Over the next few weeks I will try to illustrate some of them in an A-Z using examples of their use taken mainly from Buchan Claik, The Saut an the Glaur o't written in 1989 by Peter Buchan and David Toulmin.

WHIGMALEERIE: Anything fanciful or whimsical; a fantastic notion, whim; a fanciful ornament, sculpture, stone carving, contrivance, etc.

"It's a brave kirk-nane o' yere whig-maleeries and curliewurlies ..." Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy.

We are now pretty near to the end of the A-Z, just X and Z left!

I have known this oriental whigmaleerie for the whole of my life. When I was a child it lived in the house of an elderly neighbour and I coveted it with a vengeance. Apart from the French words on the bottle of HP Sauce in the pantry it was quite the most exotic thing that I had ever seen. When I was about 8 years old, our neighbour died, and I was allowed to choose something from her house - guess what I chose!