keelyvine pen

English

Alternative forms

• keelavine pen, keelivine pen

Etymology

Compare Scottish Gaelic cìl (“ruddle”). (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

Noun

keelyvine pen (plural keelyvine pens)

1. (Scotland, dialect, obsolete) A pencil of black lead.
   • 1816, [Walter Scott], The Antiquary. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:

     Put up your pocket-book and your keelyvine pen then, for I downa speak out an' ye hae writing materials in your hands

   • 1846 November 14, Christopher North, “Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands”, in The Anglo American, volume 8, number 4, page 85:

     This article, if finished at all, must be written with the keelavine pen on the backs of old letters—whereof, thank heaven! we have scores unanswered—by fits and snatches, as we repose from our labours on the gree-sward;.

   • 1857, Richard Thomson, A Lecture on some of the most characteristic features of Illuminated Manuscripts from the VIII. to the XVIII. century., page 48:

     A strip of lead in a case of wood or a strong reed, resembling the drawing-pencil to which we are now accustomed, is the Keelyvine-pen of North Britain; and an invention which is probably not older than the commencement of the last century.

   • 1897, Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart - Volume 1, page 342:

     Perhaps he knew that “fules," as the Shepherd says, dreaded his "keelavine pen," and so abstained from a source of offence.

References

• “keelivine”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.