- skylark Alauda arvensis. Any frivolous objection to a suggestion may be countered with
Ay, an the sky'll fa and smoor [smother] the laverocks.
Another saying, quoted in Andrew Henderson Scottish Proverbs (1832), praising someone's persuasive powers is:
You wad wheedle a laverock frae the lift.
On a cold and stormy night, you might look wisely at the sky and say:
There's nae reek [smoke] ee laverock's house the nicht.
(L. WILSON Lowland Scotch as spoken in the Lower Strathearn District 1915)
Can you solve this riddle, posed in John MacTaggart's The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1824)?
The laverock and the lark,
The bawkie and the bat,
The heather-bleet, the mire-snipe,
How many burds be that?
Click here to see the solution
A laverock is the same bird as the lark. The bawtie is another word for the bat, which is not a bird at all. The heather-bleet is the same bird as the mire-snipe. So the answer is two.
An uncommon but pretty name for bog cotton is laverock's lint.