Sculduddery
- lewd behaviour, fornication, unchastity. Edward Burt in Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland (c1730) writes of people being brought before a presbytery, etc. to be questioned for sculduddery, i.e. fornication or adultery. Dougal Graham wrote (a1779) of clerics who were a little less intrusive: Then we gat anither sort o’ gospel fouk they ca’d curits they didna like sculdudery wark, but said nae meikle against it. Sir Walter Scott in Heart of Midlothian (1818) seems to imply that the clergy’s interest in the sculduddery of the flock was less for the cure of their souls than for the increase of their own coffers from the fines they could raise in fud-money: Officers, and constables, that can find out naething but a wee bit skulduddery for the benefit o’ the Kirk-treasurer.