Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1971 (SND Vol. VIII). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1732-1771, 1884-1979
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SIXERN, n. Also sixeren, -een, sixareen (Sh. 1866 Edm. Gl.), sexareen, sixearn, sixaer(i)n, †sixoaring, sixtreen (Sh. 1931 Shetland Times (14 March) 7); saxern (Sh. 1898 Shetland News (10 Sept.)), saxereen, sax-herrin (Sh. 1892 G. Stewart Fireside Tales 242). A six-oared boat of Norwegian make or pattern, equipped with a sail when required and formerly used in Shetland as an all-purpose fishing boat, but obsol. since c.1900 (Sh. 1866 Edn. Gl., 1914 Angus Gl., Sh. 1970). [′sɪksərn]Sh. 1732 Old-Lore Misc. IV. iii. 119:
Every six oaring paid 18 ling.Sh. 1771 Session Papers, Torrie v. Stewart (13 July) Depositions 3, 4:
One of their six oaring boats.Sh. 1884 C. Rampini Shetland 80:
Before 1875 there were no decked boats in Shetland. Up to that date both the Haaf and the herring fishings had been prosecuted by means of "sixerns" — six-oared boats of about twenty feet of keel, imported till within the last forty or fifty years direct from Norway "in boards ready for putting together."Sh. 1899 J. Spence Folk-Lore 135:
The blugga-banes of the halibut were stuck under the eft hinnie spot o' da sixern for luck.Sh. 1936 Scotsman (1 Oct.) 8:
A sixern or sixareen, the characteristic fishing boat of the Shetland Islands. . . . Its clinker build and almost square sail, and in particular its similar bow and stern posts, cut away at a steep rake, remind us of Norse origin.Sh. 1950 A. Halcrow Sail Fishermen 81–2:
Johnson unhesitatingly gives the palm to the sixearn as a matchless tool of the sea. . . . Many of the sixearns fished the year round whenever weather permitted.Sh. 1957 Shetland News (7 May) 2:
Bressay has, in inverted position and serving a very useful purpose, a really complete sixern — perhaps the only perfectly complete sixern left in Shetland.m.Sc. 1979 Donald Campbell in Joy Hendry Chapman 23-4 (1985) 67:
Like a sexareen that's sailin
wi a keel that's shent and dune,
