Clachan
March 1st 2025
A clachan is defined as, “A hamlet, village, generally containing a church; ‘a small cluster of cottages’. Originally used only in the Highlands, but later spreading all over the Scottish mainland”. It can also be a term for “a village ale-house, an inn” and is the name of a village in Kintyre, Argyll and Bute.
The earliest record of the term in the DSL is from 1459, written in Latin in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland. Other notable citations include Robert Burns’ call for moderation in his 1787 poem Death and Dr Hornbrook: “The clachan yill [ale] had made me canty, I was na fou, but just had plenty”.
Another poetic offering comes from Poems (1842) by David Vedder: “The Gauger’s the mightiest man in the clachan!”.
Moving on to more recent examples, Duncan Glen uses the term in From Upland Man (1997): “The weill-kent faces o sociable neibours and mony another drappt in frae toun or clachan”.
In May 2023, a holidaying MP used the term in an article for the Alloa and Hillfoots Advertiser: “During the recent recess, I re-visited Glenturret, Scotland’s oldest distillery. Glenturret looks, as you arrive, like a wee Highland clachan – a row of whitewashed cottages bursting with spring flowers”.
Of course, clachan is also a popular name for a pub, restaurant, or hotel. There are many Clachan Inns throughout the country. There’s even the Clachan Arrows, a well-known darts team from the village of Clachan.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
