Drammach noun a mixture of oatmeal and cold water
‘… it had been a long time since breakfast, and he’d had nothing for them then save a bit of drammach and some jerked bear meat, hard as shoe leather.’ (An Echo in the Bone)
Unsurprisingly, drammach is often used figuratively to mean anything insipid and flavourless. There’s a good example of this from Walter Scott’s Old Mortality (1816): ‘Cramming their throats with the lifeless, saltless, foisenless [tasteless], lukewarm drammock of the fourteen false prelates.’
According to Sir John Sinclair in his Statistical Account of Scotland (1795), drammach can also be weaponised - well, utilised - to catch fish. ‘The mode of fishing is curious. They make what they call a Drimuck, resembling thin wrought mortar, which they throw into the pool, to disturb the clearness of the water.’
Some folk even used drammach to propagate plants. From the Saltoun Papers manuscript of 1734: ‘As for the tris [trees] that cam from holand. They were all carfolye showch [carefully planted in] and before showcht they wer all dipt in dramack as your Lord Ship ordered.’ In this example it probably denotes a slurry of soil and water.
Having to eat drammach usually signifies hardship. Robert Forbes’ first-hand account of the 1745 Jacobite Rising, Lyon in Mourning (dating from 1746, just after Charles Stuart’s followers were defeated at the Battle of Culloden), includes this description of the privations they suffered: ‘Having some meal on board and the men turning very hungry and thirsty, they began to make Dramach … with salt water, and to lick it up.’
And when Rabbie Burns was still planning to emigrate to Jamaica (saved at the eleventh hour by the hugely successful publication of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems), he wrote On a Scotch Bard Gone to the West Indies (1786): ‘So, took a birth afore the mast, An’ owre the Sea. To tremble under Fortune’s cummock [staff], On scarce a bellyfu’ o’ drummock, Wi’ his proud, independent stomach, Could ill agree; So, row’t [wrapped] his hurdies [backside] in a hammock, An’ owre the Sea.’
However, maybe drammach is not so bad in combination. This, from Alasdair Gray’s A History Maker (1994), doesn’t sound so bad. ‘“Lassies,” he said plaintively, “I’m hungry. My wame [stomach] thinks my throat’s cut.” They brought him powsoudie [thick mutton soup], drummock, kebbuck [homemade cheese] and farle [oatcake]. He ate it and dressed.’