In Scotland, a wirry-cow (Scots pronunciation: [ˈwɪɾɪkʌu̯, ˈwʌɾɪkʌu̯]) is a bugbear, goblin, ghost, ghoul or other frightful object. Sometimes the term is used for the Devil or a scarecrow.
Draggled sae 'mang muck and stanes, They looked like wirry-cows
— Allan Ramsay
The word was used by Sir Walter Scott in his novel Guy Mannering.
The word is derived by John Jamieson from worry (Modern Scots wirry), in its old sense of harassment in both English and Lowland Scots, from Old English wyrgan cognate with Dutch wurgen and German würgen; and cowe, a hobgoblin, an object of terror.
Wirry appears in several other compound words such as wirry hen, a ruffianly character, a rogue; wirry-boggle, a rogue, a rascal; and wirry-carle, a snarling, ill-natured person, one who is dreaded as a bugbear.
References
- SND: worricow Archived March 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- The Online Scots Dictionary: wirry
- Jamieson, John (1808) Jamieson’s Dictionary of the Scottish Language p. 606
- Online Etymological Dictionary Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- DOST: wirry Archived March 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- Onions, C.T. (ed.) (1966) The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology Oxford, p.1013
- The Online Scots Dictionary: cowe
- SND: cowe Archived March 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- DOST: wirry hen Archived March 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- SND: worry
