What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?

Subject: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: topical tom
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 06:38 PM

A few days ago I posted a Christmas/New Year's message with the
wishing in it "Lang May Your Lum Reek."I believe this to be a
Scottish toast and quite acceptable. Could anyone tell me the origins and meaning of this phrase?

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Banjo-Flower
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 06:48 PM

I always believed it to mean "may you always have a welcoming fire in your hearth" the Lum Reek referring to the smell of the smoke up your chimney

Gerry

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 08:26 PM

Lang may yer Lum Reek wi' oo'er folks' coal. Long may your chimney smoke with other people's coal. I'm told that people used to bring coal with them as a gift when visiting, so this means a wish for many convivial gatherings.
Happy new Year
Julia

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 08:37 PM

Don't know that has to be other people's coal? As long as you chimney (yer lum) was smoking (reeking) it showed you were still alive! Edinburgh's nickname was "Auld Reekie" because of all the smoke floating over it.
First Footing - going to someone else's house early i(minutes into?) n the New Year did involve taking some coal, food and drink to your neighbour.

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: BobKnight
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 09:34 PM

Reek is just smoke, nothing to do with smell.

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: topical tom
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 10:58 PM

Thanks for all that information. And Happy New Year ,Julia and all.

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Gda Music
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 05:23 AM

This is the Dumfries version that I`ve always toasted..,

Lang may your lum reek
Your bum squeak
Your belly rumble
And your spicket dribble

Best to all
GJ

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Jos
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 06:55 AM

I once came back (on 2 January) from a New Year's Eve party to find a lump of coal on my doorstep. Someone had evidently come to my house, first-footing, only to find I wasn't there. As I only had central heating and not even a stove, never mind a fireplace, there was no lum to reek. I still have the coal, but nobody has ever confessed to leaving it.

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Thompson
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 10:16 AM

It's supposed to be good luck for the first person across your threshold on New Year's Day to be a dark-haired man carrying a lump of coal. Here's a piece on the Scottish version; it used to be the same in Ireland, though I haven't heard of it recently.

Subject: RE: What Does This Phrase Mean ?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:58 AM

Gda, what is a spicket?


Hmm Google says it's a spigot.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,gutcher
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 03:05 AM

Spicket is how it is pronounced here, only those who have taken the gentility speak of a spigot.

My Lewis friend, living in Glasgow, always brought a small sack of peat home with him from his annual visit to the island, to be burned on Hogmanay.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Allan Conn
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 05:57 AM

Spigot and spicket are just alternate spellings for the same thing. Both are attested in the Concise Scots with "spicket" being the primary spelling listed and spigot being an alternative.

I just know the saying as "Lang May Yer Lum Reek" and it is just "long may your chimney smoke". Just means I hope you live a long life.

Reek does just mean smoke as it is meant in said saying - but it can also be more specifically an unpleasant, acrid, smoke-stained smell.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 11:20 AM

Incidentally, "reek" is cognate with the German "Rauch", meaning smoke. The German for to smell is riechen, as the ideas of smoke and the associated smell of burning are clearly associated.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 12:11 PM

I've brought in a lump of coal every New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight for over forty years, along with some shiny coins, a pinch of salt and a piece of bread. I used to be dark but have gone a bit greyer, and I may be a bit shorter than I was... I'm always handed a dram of malt in exchange. Gawd knows where I got all that from. Lost in the mists of time!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:18 PM

On the Gaelic West Coast of Scotland, "First Footing" was the thing.
The first "man" over the threshold(nae PC in these days) had to be dark headed and handsome and as long as he carried a bottle o' the cratur he was welcome.
New year celebrations and visiting lasted for at least a week and involved plenty of strong drink, old songs and old friends. I remember my wee granny who worked her fingers to the bone looking after her eight children....washing, cooking cleaning all year, but after one dram at New Year she sang to all the neighbours like a nightingale.
All gone now unfortunately as the young ones sip their Prosseco? watch idiot celebrities on TV and listen to dire music from artists like "Rag and bone man".......God help us!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:35 PM

Ake there

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 01:58 PM

Lang may yer lum reek - on someone else's coal!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 02:35 PM

As far as I can remember......"wi' someone else's coal" is a modern adulteration and certainly not in keeping with the sentiments of the original phrase.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 03:36 PM

The addition of "someone else's coal" smacks of the caricature of the mean Scotsman.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 03:53 PM

Exactly as I said on 31st December - also that bit about shows yer still alive!
Nae lums reekin' hereabouts in this part o' Embra for ower 15 years sin' auld lang smokeless cam into being!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 05 Jan 18 - 07:41 PM

Last September I traveled from the US to the UK via Icelandair with a 2-day stopover in Iceland. Iceland was lovely, and I learned some things.

The Icelandic language hasn't changed much since Iceland was first settled by Norwegians (Vikings) in the 9th century. Icelanders of today can read the country's oldest literature without much difficulty; that is, the sagas, written mainly in the 10th to 12th centuries.

Reykjavík got its name from the fact that the first would-be settlers thought they saw smoke rising, as they approached from a distance. (It was actually mist from geothermal springs.) So they named it "Smoke Bay" or "Smoking Cove" as we would say in English. In modern Icelandic, smoke (noun) is reykur and smoke (verb) is reykja (and I'm sure the root word can be inflected in various ways I haven't learned yet).

So it seems obvious reyk was brought to Scotland by the Vikings where it became reek.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 05:57 AM

According to the OED a similar word also existed in Old English.

