The plant sticky willie, also known as cleavers or goosegrass, is a plant which adheres to almost anything it touches. It is defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language as “goose-grass, Galium aperine”.
A M Stewart, writing in The Chronicles of the Stickleback Club (1930), supplied some alternative names: “Hedge bestraw, better known as robin-run-the-hedge or sticky willy”.
An earlier use is found in the Paisley Daily Express (1886): “I observed cleavers or goose-grass growing through the hedges … I pulled a piece and held it up asked if they knew it, whereupon Elizabeth and one of the boys got a piece each crying ‘Sticky Willie! Sticky Willie!’ They soon had it thrown on my coat, to which it stuck, while an uproarious burst of laughter came from the young company”.
In his novel Rum and Green Ginger (1946), RG Nettell demonstrated the romantic character of the Scots with: “I’ve got my heart as hopelessly entangled as a sticky-willie in your hair”.
In 2020, the Dundee Courier reported this beautiful summer scene: “Roadside verges, woodland margins and field boundaries are bursting with wildflowers - swathes of colour from sticky willie’s tiny, star-shaped flowers and yellow and blue field pansies, to blowsy Queen Anne’s lace and frothy meadowsweet”.
Sticky willies also have medicinal properties. In 2014, the Herald Magazine interviewed Hamish Martin (Secret Herb Garden in the Pentlands) and reported: “When a musician friend turned up wrecked after a lost weekend he was put on the sticky willy diet, and bounced back in no time apparently.”
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk
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