Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

Hide Quotations Hide Etymology

Abbreviations Cite this entry

About this entry:
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.

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,