Roseisle graffiti mystery: Was WW2 POW or Moray loon in 2010 behind tar message on tank trap?
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A DOGWALKER has asked whether the Moray public can help shed light on mysterious tank trap graffiti he spotted on Roseisle beach.
An "unusually high" tide meant Peter Adamson had to jump between the concrete structures to keep his feet dry while walking his dog Holly on Sunday.
But Mr Adamson was surprised to discover a tank trap he had not seen before, which he believes was revealed during the recent storms.
Taking a closer look he noticed words on the block, apparently written in a tar, reading "Zoid Daat" in block capitals.
There were faint signs that further text may have followed at one stage, but the characters were now too worn to offer clues.
After happening upon the mystery, he emailed the Northern Scot to ask whether our readers could help.
Mr Adamson said he believed the words may be graffiti in a foreign language left by Prisoners of War held in Moray during World War Two.
These captives were tasked with building the Burma Road that runs through Roseisle Forest – potentially explaining the source of tar used to write the message.
What does Zoid Daat mean?
Efforts to translate "Zoid Daat" using online software were fruitless.
The two words, together, do not translate nicely into English regardless of the original language selected.
However daat, translated from Polish, German and Dutch, returns the word date.
German POWs were housed in Moray during WW2, as were divisions of the Polish army, it would possible that those building the Burma Road might have spoken one of these languages.
However, the trail on "zoid" was completely cold.
The extra-terrestrial sounding word, however, has more than a passing resemblance to the year "2010".
And transcription software proposed an English translation of "2010 daat" as "dated 2010".
Asked whether this might be the case, Mr Adamson said: "It could be 2010, although the material used to write the message is not something people carry about normally."
He added: "It's possible that the blocks could be repeatedly buried by blown sand then revealed by storms washing the sand away.
"So not impossible that the block was exposed in 2010."
Could the graffiti have been the handiwork of a surprisingly well-equipped Polish, German or Dutch holidaymaker 14 years ago?
It seemed a stretch – but one last line of inquiry presented itself.
Daat – Elgin slang with 145-year-old roots
Assuming that the second word is 2010, further research suggested that the answer might be much closer to home.
When we searched for the word daat, one of the first results came from the user-edited Urban Dictionary.
A September 15, 2017 entry reads: "Daat is a Scottish word, derived from Moray, Scotland.
"It is widely and most commonly used in the town of Elgin.
"Daat has no definition, they say it after every sentence you could think of."
And, searching Twitter, we found two 2012 tweets which featured both Elgin and the word.
It appears, therefore, to have been Elgin slang around 15 years ago, but its history goes back a long way.
Dating back to 1911, A Scot's Dialect Dictionary, defines daat as both a verb and a noun.
Used as a verb it means "to pet, caress, fondle", whereas as a noun it has a similar meaning to the English term darling.
And an 1879 Scots dictionary sheds even more light on the term.
While the word may appear similar to the English "dote", it argued, the term was in fact most likely to come from Icelandic.
Daat's most recent appearance in print dates back to 1991, according to the Dictionary of the Scots Language.
North east TV presenter and Doric activist Douglas Kynoch, the first voice of Grampian Television, used the word in a in a Doric poetry anthology that year.
The term's online re-appearance seems to show it returning from 30 years in the wilderness to become an Elgin craze in the early 2010's.
So the mystery graffiti might have been the handiwork of a local loon that was keen to record Elgin's developing slang.
But it begs the question: where did the tar come from?
Let us know your theories about the mystery graffiti by leaving a comment, clicking here, or by emailing: newsdesk@northern-scot.co.uk
Your best suggestions might appear online or in print.
