Folklore: dree yer ain wierd

Subject: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: artbrooks
Date: 22 May 07 - 05:27 PM

I have heard this "translated" as meaning something like "do your own thing" or "take charge of your own destiny". Scots speakers: what does it mean really?

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 May 07 - 05:48 PM

Dree- to endure, etc.
I understand it as You must "Plow your own furrow," which means about the same as suggested by artbrooks.

weird (i before e except after c and in certain weird words).

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: GUEST
Date: 22 May 07 - 09:13 PM

Not so much take charge, more like suffer the consequences.

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Muttley
Date: 23 May 07 - 08:24 AM

My Granny used to say that one and her context was pretty much to "lay in the bed which one had made" or in other words - "suffer the consequences.

However, I have also heard it used in the 'Plough your own furrow' / 'take charge of your own destiny' contexts as well.

My sentiments tend to follow that of Granny's interpretation - after all, someone who saw the introduction of the motor car to the planet as a young girl (she was 104+ when she died about 4 or 5 years ago) and then mass communication, two world wars and Man on the Moon has GOTTA have something going in the way of folkloric wisdom.

Muttley

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 May 07 - 12:55 PM

The interpretation by Muttley's Granny, I think, is closest to the meaning.

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: artbrooks
Date: 23 May 07 - 02:50 PM

Thank you all for your input. I appreciate your help.

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: GUEST,jj
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 05:46 PM

it means "face your destiny"

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 07:06 PM

"Publish and be damned"

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 07:36 PM

My unabridged dictionary from 1934 says that:

to dree is to endure, bear, suffer - (chiefly Scottish)
the first definition of 'weird' says that weird is fate, destiny,

and it specifically says that to 'dree one's weird' is to endure one's fate.

So when Shakespeare wrote of the 'weird sisters' (the witches) in MacBeth, presumably he meant that they deal with fate, not that they are bizarre.

Hmmm!

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Cuilionn
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 07:38 PM

Not much to add to the others. I've understood it to mean "endure your own fate." Here are two salient entries from James A. C. Stevenson's Dictionary of Scots Words & Phrases In Current Use (Athlone Press Ltd., London, 1989):

WEIRD: Fate, destiny. Not often heard nowadays, though you may still be told that you have to 'dree your weird', put up with your lot. The word has however won a place in the standard English vocabulary in rather curious circumstances. The Fates, the three classical goddesses who presided over men's destinies, were known in older Scots as the "weirds" or "weird sisters." From the 15th century on Scots writers repeated a legend that the Fates, or "weird sisters," had appeared to Macbeth to lure him to his fate. The story was taken over by Holinshed, the English chronicler to whom Shakespeare went for the plot of Macbeth. Later, people came to believe that the "weird" in the "weird sisters" in Macbeth meant supernatural or uncanny. This misunderstanding gave "weird" its main modern meaning in English. "Weird" was first recorded in Scots in 1375. It is from the Old English word for fate.

DREE: To suffer, endure (pain, misfortune). General Scots, also found in northern English dialect. Someone in a difficult situation for which there is no immediate remedy is likely to be told, 'You'll just have to dree it.' A common form of 'Job's comfort' is "You have to dree your weird', you must put up with what seems to be your fate. Dree has been recorded in Scots since the 14th century. It is from the Old English word for 'to endure,' and has a common origin with "dreich," which is said of things that are hard to bear.

--Cuilionn

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 03:59 AM

MacColl's Fisherman's Wife from Singing The Fishing
Jim Carroll

A the week your man's awa',            (All)
And a' the week you bide your lane. (live alone)
A the time you're waitin' for
The minute that he's comin' hame.    (home)
Ye ken whit wa' he has tae wark,    (You know the way)
Ye ken the hours he has tae keep—
And yet it mak's ye angry when
Ye see him just come hame to sleep.

Through the months and through the years
While you're bringing up the bairns. (Children)
Your man's awa' tae here and there
Following the shoals o' herrin's.
And when he's back there's nets tae mend,
You've mebbe got a score or twa;
And when they're done, he'll rise and say:
"Wife, it's time I was awa'."              (away)

Work and wait and dree your weird.    (reap what you sow)
Pin your faith on herrin' sales;
And oft-times lie awake at nicht
In fear and dread o' winter gales.
But men maun wark tae earn their breid        (must)
And men maun sweat tae gain their fee,
And fishermen will aye gang oot.        (always go out)
As lang as fish swim in the sea.

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 11:46 AM

Thanks, Cuilionn and Jim.

Jim, your song brings to mind something I once read - and that is that UNESCO says that the world's most dangerous occupation is deep-sea fisherman.

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:38 PM

"You've burned your bum, now sit on the blister"?

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:48 PM

Leeneia
It certainly was a dangerous occupation at the time the song was written.
As he did with many of his songs, MacColl based his text on actuality recorded from fishing communities while making of the Radio Ballad, Singing the Fishing.
There are some spectcular recordings of fishermen talking, especially of Norfolk fisherman/singer Sam Larner describing a storm in the North Sea.
Some of it can be heard on what, in my opinion, is the best album of a source singer ever made, Now Is The Time For Fishing, a beautiful combination of songs and commentary.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: dree yer ain wierd
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:59 PM

Dree that weird, lift that bale.
Get a little fu' and you land in gaol.