Traditionally a lament, in song at least, has tended to lean closer to the more emotionally loaded definition of the word, being an expression of grief or sorrow, but has not been exempt from association with the looser interpretation of usage, being more simply an expression of regret or disappointment. I mention this mainly because I thought it might perhaps be pertinent to pop (not so sure the alliteration works in the blogosphere anywhere near as well as it might in poetry or verse but I'm running with it!) a wee explanation as to the etymology of this blog's title, 'Tumshie Heid's Lament', here just in the interests of sharing, or a little clarity at the very least, in what prompted the giving of that particular titular power inherent in name giving or calling.
Initially I had intended to begin posting here back in November 2015, beginning with a short post on the further waning and almost gone practice of carving Tumshie Lanterns for Hallowe'en. I'm not about, now, to get all seasonally discombobulated but suffice to say there are good reasons, about which there are numerous academic studies giving at least passing reference and inclusion in a general summary of customs, to suspect the practice has older, likely pagan roots associated with the Samhain festival, which is also generally considered to have been the Celtic New Year. These are of course older associations than the most recent common usage of the Rutebaga turnip, a Scandinavian import, as a basis for carving might at first suggest. In more recent times, increasingly so since around the mid 1980s, the traditional tumshie has of course become replaced by the pumpkin.
Having grown up in a Scottish mining community, with the tumshie as the only fitting and seasonal option for lantern carving, I don't lament the lack of cut fingers or less hours wasted gouging with barely effective spoons, to negligible effect in terms of just how scary your lantern looked after your Herculean efforts, other than scarily unlike anything you'd set out to carve in the first place. I most certainly have no lamentation over no longer having to close my nostrils against the stench of singeing turnip rind once a candle was placed inside the completed (or at least, not doing any more to it now it's been four hours etc etc) article. It's certain, as a tradition in evolution, responding to changing demands and circumstance, the pumpkin wins hands down.
Of course, what can't be measured is what is lost along with the gouging, self flagellating ritual of the tumshie carve. Certainly an element of 'rites of passage', in a child being trusted to carve a tumshie, with all its difficulties and idiosyncrasies I missed now; family and/or community bonding, where carving was shared for longer with younger children, are both far less likely with the few quick scoops and strokes into the flesh of a soft pumpkin a modern lantern carve takes.
Neither of which are pertinent to my lament though, and it is a lament of sorrow, perhaps not of grief but absolutely of regret and disappointment. Its root is in the notion which fades and becomes culturally less relevant or lost, as is often the case, as a parallel to the loss of the lantern itself. It is in a further loss of meaning in cultural exchange around the act. For me, in particular, in this case, I find it lamentable that my son, despite having been introduced to tumshie carving as a young child, and all the pumpkin generations of which he is part, finds no currency in using the term 'tumshie-heid'!
I understand for some Scots speakers, and in this I presume it is likely a generational or geographical difference, that the term carries negative weight and was mainly used in a pejorative sense conveying stupidity. For us, growing up in West Fife in the 1970s, it was used liberally by our parents and grandparents but more in a sense of if you were being a bit silly, or, as I've since found out the Scots Dictionary supports as an older derivation and usage, as an admonishment if you had been particularly gullible, as in, with a ruffle of the hair to a child whose been tricked out of a last sweet, 'Ya tumshie-heid!'. The implication in both usages is that the person's brains have been scooped out, in the latter of the two it's just done with a little more affection!
With a nod towards all of this then, round these parts, well in my kitchen and now this blog anyway, we sing (or blether on aboot!) the Tumshie Heids Lament! (I promise, there's no actual song!). And we reserve the right to use the term liberally, where entirely appropriate and only with a socially accepted modicum of affection too of course, and to all and sundry urge you to do so too, even if it's met with looks of confusion and lack of comprehension, and to know if it's flung in this direction, even if wholly inappropriately used, it will be met with a goofy, gullible, all too trusting tumshie heid smile!
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