Sonsie adjective bringing good fortune, attractive, ample
‘Words failed me. “Officious worm?” he supplied helpfully. “Unsonsie sharg?”’ (The Fiery Cross)
This word is familiar to most Scots, if only from Burns’ haggis with its ‘honest sonsie face’, but some of the senses may still come as a surprise. We find this word attested in Older Scots in the sense of propitious. Quite commonly, it was applied in the context of witchcraft, as in this 1634 example from George Black’s Some Unpublished Scottish Witchcraft Trials: ‘The pannel was not sonsie in regard she had great society with Patrick Smith a nottorious warlock’.
It was also used of buildings and places, as in Geographical Collections relating to Scotland made by Walter Macfarlane (1726): ‘They say the river is not sonsy, nor yet the loch. Apparitions they report to be seen about it’. From there, it is not a great step to the slightly later sense of ‘rational’ or ‘sensible’. So, about 1689, William Cleland writes in A Collection of Several Poems and Verses: ‘It is a good old sonsie saying, That little wit makes meikle [much] straying’.
Used of men, it denotes an honest man, or just a generally fine chap, such as Pate Maxwell in Scott’s Redgauntlet (1824), who is described by the provost as: ‘A sonsy, merry companion that none of us think it worthwhile to break wi’ for all his brags and his clavers’. Of women, it is used in the sense of comely rather than stunningly beautiful, and generous of build rather than obese. Here is another quotation from Scott, this time from Heart of Midlothian (1818): ‘Is she a pretty girl? Her sister does not get beyond a good comely sonsy lass’.
The sense of bringing good fortune is exemplified in a gloss on the rules of first-footing from Robert H Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Song (1810): ‘Much care is taken that the persons who enter be what are called sonsie folk, for on the admission of the first-foot depends the prosperity or trouble of the year.’
Taking these senses together, it is a high compliment being paid by Burns to his hamely fare.