- hedgehog. The Mrs Tiggywinkle image was not current in Older Scots. William Dunbar (1508) likens the gait of his fellow poet Kennedy to the ungainly walk of a hedgehog:
Hard hurcheoun, hirpland [limping], hippit [stiff-hipped, walking unevenly] as ane harrow.
He used the hedgehog for another unpleasant image in the The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo for the rubbing of a rough old man's face against a young woman's cheek:
With his hard hurcheone skyn sa heklis he my chekis.
This mark of affection is also referred to as a 'bairdie' and is not universally welcomed by Scotswomen, who, frankly, would rather have chocolates.
Witchcraft, as a result of which Jonett [Janet]... wes trublit with hurchouins, is documented in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials during a trial in 1591.
The Outer Hebrides are also troubled with hurcheons, which are not native to the islands but were introduced by gardeners to tackle slugs. Escaping into the wild, they have started to interfere with the local ecology through such antisocial activities as stealing puffin eggs.
Harry Hurcheon is the name of a dance in the North of Scotland, known elsewhere as curcuddie, which, according to Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes (1847), is
performed in a shortened posture, sitting on one's hams, with arms akimbo, the dancers forming a circle of independent figures.