- the red kite Milvus milvus. This once common scavenger became extinct in Scotland in 1879 but reintroduction in 1989 means that this magnificent and distinctive bird can now be seen in increasing numbers and in increasingly widespread areas. They make regular appearances in Scottish literature. In the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy (1508), a poetic exchange in which the two poets try to outdo each other in creative insults, Dunbar describes Kennedy as
Evill farit and dryit, ... Lyke as the gleddis had on thy gule [yellow] snowt dynd.
The word was sometimes extended to include other birds such as the sparrow-hawk, the hen-harrier and the buzzard:
Both Kites and Hen Harriers were called Gleds, and so it is difficult to say which is meant in the old records... In Berwickshire, Hen Harriers were known as Grey Gleds, and Dr Harvey said he often saw Grey Gleds in Coldingham moor from 1820 to 1830
(L. J. RINTOUL and E. V. BAXTER A Vertebrate Fauna of Forth ed. 1935)
Robert Burns in The Trogger (1796) clearly means a buzzard:
Here is Satan's picture, Like a bizzard gled.
Frequently, gled has been used of people who possessed character traits associated with the raptor. Fortunately university education in Scotland has become less traumatic since 1868:
An' a' thae greedy gleds o' professors to pay, that live upo' the verra blude and banes o' sair-vroucht students!
(GEORGE MACDONALD Robert Falconer 1868)
Gled-wylie is a children's game in which one of the bigger children takes the part of the gled and tries to catch some of the smaller children or the 'chickens', who stand in a string protected by the 'mither-bird' at the head.
To be as if ane had faen frae the gled is to be dishevelled and confused, as if rescued or dropped from the claws of a bird of prey.
To be in the gled's claws or grups is to be in mortal danger, without chance of escape.