If you really want to get baffled by different words - ask the scotch what they call various forms of cured pork.

Are we back to Ayrshire bacon?

CW: we also spent some time in North East Scotland as kids. I share your affection for the amazing diversity of the tea cakes. I still have a passion for the luridly coloured ones that have disappeared from bakeries here in Canada (gone all snotty with croissants) but we still found them in Dunoon and Aberdeen just a few years ago. They were called by some very highflown names, like Petits Fours, Neapolitans and Empire Biscuits (and Snowballs which were wrapped in bright pink or yellow dyed coconut!). However, I associate them exclusively with bake shops with strong Scots roots.

Even more fun, we were given rides on the shins of willing grandparents and uncles (they must have been strong-my sister and I weren't that small!)to a tune the chorus of which was: "Chappit taties, beef 'n' steak, twa reid herrin an' a bawby cake"

I think I get it all except the 'bawby' cake?

Hostess makes Snowballs. They're cream-filled snack cakes covered in shredded coconut. I think they come in white and pink in the U.S.

Snowballs - surely you mean one of Tunnocks wonderful confections, on a par with their teacakes.
Re. ice cream sandwich. Are we talking 'single nougat' here (slider in Aberdeen?)
Square sliced sausage (or Lorne sausage to give it its Sunday name) bought from a good butcher (the darker in colour the better)in a roll is heaven on earth.

No, the snowballs I am talking about were not like the Tunnock kind (we get those here in Canada, too).

These were larger, more like the size of a baseball. The cake was white, coated with pink or yellow thin frosting and a coating of coloured coconut. They had a butter-cream centre and generally a bit of jam somehwere in there, too.

They were available in some bakeries here in Canada up until a few years ago. But we also saw them about 15 years ago in Dunoon (on the west coast of Scotland).

I have to stop now, I am making myself queasy...

sounds much better than the Hostess prepackaged kind.

LJ- that would be a "bawbee cake". A bawbee was a ha'penny. Don't you remember:-

"Ally-bally, ally-bally-bee
Sittin' oan yir mammy's knee
Greetin' fir a wee baw-bee
Tae buy some Couter's candy"

Your whole rhyme was

"My mother said I never should
Play with the gipsies in the wood
They tugged my hair and broke my
comb
I’ll tell my mither when I get
home.

My mither says that I must go
With my daddy’s dinner, oh.
Chappit tatties, beef and steak,
Twa reed herrin’ and a bawbee bake.

I cam’ til a river and I couldna
get across,
So I paid five bob for an auld
done horse.
I jamped on his back and his
banes gie'd a crack.
And I had tae play the fiddle till
the boat cam’ back."

David, do you always find the drink speaks to you, dear?

LJ, did you have soo's lugs?

I have heard that song, but only on Monarch of the Glen (Lexie was singing a lullaby to a baby) :)

David, do you always find the drink speaks to you, dear?>>>

Only buckfast.

And, apparently, scotch! Grrrr!

Don't forget I am a scotchman, so I am at least half scotch.

Thanks for the whole set of lyrics, Sheila: it all came back to me across the years...should I be sad or relieved that I don't have 'soo's lugs'? (Sounds like a version of rickets!).