The Dented Kettle

There was once a time when Scots knew exactly what a dandelion was for. Not symbolically, or poetically. Scots once understood the dandelion in the practical sense that older generations understood many things: if it appeared in spring, it had value. That knowledge has

Before the potato became ordinary, and before sugar became cheap, there was skirret. In Scotland it was known as crummock, a word recorded in Scots for the plant Sium sisarum. The Dictionaries of the Scots Language give Scottish references from the early eighteenth century,