bairn

   One would expect the user of bairn to be Scottish or from the North of England, though this word for child was once in general use. Shakespeare used it in The Winter’s Tale, spelling it ‘barne’. The Oxford English Dictionary makes the interesting point that it stresses relationship rather than age. It is certainly used to an adult daughter in When the Boat Comes In, by James Mitchell: ‘Come on, me bairn.’ A Scottish girl says ‘Don’t greet so, my poor bairn,’ to a young woman in Iris Murdoch’s The Word Child, but is reproached by another character for using ‘affected Scotticisms’. ‘Bairn’ could, of course, be used to a male child as well as a female. It is used by a man to his son in The House with the Green Shutters, by George Douglas, where the characters are Scottish, but there is at least a suggestion in context that the term is meant to be insulting. The son, who has been expelled from university, is considered to be acting like a young child by the speaker. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre an old countrywoman uses ‘bairn’ to address a young woman who is not related to her.