Mortal adjective extremely intoxicated, dead drunk
‘“The point being … that the second lot of rum punch was served out just past midday, and I found the woman flat on her back in the dung heap … punch cup beside her, nay more than an hour later. I’ll no say it couldna be done, but it would be quick work to get mortal in that span of time…”’ (The Fiery Cross)
The adjective mortal in Scots, as in English, primarily means ‘deadly, causing death’. However, some words shared with English have an additional, special use in Scots - mortal is one such. In the early nineteenth century, it developed an additional meaning: ‘extremely intoxicated, dead drunk’. The usage is still current, alongside derived forms including mortalled, mortal fou and mortalation fou and the less common mortalous (modelled on miraculous).
Recent citations include a rather cryptic instance from the Daily Record (2003): ‘By this reasoning, of course, everyone here must have been mortalled, because they lapped it right up’ (what was lapped up is, alas, unknown). The novelist Alan Warner used it too: ‘She was feeling bad ’cause she heard the next Saturday, he’d thumbed it the nine mile home without a lift, mortal as a newt.’ (Sopranos, 1999.)
An early citation is from the Wynne Diaries (1796) of Lady Betsey Fremantle, a respectable lady in her day… ‘Dined with Monresor and got mortal … & fell asleep’. Betsey Fremantle was an adventurous person - she married a naval captain, accompanied him on his ship, and nursed him (and Horatio Lord Nelson) when he was wounded. She was from Lincolnshire, but her sisters both married Scots and the few subsequent citations from the Oxford English Dictionary for mortal with this meaning are all from Scottish sources.
An early quotation for the usage is from The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1824) by James MacTaggart, who combined a rather chequered career in engineering (he worked for some years in Canada, but was dismissed, perhaps aptly, for drunkenness) with interests in poetry and folklore. MacTaggart refers to one unfortunate who ‘was carried home to his crue, on a hand-barrow, just mortal’ (crue is a word transferred to Scots from Gaelic and means a sheepfold or pen).
A later citation, from The Little Minister (1891) by J M Barrie (1860-1937), places mortal at the end of a graduated scale of intoxication: “‘He may be a wee drunk,” said Micah in his father’s defence, “but he’s no mortal”.’