Folklore: The word 'scut'

Subject: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Wheatman
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 06:16 PM

The last line of the 4th verse of AU Hinny Burd ( Northumbrian Minstrelsy) says "And South shields is the place for scut" Does any one know what the word scut means in this instance. My dictionary says it is a short tail, like a rabbits'. Other bits of the internet suggest a mundane or worthless job. Northumbrian Minstrelsy or learn yoursel geordie does not help.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 06:36 PM

Hunters used it to mean hares.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Zany Mouse
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 06:47 PM

A scut was also the word for wasters in Wombwell. Not sure how far that was spread though - we were a strange lot!

Rhiannon

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Bee
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 06:55 PM

I always understood it to mean a rabbit or hare's tail.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:21 PM

And, from US, I always understood it to mean lowly work. Scut work. The nastiest jobs around the place.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:25 PM

Could it be related to 'scuttlebug', gossip about a colleague, rumours concerning the lower orders?

"Red Dwarf" had little menial robots called 'scutters' who would fall into the lowly work area.

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:27 PM

Scut, like many words, has several meanings. These from the OED and slang dictionaries. In Hinny Burd, means a hare (to me, anyway).

And to fill the deck-

A short tail
A hare
An embankment
A short garment

adj. -short

verb-
to scut =
to dock
to cut short

a scout

From slang dictionaries
scut(tlebutt)
a worthless person or a useless git (Zany Mouse has a variant)
The 'tail' of a woman- in Frances Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

Probably more ---

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:38 PM

If you look very closely (I used a magnifying glass), you'll see that the word isn't scut at all, but seut.

Conrad Bladey posted a text from Cawhall's Beuk o' Newcassel Sangs (1888) in thread A.U. Hinny Burd, 7 years ago. There are typos in it, but he has 'seut' right.

Offhand I don't know what the word means, but at any rate you don't need to be worrying about how 'scut' might fit the sense.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:39 PM

I thought it meant tail of a rather different species...

The odd thing about this song is that the rhyme seems to force the pronunciation "scoot".

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 07:58 PM

Well, in that case, it means "soot." The Oxford English Dictionary: your one-stop source for word info.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 08:33 PM

The line is not in the version published in the volume "Allan's Tyneside Songs," facsimile of 1862 edition with preface by David Harker, 1972.
I have posted the version from Allan in 19381: A. U. Hinny Burd
This thread also linked above by Malcolm Douglas.

'Seut' is rhymed with 'neuk' in the post by Conrad Bladey from Cawhall 1888 (which seems to be a later version).

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 09:50 PM

"I thought it meant tail of a rather different species..."

Yep - for adults only conversation....

Well, Jack, great minds think alike - or perhaps fools never differ?

to put the thread back on its proper track

"Offhand I don't know what the word means, but at any rate you don't need to be worrying about how 'scut' might fit the sense. "

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:14 PM

Slaves and women do scut work. So does the new hire. Can this in any way be related to rabbits, tails, docking etc? I'm curious.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:25 PM

It looks to be related to 'slut' - which used to mean something quite different before the word was denigrated.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:28 PM

The word, I assure you, is 'seut', not 'scut' or 'slut'; and Jonathan Lighter has given us the answer from his dictionary (which is bigger than mine). End of story, really.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:33 PM

OK, Malcolm, but could there be 2 words? I grew up, S. Kansas, US hearing 'scut work'. Scoop the manure out of the barn, wash the dishes, do all the nasty jobs for little or no pay. If it is seut (which sounds more like 'suet'/beef fat to me) where did MY definition of scut come from?

Yea, Fooles, sluts do scut work. Sounds reasonable to me.....

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:39 PM

Looks like the thread has now been hijacked.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Jun 07 - 10:42 PM

'Scut' is a real word; no argument there. It isn't the word used in the song that this thread is about, though; that's all. 'Wheatman' just mis-read it; easily done, especially if he was using the facsimile reprint, which isn't clear. As I said, I had to use a magnifying glass to be certain that the letter was 'e' rather than 'c'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 12:02 AM

Looking at the lines in the verse, most of the suggestions made here can be dropped as unlikely. From Conrad Bladey's post (which I assume is correct):

There's Tynemouth an' Cullercoats,
And North Shields for sculler-boats;
There's Westoe lies iv a neuk,
And South Shields the llyce for seut.

