From Len Pennie To Hurkle-Durkle: How TikTok Recaptured The Scots Language

Omar Malik

08/05/24

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Thanks to TikTok and Gen Z, there has been a resurgence in everything Scottish as of late. People from all over the world flocked to Edinburgh earlier this year after the Netflix adaptation of One Day.

While clever Scots expressions, most of which haven’t been regularly uttered for decades across most of Scotland, have captured the attention of scores of TikTokers.

Let’s take a deep dive into Scotland’s newfound popularisation among youngsters.

Len Pennie’s ‘Scots Word Of The Day’

Lanarkshire-born Len Pennie may only be 24-years-old, but she’s certainly accomplished most young poets’ dreams.

The 2020 lockdown led to swathes of scrollers discovering Pennie’s captivatingly humorous social media content - with the poet having 688k followers on TikTok and 513k followers on Instagram as of May 2024.

Focused on short and snappy videos focused on the vastness of Scots language words, Pennie’s ‘Scots Word of the Day’ series on Twitter (X) resulted in the poet gathering an international following.

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From the United States to the United Arab Emirates, Scots terms were now being popularised globally - which subsequently resulted in Pennie’s poetry becoming more widely recognised.

A dedicated women’s rights activist, Pennie published Poyums in 2023, an endearing collection of some of the poet’s works - with English and Scots being interspersed throughout the poems, and feminism being paramount to their themes.

Pennie’s followers worried for her wellbeing, however, after she suddenly left Twitter (X), the platform which sparked her stardom, in late-2021 after receiving misogynistic abuse.

The gradual infrequency of Pennie’s content being posted alarmed her followers, especially after her socials were set to private a year later.

In March 2024, Pennie bravely revealed her four-year long domestic abuse turmoil - which saw her feeling isolated and fearful after being continually stalked by her abusive ex-partner.

While still unapologetic in her posting of Scots words and terms, Pennie is now just as dedicated to adding her insight and input into the conversation around combating domestic violence.

TikTok’s Hurkle-Durkle Trend: Self-Care Or Harmful?

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Many of us will be aware from parents and grandparents of the uniquely quirky words and phrases of the Scots language.

Some of them sound so absurd that it seems as though they simply can’t be real. This sentiment can’t be more true for ‘hurkle-durkle’ - a term that, until its discovery by social media users, was becoming largely obsolete.

But it’s absolutely real - as unbelievable as that sounds. Originally used in conversations in the nineteenth-century Lowlands, to hurkle-durkle is “to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up and about.”

In other words, hurkle-durkle essentially means having a long lie-in, watching Netflix and scrolling through TikTok, long after you should be up and about.

As we enter the summer months, the term is perhaps not quite as prevalent on social media - but by hurkling, or sitting in a crouched manner for optimal warmth, you can temporarily escape the freezing gales of winter by staying wrapped-up in bed.

It’s during the colder months that people most like to profess their adoration of a hurkle-durkle!

Scotland’s a dreich country most of the time anyway, though, so why not hurkle-durkle all the time?

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According to Marisha Mathis, a clinical social worker, the lush hurkle-durkle can actually be detrimental to one’s mental health - depending on its frequency, that is.

“It might be a red flag when the hurkle-durkle extends beyond a slice of the morning and drags throughout the day, or becomes a regular occurrence that takes us away from our responsibilities or creates isolation from friends and families,” Mathis told HuffPost.

Rather than take away the relaxing bliss that a hurkle-durkle can bring, professionals like Mathis are merely warning people to carefully allow such ‘lazy days’ to occur.

Otherwise, social interactions become more limited as we tend to remain in bed recurrently.

It’s rather fascinating, to be frank, how social media has massively repopularised the Scots language and terminology among Gen Z. But more importantly, it seems to have opened up a wide range of discussions as well.

These include the dangers that can come from seemingly harmless TikTok trends, namely the hurkle-durkle, or how harassment can be so debilitating to prominent Scottish public figures.

If you are affected by any such mental health issues, please check out the NHS 24 website for relevant resources.