- fat, grease. While a creeshie person might be corpulent or unctuous, creesh is often specifically applied to the fat of fowls, as in the Aberdeen Press and Journal of 21st March 1992: Creesh was the lump of fat from the inside of a hen; and when rubbed liberally on leather it made a first-class water repellent.
Horse-creesh, the fat surrounding the entrails of a horse, was rubbed in to ease sprains.
A different kind of creesh, but an equally useful one, is described by J. Firth in the Orkney and Shetland Miscellancy (1913): When wool was being prepared for a web a mixture of whale-oil and tar melted together, and called creesh, was sprinkled out of an old cruizie lamp on the heap of wool laid on the floor.
According to A. Hislop’s The Proverbs of Scotland (1870), Butter’s the king o’ a’ creesh and the lubricating powers of butter are well attested; the 1527 Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland show an entry For Orkney buttir to creische the quhelis (wheels). J. Kelly in A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs (1721) is scathing, unjustifiably claiming Orkney butter is neither good to eat, nor to creich wool.
Creeshin someone’s luif (greasing someone’s palm) can imply payment for a service or it may carry undertones of bribery.
A tasty dish creeshes the tongue or teeth. This was the sense used by Robert Henryson in his retelling of the Aesop fable in which the town mouse and the country mouse ate A quhyt (white) candill out of a coffer stall, In steid of spyce to cresch thair teithis withall. For all the practical uses of creesh, it is this substance which brings both mice and men to the sin of gluttony. Who could resist the temptations that Allan Ramsay offers (1722): Beef, and Broe [gravy], and Gryce [pork], and Geese, And Pyes a’ rinning o’er wi’ Creesh?
Finally, the concept of ‘fat cats’ is not unknown in Scotland as Roderick Watson claims in The New Makars (1991) edited by Tom Hubbard:
God’ll shairly keep the heid yins [top people]
Wrappit in creesh an peace at hame,
Sin they never kent the dirl o needin.