Gàidhlig / English
Crumhagan

Crumhagan

Posted by Shelagh on Thursday 3 December 2015

Given how cold it’s supposed to get over the next few months, we’ve put together a selection of words from the Fieldwork Archive which will be useful if ‘El Nino’ arrives.

In Lewis, particularly in Ness and Uig, children would say “Feuch an dèan thu crumhagan" (or cruimhean) (try to make crumhagan/ cruimhean) on a cold day, to determine who was the hardiest amongst them.  When their hands were numb with cold, they had to try to bring all of their fingertips together – not an easy task! There was a similar saying used to test the cold in Eriskay, but using the word cruaidh instead of crumhagan: “Ma nì thu cruaidh chan eil do làmh fuar.” (If you can make cruaidh your hands aren’t cold.)

The word crumhagan was also used in another sense in Lewis – to measure food, such as in the phrases crumhagan min or crumhagan siùcair – which is a similar measure to a “pinch” of oatmeal or sugar in English. A lovely phrase was collected in Tiree, crumha-cait, where the tips of the fingers and thumb were brought together and placed on a dusty table to form the shape of a cat’s paw.

There’s a good selection of words which mean a pain in the fingers from the cold – in Inverness-shire they had ionglach, englach, èulach and èalaich and pèileadh was collected in Perthshire. In Skye, the word daingealaich was used, such as in the phrase “tha daingealaich na mo làmhan” (I have numbness in my hands).

Hopefully you’ll be wearing gloves throughout the winter and you won’t have to use any of these words, but if you do why not let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

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