In the same usage of the word, the Scottish proverb expresses distress and trouble in a person's affairs, by saying that "he has got his kail through the reek." In like manner haddock, in Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire, used to express the same idea, as the expression is, "Will ye tak your haddock wi' us the day ?" that fish being so plentiful and so excellent that it was a standing dish.

There is this difference, however, in the local usage, that to say in Aberdeen, Will you take your haddock?
implies an invitation to dinner; whilst in Montrose the same expression means an invitation to _supper_.

Differences of pronunciation also caused great confusion and misunderstanding.

Novels used to be pronounced no_vels_; envy en_vy_; a cloak was a clock, to the surprise of an English lady, to whom the maid said, on her leaving the house, "Mem, winna ye tak the _clock_ wi' ye ?" The names of children's diseases were a remarkable item in the catalogue of Scottish words:--Thus, in 1775, Mrs.Betty Muirheid kept a boarding-school for young ladies in the Trongate of Glasgow, near the Tron steeple.

A girl on her arrival was asked whether she had had smallpox.