{"id":643,"date":"2018-01-25T15:52:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T15:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/?p=643"},"modified":"2026-06-02T11:50:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:50:25","slug":"for-burns-night-scotland-in-yorkshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/2018\/01\/25\/for-burns-night-scotland-in-yorkshire\/","title":{"rendered":"For Burn’s Night, Scotland in Yorkshire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Alexandra Medcalf, Project Archivist for the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interactions between Scotland and Yorkshire were clearly, from the surviving terms in the dictionary, many and common-place. Those words which explicitly reference Scotland seem mostly to do with trade between the two areas, as Scottish men brought wares down from their home country to be sold around the county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scotch cloth<\/strong>, for example, was a fabric said to resemble \u2018lawn\u2019 (a plain weave textile of linen or, latterly, cotton) but cheaper – it was sometimes said to have been made with the fibre of\u00a0nettles<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what better to wear with your scotch cloth shirt than a scotch cap<\/strong>? In his will of 1551, Thomas Greenwood of Wakefield stated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unto Edwarde Sundderland as it apperethe in my booke of parcels for a remnantte of calve skynes so that the said Edward do allowe to me xxs which I paid for hym to William Parkyns, besides a Scotche cappe that he had of me, and I owe unto hym for whitte carsaye<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This was not a scotch bonnet or a tam o\u2019shanter but something more like a Glengarry cap or Balmoral bonnet. The OED<\/a> has examples from 1591 and describes it as \u2018a man\u2019s head-dress made of thick firm woolen cloth, without a brim, and decorated with two tails or streamers.\u2019 Something similar is now worn by Scottish military regiments:<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Balmoral Bonnet, similar to a scotch cap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

These items were probably brought down from Scotland by the scotchman<\/strong>: a sort of catch-all term for travelling drapers, hawkers and sellers of scotch cloth. They called regularly, in isolated rural hamlets, and offered a credit system which helped to make them successful. There are numerous references to scotchmen in the Quarter Sessions from the seventeenth century:<\/p>\n\n\n\n