Wae
With. Also: because of, on account of. 'A couldnae get wae the snaw' = I couldn't get there because of the snow. The preposition does double duty in Ulster Scots speech, marking both accompaniment ('with') and cause ('because of').
Etymology
From Scots 'wae' / 'wi' (= with), a pronunciation reduction of older 'with'. The dual cause/accompaniment sense parallels Scots 'wi' and is documented in Older Scots. Fenton records the form in modern Co. Antrim use in The Hamely Tongue. The double-duty (with + because of) is the Ulster Scots distinctive.
In a sentence
"A couldnae get wae the snaw - the road was blocked for three days."
Historical notes
Wae is one of the small Ulster Scots prepositions where the dialect carries a syntactic flexibility that standard English does not. Standard English needs two prepositions - 'with' for accompaniment, 'because of' for cause - where Ulster Scots uses one. The construction 'I couldn't get there with the snow' would feel ungrammatical in standard English but is fully natural in Ulster Scots speech. Heard mostly in rural Antrim and the wider Scots-speaking belt of Ulster.
Sources
- Fenton, James. The Hamely Tongue: A Personal Record of Ulster-Scots in County Antrim. Ullans Press. · dictionary