Tattie bogle
July 18th 2026
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) tell us that tattie bogle is a term for a “scarecrow set up in a potato field”. This is well-illustrated in Thomas Smellie’s Mrs Goudie’s Tea-Pairty (1934): “A crood o sparras that’s been frichtet awa by some tawtie-bogle”.
However, the term can also be applied to “a ragged, unkempt or poorly-dressed person”. This extended use is well-established and highly popular – the examples in DSL date back to the nineteenth century. In Wilson’s Tales of the Borders (1838) we find: “Ye look mair like a tauty bogle than a Christian man”. Then, in J. Smith’s Canty Jock (1882) we are told that, “Jamie Macsnuffle was naething but a tatty bogle”.
J. Fergus provided a rather evocative example in The Sodger (1915): “He was like a tattie-bogle, his claes flapp’d on his back”. Then, George MacDonald Fraser deployed the term to great effect when describing the appearance of McAuslan ‘the Dirtiest Soldier in the World’ in The General Danced at Dawn (1970): “While the charge was read out I studied McAuslan; he was his usually dove grey colour as to the skin, and his battle dress would have disgraced a tattie bogle”.
In the twenty-first century, a piece from November 2019 in the Times informs us that tattie bogle has been adopted as the name for a vodka made from potatoes: “Arbikie Highland Estate … started in 2014 with the launch of the first Scottish potato vodka — Tattie Bogle Vodka — and has been innovating since”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
