soothmoother

plural soothmoothers

1. OrkneyShetlandAn outsider; Someone who is not native to the isles, especially someone from the south.

   I was a 'soothmoother', arriving in Lerwick from the south.

   1983, William Reginald Mitchell, Birdwatch Around Scotland, page 93

   5 more examples

   Several of my soothmoother informants pointed out that the Shetlands were not the only islands to have been visited by the Vikings.

   1980, Marsha Elizabeth Renwanz, From crofters to Shetlanders

   During the 1860s when Delting, North Unst and North Yell were divided, the Garth estate was managed by its factor, John Walker, a 'soothmoother' from Aberdeenshire.

   1985, Susan A. Knox, The making of the Shetland landscape, page 88

   But in Whalsay his distance from those bereaved has an added dimension, for he is an outsider, a soothmoother.

   1987, Anthony Paul Cohen, Whalsay: Symbol, Segment, and Boundary in a Shetland Island Community

   Here on Papay folk will speak slowly and sympathetically in a one-to-one conversation with a 'soothmoother', but if you're on the fringes of a pierhead debate about the price of cattle or the weather, then you'll soon be submerged beneath a fast-flowing terminological tidal wave.

   1996, Jim Hewitson, Clinging to the Edge: Journals from an Orkney Island, page 41

   She might be a soothmoother, but she lived in Shetland now, and she'd been good to Jimmy Perez after the business on Fair Isle.

   2013, Ann Cleeves, Dead Water