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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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About this entry:
First published 1971 (SND Vol. VIII).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

SCOURGE, n., v. Also scurge, skirge, and metathetic form skrudge. Sc. usages:

I. n. 1. The whip or lash for a boy's spinning-top (Lnk. 1969). Also in Eng. dial.Gsw. 1877 A. G. Murdoch Laird's Lykewake 171:
A big spinning “tap” wi' a whuppin' skrudge ca'd.Gsw. 1931 H. S. Robertson Curdies 86:
A top, I may explain, was distinguished from a peerie by being flogged into spinning life, the instrument used being a “scurge”.Dmb. 1945 Folklore LVI. 369:
Whips were not used, but a length of stout rope, frayed at one end to form a kind of brush, which swept, rather than lashed, the top along. This was known, it seems significantly, as the scourge.

2. A termagant, a brawling, domineering woman (wm.Sc. 1868 Laird of Logan App. 517; Wgt., Kcb. 1969).

II. v. 1. To exhaust the fertility (of land) by overcropping, neglect of rotation, lack of manure, etc., of the farmer or the crop (Sc. 1808 Jam.). Ppl.adjs. scourged; scourging, of a crop which does this. Comb. scourge-crop.Slg. 1762 Session Papers, Stirling v. Christie (21 July) 6:
He has known severals, the last Year of their Tack, to sow Oats, where they used to sow Bear, or Pease and Beans, which is called the taking a scourged Cropt, which is an impoverishing of the Ground.Sc. 1773 Sc. Farmer I. 21:
They may prevent his hurting the Farm, by a course of what they call scourging cropts, near the end of his lease.Mry. 1795 Stat. Acc.¹ VIII. 255:
The last [rye] has, of late years, been in no high estimation, from the effect it has in scourging the ground.Sc. 1842 J. Aiton Clerical Econ. 37, 154:
He will find it to be his interest to scourge everything out of the land. . . . When a minister's incumbency is apparently drawing to a close, one scourge crop after another is sometimes taken from a glebe. . . . Let that rule be — no scourging.Sc. 1888 J. Harrison Scot in Uls. 111:
Flax is a crop which scourges the ground.

2. ? To be noisy and obstreperous, to brawl, break the peace. Cf. I. 2. Ppl.adj. skirgin, brawling, rowdy.Gall. 1706 Session Bk. Penninghame (1933) I. 173:
Agnes M'Dowall did abuse her three severall dayes the last week and said that she was a skirging, lying lown and bitch.