Drack
“The dragon no longer spits,” read the SZ recently. It was about the volcano on the island of La Palma that harassed the people there for three months. More than 1,600 buildings were destroyed by the lava. The locals call the volcano a “stubborn dragon”. This coincides with the mythology, which describes the dragon as a sinister fellow, from whom a great danger emanates, and he also possesses supernatural powers. The mother of all dragon myths is the Siegfried saga in the Nibelungenlied from the early 13th century, according to the SZ a few days ago. The dragon also has a permanent place in the Bavarian canon of swear words. However, there it is called Drack, a word that is probably derived from the Latin draco. A Drack is a person who likes to annoy other people: “Sneak up, you Drack!” Is what they say. Even boys who have eaten something up were often referred to as Drackn in the past and were sometimes rewarded with a watschn.
scraper
Even a simple item of clothing like an apron often has a multifaceted cultural history, which an exhibition in the Kaufbeuren City Museum is impressive evidence of. Often the apron is reduced to the flowered smock apron, as it was worn mainly by housewives and peasant women. This garment is called a Schürzl. Craftsmen also wear work aprons for reasons of protection, but these are called scrapers (Schowern, Schawa), as reader Alfred Hechtl recently pointed out. This term should not be confused with the tool of the same name, which has a cutting edge for scraping. We learned from Christina Loquai that in western Bavaria they say apron to apron and scraper, or also Füatta (pre-cloth). As for the origin of the word scraper, there could be a connection with the French chaperon (cover).