I have heard it said that when Scandinavian people (Vikings or Danes) were settling in Britain their language and that of the Angles were mutually intellible to a limited extent. The particular word "reek" could have come from either or both. In Scots it has kept its old meaning of "smoke", which it seems to have lost in standard English where it only has the meaning "smell" or "stench".

Subject: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek'
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 09:21 AM

sonnet of Shakespeare:

And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks . . .


(opening line:
My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun)

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Jan 18 - 03:34 PM

"The addition of "someone else's coal" smacks of the caricature of the mean Scotsman."

Aye, Richard, but Yorkshiremen are worse.

Q. How does a Yorkshireman make an omelette?

A. First, he nicks three eggs...

Cheers from Steve (Lancashire lad...)

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 07:26 AM

"Spiket" in the context above is of course what we pee through, as Allan has mentioned the phrase means good health and long life.

As long as we are warm and can perform the natural functions... we live.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: topical tom
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:07 PM

Thanks to all of you for providing me with so much fascinating information about the customs and traditions of mainly the Scottish people. Being a Canadian who has ventured little abroad, I have learned little about these intriguing, fascinating and delightful customs and mores.Although my last name is Scottish, my paternal ancestors came from Northern Ireland and the name is definitely NOT Irish,I suspect that at some point my ancestors were tossed out of Scotland and into Ireland by Oliver Cromwell but this is supposition only on my part.Anyway. many thanks for the research and information and although the era in which it was more prevalent than today, "Lang may your lum reek"!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,Allan Finn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:47 PM

Not sure that Cromwell was particularly invassociated with planting Scots in Ireland. Original plantation in the early 1600s was in the reign of James VI of Scotland and I of England. Planter community came under attack in the 1640s by Irish Confederates and Scottish Parliament sent an army to Ireland to protect them whilst at the same time occupying Northern England in an all
iance with the English Parliamentarians. The Scots and Cromwell fell out after the execution of the King hence when Cromwell looked to renew the planting he favoured the English as planters rather than Scots. With the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy the Presbyterians were oppressed in Scotland so no doubt some may have moved away. However as far as I understand it the first mass movement since the early days of the Plantation happened in the 1690s. The famine and so called "I'll years" resulted in tens of thousands leaving Scotland.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 12:48 PM

Sorry typo on phone. That was me

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 01:02 PM

And apologies the Scots fell out with Cromwell before the King was executed

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 01:08 PM

There are various other tasks and customs associated with Hogmanay that some people (me!) continue to practise ---

frantically cleaning the house and completing all the unfinished projects in the days and hours leading up to midnight on 31st.

ensuring there is sustenance for any number of first footers and visitors in the hours and days following midnight on 31st (whisky, shortbread, black bun plus plenty of staples - steak pie, lentil soup, mince and totties, breakfast fry ups etc)

if there's time do some 'last footing on 31st in daytime /early evening.

ensure fire in hearth is burning bright and warm

light candles and lanterns in garden and along driveway

immediately before 'the bells' open windows (to let old year out) and on the first stroke of midnight open front door to let new year in

await 'first foot' (who has possibly left via back door - - -) carrying coal, salt, shorbread, whisky, a shiny coin (silver or gold) and should be tall/dark/handsome (tho red headed is a good substitute)

- then of course we have to celebrate the 'auld' new year (Julian) - 14th January this year!

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 02:20 PM

Huv yoo goat a "driveway"????.......Helluva poash!! :0)

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 03:10 PM

My favourite rhyme by my favourite cartoonist...Bud Neill.

WINTER.
Winter's come, the snow his fell
wee Josie's nose is froze isswell!
Wee Josi's frozen noseis skintit!
Winter's DIABOLIC....i'ntit??

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 05:42 PM

> Huv yoo goat a "driveway"????.......Helluva poash!! :0)

When my house was built, the space between it and the road would have been a front garden with a narrow path. Now about two thirds of that area has a hard surface on which two cars can be parked (or once, years ago, four small ones). I am unsure of the best word to call it by. "Drive" seems the commonest term, but does suggest something much longer than the few metres between my front step and the road. "Forecourt" is perhaps more accurate but is normally only used for petrol stations and suchlike, not for domestic dwellings.

What would GUEST Date: 07 Jan 18 - 02:20 PM call it?

Apologies for serious thread drift.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 07:28 PM

Richard I think 'guest' is actually Akenaton who needs to update his registration or something?

When I bought my house you couldn't even see it for jungle, a machete was required to access - -- over the years have managed to discipline it a bit but in recent times it is more difficult to use the big petrol strimmer (getting too old - me that is) and Nature is taking over again.
'driveway' is in fact the track between gateway and house as made my car tyres and footfall! Nor really posh at all---
(currently I no longer have a gate since the shocking demise of my 150* year old Copper Beech which fell in October crushing gates, henhouses and runs, bushes, plants -- any semblance of a garden! Also whacked the Monkey Puzzle tree en passant so fingers crossed that continues to thrive -- (I posted about the tree tragedy in the below the line section, think it was a discussion about signs of autumn?)

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 07:39 PM

Akenaton is not allowed to post to this forum as a member. As with everyone else on the planet, he's allowed to post in the music section only as an unlogged-in guest.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jan 18 - 07:54 PM

Well, everyone on the planet except for those of us who are allowed to log in...

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 05:11 AM

Sorry Gallus and ....only jokin', ah no thurs naethin' "poash" aboot you.
I'll explain the situation when I see you.

Subject: RE: What Does This Mean: 'Lang May Your Lum Reek' ?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 08 Jan 18 - 05:44 PM

Hmmmmmm - curiouser and curiouser.

Aweel, I await enlightenment with interest - -- !