Obviously the words I found in the OED for scut do not apply since the word is seut; which means soot acc. to the OED as Lighter has told us.

Is the poet talking about coal or lampblack- there were coal mines in South Shields and Westoe- And probably a place where they made blacking, lampblack, etc. Seems likely.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Stephen R.
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 12:29 AM

Swink, you scuts! Yauld, gleg, and yare! Or it's pizzle, knout, kurbash, and chawbuck for you!

Stephen

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 01:05 AM

I am not convinced by Conrad's 'llyce'; there are some obvious typos in his transcription, as I said earlier. Bruce and Stokoe have 'place', which has the distinct advantage of making sense. Mind you, I haven't seen Conrad's source, so he may have reproduced that bit faithfully.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: alanabit
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 04:40 AM

I have heard Irish blokes use it to mean a bad mannered or ill behaved young man.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 05:18 AM

ALANABIT,correct, a blackguard.SCUT is aword commonly used around here.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Wheatman
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 05:50 AM

thank you all, I do apologise for causing a little ruckus again. I have revisited my Minstrelsy and bad printing could be the reason for the confusion. Perhaps I will let the oral tradition take over and use a word which will fit and seems logical. If I do that then I will not be asked any embarrasing qustions having sung the song and not knowing the meaning of the word. Thanks once again.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: MartinRyan
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 06:02 AM

A tale-piece: in my youth "scut" was also used as a verb meaning to hang off the tail-board of a horse cart (or slow-moving truck).

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 06:33 AM

I lived in South Shields for thirty years and thirty years on I still visit regularly and as long as I have known the song I have always considered it to mean soot.Never really known why - Shields is known for lots of things but why particularly soot?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 08:17 AM

An old US Navy expression - scuttle-butt. mentioned in a WWII doco about Pearl Harbour.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Sorcha
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 08:19 AM

OK, Malcolm, got it now. And scuttle butt is inside information, or gossip.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 08:23 AM

Maybe South Shields wae a larger population compared to the other places. More coal fires, more soot!
Bradford used to be noted for black snow in the days when the mills were all coal powered and before smaokeless zones were invented.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 02:03 PM

This wireless keyboard gets worse by the daY. pERHAPS it needs fresh batteries?
That should have read Maybe South Shields was (I don't do the "fake geordie accent" writing thing).

and

smokeless zones

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: stallion
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 04:52 PM

My son always referred to adolescent males on chopper bikes, wearing trackie bottoms and hoodies as "Scuts".

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 05:41 PM

Aye! A 'scut' is the proper name for a rabbit's/Hare's tail but as it's so near the arse it aalso became a derogatory term - as in 'lower than a rabbit's arse'

Victor McLaglan who played hundreds of Irish/American cavalry parts in John Wayne's movies used it whenever somebody walloped him from behind with a bottle/gun/chair

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Geordie-Peorgie
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 05:42 PM

Sorry! That wez me! Aah still cannit find me cookie

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Bonecruncher
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 08:12 PM

In UK countryman's terms a scut is not the tail.
It is the white flash on the rump of a hare, rabbit or some varieties of deer.
It is put there by Mother Nature to allow the animal to show an alarm signal to it's fellows and for them to follow while in flight.

Colyn.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Jun 07 - 08:15 PM

More and more that has less and less to do with the word in the song!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 11 Jun 07 - 01:42 AM

I would imagine from all that's been written here that it means South Shields is the place for fanny, i.e. the place to get a good shag! I've heard the word 'scut' used as referring to a lady of ill repute. The City Waites do a song called 'Oyster Nan' which refers top her 'itching of her scut'(I'm sure you don't need me to point out which part of her anatomy that is!)
Makes sense to me!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 11 Jun 07 - 03:01 AM

Err... G'day Bruce MB,

Actually, about 28 posts back is was determined that Wheatman had misead a badly printed letter in the facsimile ... and the word is, under careful inspection with a magnifying glass, actually "seut" - a local dialect version of "soot".

