Trig and trim

I was rereading Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood a little while ago and came across this description of Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice; “in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View..” Whilst the meaning of the phrase is pretty clear from the context, neat and tidy, it set me wondering where the phrase came from.

My researches unearthed an interesting character, Bishop Douglas, whose bishopric centred round the lovely cathedral village of Dunkeld in Perthshire. Douglas died of the plague in London in 1522, proving that no good ever comes of a Scot when he ventures south of the border, but not before he had translated Virgil’s Aeneid in what he called Thirteen Bukes of Eneades,, of the famous poet Virgil, translated out of Latin verse into Scottish metre, a task he accomplished in just eighteen months. It was published posthumously in 1553 and reprinted in Edinburgh in 1710.

In the translation which was probably worked on in 1519 we find the couplet “the heist sall be full tydy, trig and wicht/ with hede equalle tyll his moder on hicht,” the first appearance of the word trig in print. He used it again later in his translation, “In lesuris and on leyis litill lames/ full tait and trig socht bletand to thaire dames.” Trig was a Scottish adjective for neat or trim, owing its origin to the Scandinavian word tryggr which meant faithful or secure.

The Scottish poet, Hector Macneill, writing at the turn of the 19^th century, also used trig in the same sense in one of his odes; “the same with E tricked up; Rudd/ trig her house, and oh! To busk aye/ ilk sweet bairn was a’ her pride!” Both Douglas and Macneill used the adjective on its own rather than as part of the reduplicated phrase that we know today.

Perhaps the blame for hitching trig with trim lies with the Sassenachs. Around the middle of the 16^th century a phrase, trick and trim, came into vogue south of Hadrian’s Wall. One of the senses of trick as an adjective at the time, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was being smart, clever or trim, neat, and handsome. Roger Ascham wrote a book in 1545 on archery, called Toxophilus, and there we find an English version of the reduplicated phrase; “the same reason I find true in two bows I have, whereof one is quick of cast, trick and trim, both for pleasure and profit.” The sense is identical; something neat and tidy.

Grammarians have spilt much ink discussing why the Scottish adjective trig became trick when used in England. It may just have been down to mishearing – after all, the thick Scottish accent is often incomprehensible to the effete cloth ears of the Sassenachs – or it may be that there are two distinct roots in play, with different meanings.

What is clear is that the Scottish version has prevailed. Interestingly, the Cyclopaedia of English Literature, compiled by Robert Chambers in 1843 and published in Edinburgh, amended Ascham’s usage to trig and trim. As a Scot he probably enjoyed getting one over the English. Be that as it may, the phrase is today rather obscure but is worth dusting off and bringing back to life, I feel.