By Betty Kirkpatrick
We have had a few days of sunshine recently and many Scots, as is their wont, have stripped off in response to this. They seemed to be impervious to the chilly winds that accompanied said sunshine, at least in some parts of the country.
Some Scots sun-worshippers seem instantly to acquire a glowing tan at the first blink of sunshine and so become the envy of some of their friends. Others go scarlet and blistery after a few hours spent in relentless sunbathing behind a windbreak. Some see an increase in their fernietickles.
Fernietickles, pronounced as it is spelt and sometimes spelt with a hyphen or as two words, is Scots for freckles. Fernietickle, also known as ferntickle, is derived from Middle English farntikylle and is thought to take its name from the fact that a freckle resembles a brown fern spore, not a particularly attractive origin. The "tickle" part is probably from tickle meaning a small part or grain.
Fernietickles are not always regarded as an attractive feature. A scarcely discernible light dusting of them is thought to be all very well – but, when they overlap and join up with each other, fernietickles seem larger and more obvious. It has to be said that fernietickles, however small or large, are usually much more obvious to the bearers of these than to people who are viewing them on the skin of others.
Nowadays, fernietickled people (I was going to say particularly women – but, given the money spent on men’s cosmetics, this is perhaps no longer true) often go to great lengths to find some kind of bleaching cream that promises to cure them of what they regard as a skin problem. Older suggested remedies included the use of vinegar, lemon juice or buttermilk.
It was also hoped by some fernietickled people that the traditional custom of washing the face with early morning dew on the first of May, thought to be a general beauty-enhancer, would remove their fernitickles. Of course, they can also just stay out of the sun, not a difficult task in our climate.
Some fond relatives once tried to relieve the concerns of young people who were wreathed in fernietickles by telling them that they should be pleased about their facial feature. Fernietickles, or so one story went, were a sign that people exhibiting them were actually a form of chosen people. This was because the fairies (good fairies, that is) had bestowed the fernietickles on them at birth.
Fernietickles are not usually seen on people with darker – known in Scots as din – complexions, but are a particularly common feature of the fair Scottish skin. They are typically to be seen on the skin of red-haired people with such a skin, but dark-haired, fair-skinned Celts are also frequently fernietickled.
Incidentally, fernietickled is not restricted to skin. It can also be used of something, such as a story or comment, that is very often, probably too often, repeated. A much more attractive way of saying hackneyed, overworked or even clichéd.
Betty Kirkpatrick is the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. She is also the author of several smaller language reference books, including The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés published by Bloomsbury, and a series of Scots titles, including Scottish Words and Phrases, Scottish Quotations, and Great Scots, published by Crombie Jardine.
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