Crowdie noun a mixture of oatmeal and cold water; a kind of soft cheese
‘“A nice venison pie we’ll have for Hogmanay … and the haggis to follow, wi’ cullen skink, and a bit o’ corn crowdie …”’ (The Fiery Cross)
Although the non-dairy crowdie is defined as a combination of oatmeal and water, it can be a mixture of any kind of meal with something much more palatable. ‘Meal-and-ale and the original Athole Brose (meal and whisky) are also forms of crowdie’ (Marian McNeill The Scots Kitchen 1929).
Generally, though, this sense of the word denotes something plain and not very appetising or, indeed, the joyless folk who partake of it. For example, Jenny Dennison (in Scott’s Old Mortality) was clearly not a woman to mess with: ‘“Tell his honour, now - there’s a braw lass - tell him what ye were wanting to say to Lord Evandale, mistress.” “What was I wanting to say,” answered Jenny, “to his honour himsell the other morning, when I visited him in captivity, ye muckle hash [idiot]? – D’ye think that folk dinna want to see their friends in adversity, ye dour crowdy-eater?”’
This doesn’t mean to say that crowdie can’t be relished. In R D C Brown’s Carlop Green, there is some distinct relishing going on: ‘And crowdy-moudy, and het [hot]-pints Fit for the lips o’ a queen.’
Crowdie mowdie generally means either a mix or muddle, but it can also be a sweet (or, in the words of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, ‘ludicrous’ - meaning humorous then) term of endearment. William Dunbar uses it that way here: ‘My tendir gyrle, my wallie gowdye, My tyrlie myrlie, my crowdie mowdie.’ (c.1500-1512).
Most of us perhaps know crowdie as a kind of soft cheese. Its make-up was recorded by Angus Duncan in his Hebridean Island: Memories of Scarp (1995): ‘In summer most families had a good supply of milk and were therefore well provided with butter and crowdie, the latter being made with the skimmed milk that has set like junket without going sour. No rennet was needed.’ In some recipe books cream crowdie is used as an alternative term for cranachan, although in our earliest attestation it is defined as oatmeal with the addition of cream, sugar and ‘flavouring to taste’ (The Scots Kitchen, F.M. McNeill, 1929).