Peelie-wally adjective pallid, wan, ill-looking
‘“Oh, I’m a bit peely-wally … but no bad, no bad. A wee dunt on the head, is all.”’ (Written in my own Heart’s Blood)
Peelie-wally is comprehensively defined as: ‘sickly, feeble, pallid, wan, thin and ill-looking’. The term can also be used as a noun meaning ‘a tall, thin, ill-looking person’. There are several derived forms, including comparatives peelie-wallier and peelie-walliest, and a noun (peelie-walliness). Variant forms include peel-, peley-wersh, and even peelie-welsh-like, dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century. There’s even the occasional speelie-wally, a figurative usage applied to a tall, slender plant or young shoot.
Meaning ill-looking and feeble, a poor soldier is described thus in Bernard Fergusson’s Lowland Soldier (1945): ‘Ye’d say he was thin, Peelywally, bow-leggit and shilpit [shrunken].’ Peelie-wally is still current in Scots. Liz Lochhead, an acute observer of Glasgow usage, offers in Bagpipe Muzak (1991) not only an example but also an interpretative gloss: ‘So it’s not unusual to see her looking sorta peely-wally and washed out’, while the Glasgow Herald (1998) didn’t bother to help its readers, since the meaning of the term was clearly felt to be obvious: ‘There was, of course, the usual post-match ritual of peely-wally Scots trying to chat up dusky Brazilian babes’.
Peely-wally is not restricted to the west of Scotland, however. There are citations from Aberdeen and Edinburgh, from Berwickshire, Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire, from Angus, and as far north as Caithness. Where peelie-wally comes from is disputed though. One suggestion is that the first part, peelie, is a blend of two elements; the first being imitative of a whining, feeble sound, and the other influenced by palie, an adjective also meaning pale, derived from Old French pale/palle. (John Jamieson in 1808 suggested a link with French pelé ‘peeled’, which is no longer generally accepted but it is indeed true that peelie-wally skin will peel in the sun ...)
The sense of pale is used by Deborah Leslie in Alive an Kickin (2004): ‘“He’s booked you in for the massage an mini makeover… Mind you” she addit, leukin Betty up an doon, “You might feel that you’d benefit from our full makeover … what about the sun beds?” speered the receptionist, leukin ower the coonter at Betty’s peelie-wally legs.’