Blether verb to chat, to gossip; noun nonsense
‘“I’ll go and have a bit of a blether with him, aye?” Roger touched her back in brief affection. “He could maybe use a sympathetic ear.”’ (A Breath of Snow and Ashes)
Blether usually refers to talk, or to a person who talks a lot. While there are numerous examples of blether meaning to talk too much, there are also many cases in modern Scots where it simply refers to informal conversation. If two people are having a right good blether, they are not (necessarily) talking rubbish. Blether is, though, derived from an Old Norse word meaning ‘to talk stupidly’. It’s the ancestor of modern Norwegian bladra or bladdra (to babble, to try to speak, or to speak imperfectly). Although blether is the usual modern Scots spelling, variant spellings such as bledder have been recorded in some Scots dialects up until the early twentieth century.
An early appearance of the word in Scots is found in David Lindsay’s mid-sixteenth century allegory, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis. In it, Veritie (the personification of truth) is described by Dissait (the personification of deceit) as a ‘bladdrand baird’ (raving bard). In the late sixteenth century, the word also appeared in a Glossary where it serves as the Scots translation of the Latin balbutio (to babble, stammer).
Being described as a ‘a right blether’ is not a compliment. Neither is being described as talking blethers. Take the comment found in a 1929 issue of the St Andrews Citizen, for example: ‘It nearly gars me spue sometimes tae read sic’ blethers’. And then there’s the unflattering context of voluble drunkenness: ‘Like some cheil [man] bletherin’ fou.’ (George Dunbar, Guff o’ Peat Reek, 1920)
On balance, though, the majority of more recent examples seem to relate more to having a cosy chat than talking rubbish. An example from 2005 in the Scottish Edition of the Daily Star reported that Scots actor Iain Robertson would be starring with Sharon Stone in the sequel to Basic Instinct. On the occasions when he saw her, she was constantly flanked by bodyguards, which apparently led Iain to conclude, with some understatement, that ‘approaching her for a blether didn't really seem like the right thing to do’.