- porridge; oatmeal boiled in salted water, a staple of the Scottish diet. A perusal of these quotations shows that the opportunities for the sin of gluttony were pretty limited in Scotland for many years.
The 1795 Statistical Account for Moray confirms that The diet of the labouring people here, and in general, all through the Lowlands of the North of Scotland, is porridge, made of oat meal, with milk or beer, to breakfast.
Menu suggestions for the rest of the day come from the Scots Magazine (December 1953): It was parritch in the mornin, oatmeal fried in creesh and tatties at dennertime, and parritch at nicht. This might sound plain but it seems to have been good enough for Burns in The Cotter’s Saturday Night (1786): But now the Supper crowns their simple board, The halesome Porritch, chief of Scotia’s food; and the prospect of this meagre fare, according to William Tennant in Papistry Storm’d (1827) was occasion for Singin’ and dringin’ [loitering], token clear That merry parridge-time was near.
Indeed, the results of even slight overindulgence were quickly noticed: I doot some o’ ye hae taen ower mony whey porridge the day (Border Treasury 1 August 1874). Parritch (and soup) demonstrate a quirk of Scots grammar in that they are often used as if they were plural. Sir Walter Scott does this in Old Mortality (1816) “They’re gude parritch eneugh,” said Mrs. Wilson, “if ye wad but take time to sup them”. Robert Louis Stevenson also does this in Kidnapped (1886) They’re fine, halesome food – they’re grand food, parritch.
Something that is as plain as parritch is self-evident and obvious to all.
After a period of comparative luxury, it seems one always has to get back to auld claes an’ parritch, or the humdrum workaday world of sober reality. You might even be so poor that you are no able to buy saut [salt] tae yer parritch which would mean that you were very poor indeed. Of course that may be because you are no worth the saut tae yer parritch, in which case you are a complete waste of space. Telling someone to save yer breath tae cool yer parritch, is a way of telling them to mind their own business and keep their mouths shut.