An A to Z of the Doric

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

Doric, the dialect spoken in the North-East of Scotland is rich in words and phrases associated with the land and the sea. 

TRACKIE: A teapot.

"The tae wiz nearly aye rickit an files it wiz bile't, and the trackie got affa brookie sittin sae lang on the bink." (The tea tasted of smoke and sometimes it was boiled and the teapot was black with soot being so long at the fire). From Buchan Claik, The Saut an the Glaur o't written in 1989 by Peter Buchan and David Toulmin.

The description above is of a metal teapot that was never far from the fireplace. The  type of teapots in the blip would have been kept safely in a cupboard and taken out only on the most special of occasions. The colourful one is part of a full tea-set purchased in the 1930s from one of the itinerant salesmen, often Sikhs, who travelled around the farms and fishing villages of the NE selling fancy goods out of capacious suitcases.

The other one is modern, a gift from Mrs T on a birthday gone by.