Heidit
This past participle of the verb heid, ‘to furnish with a head’, appears in a number of compounds suggesting mental confusion, such as bee-heidit and peerie heidit. Joseph Tennant in Jeannie Jaffray (1909) extols the virtue of a sensible gweed-leukin’ lass . . . Nane o’ yer fleein’ bee-heidit craturs, withoot a grain o’ soleedity. A peerie-heidit person is quite literally dizzy, because a peerie is a spinning top. Another more derogatory example is mell-heidit, having a head like a heavy wooden mallet. Current at least since the time of William Dunbar, it appears in the Scots Magazine of March 1806, to describe one of a pathetic trio: Mell-headed Rab, wee limpin’ Charlie, An’ waddlin’ Sam, the shauchlin’ ferlie. None of these has anything to be heich-heidit about. A Buchan speaker (1929) issued the caveat: She’ll get the breeth o’ her back yet for a’ she’s sae heich heidit, a colourful Scots rendering of ‘Pride cometh before a fall’.
On the positive side, it is a great compliment to be described as lang-heidit. In her Diary (1815), Frances Burney d'Arblay describes A woman that the Scotch would call long-headed; she was sagacious, penetrating, and gifted with strong humour and the Scots Magazine (October 1823) uses the expression of Andrew Miller, wha was anes reckoned among the langest-headed men in the parish, his advice sought by rich and poor round about.
Paradoxically, heidit can also mean ‘deprived of a head’ as the past participle of heid meaning to behead. Hence a quotation on 1685 in W. Fraser’s Red Book of Grandtully (1868) announces that Argyll is to die on Tuesday nixt, whither headed or hanged I cannot yet tell. It’s enough to make you peerie-heidit.