Skyreburn Warning

A Scarborough warning, meaning no warning at all, was an old English saying, and writers explained it by a rough way with thieves at Scarborough or by Thomas Stafford’s surprise of Scarborough Castle in 1557. Chambers, printing it under a letter of 19 January 1603 that uses the phrase, thought them all mistaken. In the parish of Anwoth in Kirkcudbright the Skyreburn is usually a gentle stream, but after ordinary rain it can come down from the hills in sudden flood and sweep away hayricks and washing on its banks. Skyreburn warning was a proverb across south-west Scotland, and Chambers suspected Scarborough warning was the same phrase misheard south of the Tweed.