These entries are drawn from Scots Proverbs, Ancient and Modern, Selected from Allan Ramsay and Others (Brechin: Alexander Black, 1834) — a 19th-century printing built on the 18th-century collection assembled by the poet Allan Ramsay, running to over 700 sayings arranged A to Y. This page is a selection, not the whole book: about forty entries chosen for being clear, characterful, and a fair sample of what's here, each given a plain-English gloss where the Scots needs it. The book is in the public domain in the United States and digitised by Project Gutenberg.
Some of these sayings are the earliest recorded Scots form of proverbs now used across the English-speaking world — that lineage is noted where it applies.