A Doric A-Z: Y revisited

Doric, the dialect spoken in the North-East of Scotland is rich in words and phrases associated with the land and the sea. I so much enjoyed my recent journey through the Doric dictionary that I plan to revisit it on an irregular and random basis. As before, the examples are taken mainly from Buchan Claik, The Saut an the Glaur o't written in 1989 by Peter Buchan and David Toulmin.

YAKKIE: The Peterhead name for the Esquimaux. It is said to be derived from Yaqui, but, since the Yaqui people live in Northern Mexico, this seems unlikely!

"Fin I was a loon, a Yakkie cam tae bide in Jamaica Street, jist across the road fae hiz. Jingers, boys, he took the caal, he took the mirrles, he took the jandies, he took the kink-hoast an aa mortal things there was to tak. So they put him hame to dee, but it seems the the frost kill't aa the germs, cos he lived till he wis ninety-two." (When I was a boy, an Eskimo came to live in Jamaica Street, just across the road from us. Good grief, boys, he caught the cold, he caught the measles, he became jaundiced, he caught whooping cough and all living things that could be caught. So they sent him home to die, but is seems that the frost killed all the germs, because he lived until he was ninety-two.)

You may well be wondering why Peterhead folk had their own name for the Eskimos. In the 1800s, Peterhead was a major player in the Greenland whale fishery and the whalers would have had frequent contact with the local people, and on a number of occasions they brought individuals back to Peterhead. Sadly their exposure to the diseases of the Scots had a less happy outcome than that described above. The burial lair of the Grays, a prominent Peterhead whaling family is in St Peter's graveyard. Also buried in the Gray lair is a 13 year old Inuit boy, Jacob Johannes. An Inuit woman known only as Mary was buried at the same time in a nearby, unmarked grave. The Inuit family had arrived in Peterhead in 1825, as guests of the Grays. Unfortunately they had little resistance to the diseases that were so rampant in Britain at the time and Jacob and Mary both died in March 1826.

The photograph shows a stone carving of an Inuit struggling with a seal in the moonlight of a winter's night. A rapacious bird looks on, hoping for a share in the forthcoming feast. Zoomify for maximum rapaciousness.