Note 63 — CONCLUSION

After all, there is, it seems, a Scottish word which answers to Askepot to a hair. See Jamieson’s Dictionary, where the reader will find Ashiepattle as used in Shetland for a “neglected child”; and not in Shetland alone, but in Ayrshire, Ashypet, an adjective, or rather a substantive degraded to do the dirty work of an adjective, “one employed in the lowest kitchen work”. See too the quotation, “when I reached Mrs. Damask’s house she was gone to bed, and nobody to let me in, dripping wet as I was, but an ashypet lassy, that helps her for a servant.”—Steamboat, p. 259. So again Assiepet, substantive “a dirty little creature, one that is constantly soiled with ass or ashes”.