Carlin/e noun a disparaging term for an old woman, a witch
‘“He was a carline, was Johnnie Howlat, and folk went wary near him - but they went. Some went by day, for grass cures and graiths, and some went by night for to buy charms.”’ (The Fiery Cross)
Carlin or carline is another very old derogatory Scots term, usually for a woman. Our first example comes from the Legends of the Saints (1380): ‘Fra he herde the karling mak Sa fare hicht, he can confort tak’. It doesn’t have to be applied to women, but it generally was. An early exception comes from Robert Sanderson in Poems and Songs (1865): ‘This carlin’s feckless, frail, an’ auld, His cleadin’s scant and thin.’
The word carried forward from the late fourteenth century, appearing in 1712 in this example from J Arbuthnot’s John Bull: ‘Then there’s no living with that old carline his mother; she rails at Jack, and Jack’s an honester man than any of her kin.’ One can only feel sorry for the poor, scolded Jack but perhaps he hadn’t tidied his room.
However, in Farewell Miss Julie Logan (first published in the Times of 24 December 1931), J M Barrie seems only to mean by it that a woman is elderly: ‘It was eerie to reflect that to those two carlines, as we call ancient women, my study must still be more his than mine.’
Andrew Cheviot’s usage in Proverbs (1896) is the same: ‘Cats and carlins sit i’ the sun, but fair maids sit within.’ Though another Andrew (Pennecuik), in his collection of Scots poems (1756), uses it in a much more Macbeth way: ‘Three clav’ring carlings o’er their pot, A’ spewing fou’.
But carlin is probably most familiar to us today because of a certain poet from Ayrshire called Robert Burns. In his epic poem Tam o Shanter, which he wrote in 1791, Burns memorably captures a vivid picture of witches with the following description of them partying: ‘They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit.’
Finally, the following is from a poem entitled My Granny from S4 pupil Allanna Barron published in the Herald of 25 April 1995: ‘Oor Granny’s a carline my sister says.’ We can only assume that neither granny nor sister were best pleased.