stormy, threatening, blustery, bleak, bitter. Allan Ramsay (1721) writes: Bare Fields and gurly Skies Make rural Scenes ungrateful to the Eyes.
In the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, we know that the outcome must be tragic as soon as we read the lines: When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea. A similar sense of foreboding is engendered by this quotation from George Macdonald’s Castle Warlock (1882): It’s a gurly nicht; no a pinch o’ licht, an’ the win’ blawin’ like deevils.
This threatening word transfers easily to snarling dogs and bad-tempered people: Dour were their threats and their grimaces, Gurlie and crabbit-like their faces (William Tennant Papistry Storm’d 1827).