Bodle

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A bodle or boddle or bodwell, also known as a half groat or Turner was a Scottish copper coin, of less value than a bawbee, worth about one-sixth of an English penny, first issued under Charles II. They were minted until the coronation of Anne. Its name may derive from Bothwell (a mint-master).

It is mentioned in one of the songs of Joanna Baillie:

Black Madge, she is prudent, has sense in her noddle

Is douce and respectit; I carena a bodle.

The use of the word survives in the anglicised phrase "not to care a bodle", which Brewer glosses as "not to care a farthing". Something similar appears in Burns' Tam O' Shanter (line 110), it is also mentioned:

Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle (He cared not devils a bodle)

[edit] See also

• Plack
• Pound Scots
• Scottish coinage

[edit] References

• MacKay, Charles – A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch (1888)
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

[edit] External links

• Elks, Ken. Coinage of Great Britain