MHAIRI: pronounced Vah-Ree
CRABBIT MARY: Donald McKinnon’s wife, crabbit meaning irritable or angry
BIG MARY: Mary Gillies
BIG GILLIES: Hamish, Mary and their children (as opposed to Effie and her father Robert Gillies; Robert and Hamish are brothers)
BLACKHOUSE: a traditional, single-storey, grass-roofed dwelling
BLOODS: youngbloods; local youths
BLUFF: a cliff, headland or hill with a broad, steep face
BOTHY: a basic shelter or dwelling, usually made of stone or wood
BROSE: a kind of porridge
CATCH A SUPPER: to be scolded
CEILIDH: traditional Scottish dance event
CLEIT: a stone storage hut or bothy, only found on St Kilda
CRAGGING: climbing a cliff or crag; a CRAGGER is a climber
CREEL: a large basket with straps, used for carrying cuts of peat
CROTAL: a lichen used for making dye
DINNER: taken at lunchtime
DREICH: dreary, bleak (to describe weather)
DRUGGET: a coarse fabric
EEJIT: fool; idiot
EIGHTSOME: a Scottish reel
EVENING NEWS: daily walk down the street sharing news
FANK: a walled enclosure for sheep, a sheepfold
HOGGET: an older lamb, but one that is not yet old enough to be mutton
LAZYBEDS: parallel banks of ridges with drainage ditches between them; a traditional, now mostly extinct method of arable cultivation
PARLIAMENT: the daily morning meetings on St Kilda, outside crofts five and six, where chores were divvied up for the day
ROUP: a livestock sale
SMACK: boat
SOUTERRAIN: an underground chamber or dwelling
STAC: a sea stack (a column of rock standing in the sea) usually created as a leftover after cliff erosion
STRIPPING THE COW/EWE: milking a cow or sheep
SWEE: an iron arm and hook fitted inside a chimney for hanging pots above the fire
TEA AND A PIECE: tea and fruit cake
TUP: a ram; a ewe that has been mated with can be called TUPPED
WAULKING: a technique to finish newly woven tweed, soaking and beating it