The indefatigable Malcolm Douglas first pointed this out ... and, apart from those who only read the immediately prior post ... discussion has refocused on the real text.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 11 Jun 07 - 03:32 AM

And apart from that I hardly imagine that it would be a suitable subject for a lullabye lol.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: stallion
Date: 11 Jun 07 - 04:20 AM

Yes we all read the seut thing but the origin of Scut is far more interesting and not at all off thread!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Jun 07 - 08:11 PM

At a pinch; provided that nobody imagines that it has anything at all to do with the song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Stephen R.
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 12:31 AM

The scuttle-butt was the barrel that held drinking water back in the days of wooden ships, corresponding to the office water cooler. Those who could take a break hung out there for a while, and it was a prime locus for picking up the latest rumor. Hence "scuttle-butt" in the sense of inside information or allegedly inside information. It was and is notoriously hard to keep secrets on a ship.

Stephen

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: stallion
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 04:48 AM

Maybe this ought to have a separate thread but, I have always referred to folk music's "Aural" tradition because it doesn't matter what anyone actually says what really matters is what the listener/ scribe hears, what is written down is what one hears, even listening from rumbly wax cylinders or from scratchy 78's or even CD's released yesterday, I suppose with "source singers" one might ask what the words meant. Also I was recently in a doctors surgery waiting room and picked up a copy of "The Dalesman" it had dialect poetry which I couldn't grasp until I converted it to "proper" english and then spoke it in my Fathers "Monday morning market" accent purrrrrrrrfect. What gets passed on is what one hears not what the other one says.
Peter

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 05:18 AM

I know exactly what you mean, Stallion. I originate in Braford (West Riding of Yorkshire - for those not local). I personally have a strong dislike of stuff that people try to write "in dialect" as dialect is how something is spoken. Obviously, some words only exist within a particular dialect, but a lot are just the way a standard english (or scots or whatever) word is spoken in that area.
Part of the problem is that dialect is specific local usage. As mentioned, I originated in Bradford. What I grew up speaking was in many respects very different from what people in Keighley or people from Leeds (about 10 miles away in different directions) would say. Something as simple as what we call a specific type of bread (tea cake/barm cake/bread cake all refer to the same item).
Give me a dialect poem written in plain English and I will recite it one way. Someone from a few miles down the road, or from my Grandfather's generation (not many left these days) would speak the same words differently.
Give a song sheet with the words "our house" to a Scot or a Geordie and you will get sung back at you "oor hoose" or "wor house" (apologies to geordies and scots, but you know what I'm trying to point out). It isn't necessary to write in "mock dialect" because those who speak the dialect will know what is meant and those who do not will probably never pronounce it the way the "writer" intended.

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 01:08 AM

Ah BOB!
Now I wouldn't argue with someone who obviously enjoys being right but I didn't just read the posting prior to my own I was of course referring to the threads title, which just in case you've forgotten is 'The word SCUT',

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: stallion
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 04:39 AM

surely Guest
Scot - oor hoose
Geordie - wor hoose
Yorkshire - ower owse
South - r harse

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 05:17 AM

Stallion, dear chap, that is my point - I WOULD NOT EVER pronounce "our house" as "ower owse", it would be "are ouse" ( "ou" pronounced as in "out" ) - if anything.
If I saw "ower" written ad dialect I would read it as OVER not OUR and pronounce it with a long "O" sound at the start. If I used the spelling in Bradford's dialect it would be in a sentence such as " Ey up, are kid! Cum ower ere", but in real life I would write it (H)ey up, our kid! Come over here.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 05:42 AM

I'd say this thread has now been thorughly scut-led...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: stallion
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 08:42 AM

Ah GtD, exactly, You and I know these things but for the great unwashed out there it isn't so simple. Last time I was in New York someone asked me what nationality I was, I nearly nearly threw a fit!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The word 'scut'
From: EBarnacle
Date: 13 Jun 07 - 09:28 AM

Hmm, I wonder whether there is a common root between scut and eSCUTchion.