“Are ye sure I’ve tae dae this afore I can jine the nae brakes brae gang?”

Translate:

brae: side of a hill; road with a steep gradient.

“Are you sure that I have to do this before I can become a member of the no brakes hill gang?”

brave

Surely we’ve all had rites of passage where we challenged ourselves to overcome something fearful (at the time) and then moved on.

Some of mine were; sledging down the massive hill the big kids sledge down. Taking an apple from the grumpy headmaster’s tree. My one and only shoplift. I’ll skip the adult ones.

One in particular was circumnavigating the bole of a massive beech tree about fifteen feet off the ground.

It was only possible when your arms had grown long enough to reach the hand holds.

This really was a big tree at least ten to fifteen outstretched arm spans in circumference.

Alas it is cut down now. For health and safety reasons probably.

What is health and safety anyway?

The right to live from birth to a comfortable death caused by old age?

The right to be protected from any and all hurt either physical or mental?

The right to legal aid to sue the pants off anyone who causes us hurt by any action or inaction?

In fact keep me a baby and keep my mum and dad alive until I die. That should be my right.

Shouldn’t we take responsibility for our own actions, take a risk, do something we’ve never done before? Get a life in fact.

Even a zombie takes more risks than a person who loves their own comfort above all other things.

Deader than a zombie and still alive? Tsk tsk.

The Scottish Word: brae with its definition and its meaning illustrated and captioned with the word used in context in the Scots language and in English.