"High heid yin"

[vivdunstan]

Advance reading something, and passed the words "high heid yin". One of my all time favourite Scots expressions, especially when used in the plural, that I still say regularly, including just a week ago when talking to Martin about something in our kitchen. I've also deployed it when asking an audience question 20+ years ago at a history research seminar at Dundee University, though I then felt the need to translate it for the visiting Welsh prof! For non-Scots friends it means someone in authority, a leader.

Checking back here I have mentioned this expression in a friends-locked post before, but it's well worth repeating!

Comments

[greenwoodside]

It's a great expression! I've seen it much deployed in Lexie Conyngham's detective novels (though they're mostly set in Fife and Aberdeenshire).

[vivdunstan]

Great! It came up in my reading in a new book (currently being written) about my former PE teacher, a certain Bill McLaren ... Who, like me, was from Hawick.

[greenwoodside]

It's fairly unusual in Dreamwidth circles to hear positive things about people's former PE teachers. Happy it sounds like yours may have been a good 'un. (Aside from having been famous enough to be the subject of a book).

[vivdunstan]

He was wonderful :) And much loved by the local community, including the kids he taught. Though he is far better known worldwide as the BBC’s long-term main rugby commentator.