A Doric A-Z: B revisited

Doric, the dialect spoken in the North-East of Scotland is rich in words and phrases associated with the land and the sea. In this occasional series I try to illustrate some of them using, in the main, 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.

BAUDRONS, or BAWDRONS: Cats

It reminded her of "bawdrons stepping among the broken bottles on a wa'." From: N. Dundas Castle Adamant (1927)

These 3 baudrons are very distant cousins. The blue one is from Ancient Egypt where the cat was the sacred animal of the goddess Bastet. Bastet was a nationally popular deity associated with fertility and the life-giving properties of the sun. The original cat dates from the 1st century A.D. and was made from faience, glazed with lead alkaline turquoise with added black spots. Our baudron is, of course, a modern copy, from the original in the British Museum's Department of Egyptian Antiquities.

The other two date from the early 1980s and were made at the Moorside Cat Pottery at West Burton in the Yorkshire Dales.