“I’m tellin ye, the spug’ll escape through the wires.”

Translate:

spug: house sparrow.

“Must I repeat myself until I’m blue in the face, that house sparrow will fly safely through the wires.”

(I was there.)

My Childhood

I grew up in a cottage on a mixed arable farm where we were as near self sufficient as made no difference. Except I never realised that until much much later in life.

We had acres of ground around that cottage, enough for my uncles to build three garages from timber slabs from the local saw mill.

I had plans to build an aviary in the gap between two of them and set my very first trap exactly as in the drawing.

It worked except the sparrow as fat as it looked just zipped straight through the small gaps in the riddle wire and escaped.

And again when I excitedly told my uncles and gran about my adventure they scoffed at the idea that a sparrow would fall for my trap.

Again it wasn’t till later in life I realise they were again winding me up. Only thinking about it now, my uncles at that time were teenagers with their first cars and first girlfriends, and so were as full of mischief as I was.

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