Collieshangie noun A noisy dispute, an uproar, row, disturbance
‘“There was an awful collieshangie, but I couldna hear much … I mean … she doesna seem to know how to fight properly, like my mam and Uncle Jamie…”’ (Voyager)
Scots contains many words for vigorous disputation … one is collieshangie, though some might prefer the term ‘debate’. Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) gives various definitions, including: ‘A noisy dispute, an uproar, row, disturbance’; ‘A dog-fight’; ‘Talk, consultation, animated or gossiping conversation, with no idea of conflict implied’.
The origin of the word is uncertain, but it is thought both to derive from the commotion created when some noisy object (a shangie) is tied to a collie dog’s tail and/or a relationship to the Gaelic word callaidh, meaning wrangling, noise, disturbance. Queen Victoria appeared to hold with the former definition in More Leaves 139 (1884) where she recorded: ‘Sharp going with us and having occasional “collie-shangies” with collies when we came near cottages.’
Other examples include an early illustration from W Meston’s Old Mother Grimm’s Tales (1737): ‘Sitting too long by the Barrel, MacBane and Donald Dow did quarrel, And in a colleshangee landed’. What was in the barrel isn’t recorded…
In Matthew Fitt’s Kate O Shanter’s Tale and Other Poems (2003), its meaning is distinctly disputatious:
‘… and in amangst it / the stushie / the collieshangie / the reel-rall / rummle-tummle / ramrace o a fecht / ah’ll hae / tak a radgie / loss the rag / and stove yir heid in pal.’
Aberdeenshire author Nan Shepherd, in her 1928 novel Quarry Wood, used the word in its gentler sense: ‘They made no steer [disturbance] when they gathered for a collieshangie at a dyke corner’. Basically, that means they had a good gossip on the corner.
Politics often seems to cause collieshangies, as this example from the Portobello Advertiser of November 1888 shows: ‘Since I wrote ye last week aboot my adventures in a killin-hoose, there has been a gie collieshangie in oor toon – nae less than the electing o three guid men an true tae serve the toon as Commissioners’.
Still in the world of political debate, an excerpt from a letter to the Times of June 2020 stated: ‘Sir, Calls for the Scots language to be recognised as the country’s mother tongue will lead to a collieshangie and even some nashgab in many parts of the land’.