- lazy, slothful, disinclined to work, reluctant. Sir James Balfour, of Pettindreich in Practicks: or, a system of the more ancient Law of Scotland. (c1575) puts a different slant on the fable of the grass-hopper who played all summer and in winter went to beg from his neighbour, the ant: He that for swearnes and cauld wald not work in winter, sall thairfoir beg in the sommer time. Of course there are certain tasks that cannot be undertaken if the weather is going to be bad and so A sweir man’s aye bodin’ ill weather. No doubt the shoemaker in J. C. Milne’s The Orra Loon (1946) was just such a procrastinator: The sweer souter’s crookit tattie-dreels [potato rows] Bleezin’ wi’ yalla skellach [wild mustard].
Of course, on rare occasions, women have also been sweir, like Katie, the little sweir person in Allan Ramsay’s rhyme (1736), Ketty Sweerock frae where she sate, cries reik [pass] me this and reik me that. And we read with some horror in the Huntly Express (11 February 1949) that Sweerty winna lat the wives rise tae mak’ the brakfist.
Sweir-drauchts, sweir-tree or sweer-arse is a game in which two people seated on the ground, facing one another with feet pressed against feet, hold hands or grasp a stick between them and tug so that one tries to pull the other to his feet. Charles Mackay in Poetry and Humour (1882) explains the indelicate nature of the last of these names: a sport among Scottish children, in which two of them are seated on the ground, and, holding a stick between them, endeavour each of them to draw the other up from the sitting posture. The heaviest in the posterior wins the game.
A sweir man’s lade or lift is an extra load taken by a lazy person to avoid a double journey.
Sweir or sweirt can also mean reluctant without any necessary implication of laziness. In fact, this quotation suggests that ministers may suffer from avarice rather than sloth when the question was raised in the Presbytery in Orkney as to Whether it will make a Gospel Minister sweer to Preach if he wants [lacks] a Stipend?(1703).