DOOKING
In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) there are many types of “dooking” described: “to bathe”; “to soak, drench”. You can also be a “dooker” – a swimmer.
The dooking I’m thinking about today relates to Halloween. Dooking for apples is defined in the DSL as “to try to catch with one’s teeth an apple floating in a container of water”.
DSL records this concept with Christopher Rush’s Twelvemonth and a Day (1985) describing typical Halloween activities: “Then it was home [after guising] to dooking for apples and eating treacle scones and counting our winnings. We sat by the fireside in our creased and dirtied disguises, our faces streaked with treacle and the faded remains of our make-up, and the dowsed turnip-lanterns stinking in the grate.”
However, our research shows that the practice was well-known way back in the 19th century. The Ayrshire Express of November 1863 informs us: “Cracking nuts and dooking for apples formed in many houses ample amusement for the fireside”.
Cracking on to the 21st century and DSL records this from the Scotsman of November 2003: “…as teenagers our idea of riotous fun would be a banger in a dustbin sometime after the equally riotous fun of carving out a thick-skinned turnip lantern and dooking for apples at Halloween”. A writer in the Glasgow Times of October 2020 asks: “Who remembers neep lanterns and dooking for apples (without the forks)?” Forks were an alternative to getting your face wet – you held one between your teeth and dropped it, from a height, into a bowl of rotating water. In my childhood this was the practice in more well-to-do homes.
Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel, Dictionaries of the Scots Language https://dsl.ac.uk.
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