[…] when, without any great ettering of fash, we got all our rickle of things put on board, a full day before the Perseverance, as the trader was called, could be ready; […]
The mill again is a sort of outshot or to-fall — as we word it in the north — to the strange rickle of a dwelling house, which is at once old and new, two stories and yet only one.
1844 — Jane Welsh Carlyle, letter to Thomas Carlyle dated 28 June 1844, re-printed in New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (ed. Alexander Carlyle), John Lane (1903), pages 136-137:
We came home by a place called Speke Hall — built 1589 — the queerest-looking old rickle of boards that I ever set eyes on; […]
1881 — John Younger, Autobiography of JohnYounger, Shoemaker, St. Boswells, J. & J. H. Rutherfurd (1881), page 387:
The old, ill-thatched rickle of a house itself was of little other value than for the spot of ground on which it stood; […]
1911 — The Living Age, Volume 270, page 296:
There are whins and saplings pushing themselves through the stones, and away down the straight, weed-grown avenue the so-called Castle shows itself — a long rickle of a place, with small windows and a pointed gable above the door.
1917 — J. H. Balfour Brown, Recollections Literary and Political, Constable and Company (1917), page 141:
Hoxton itself is a rickle of a town, and Hoxton House Asylum was a rickle of a building.
Noun: "any object in poor condition, particularly a vehicle"edit
On a memorable night was the old rickle of a boat taken out to the West Sands during a terrible storm, when Admiral Maitland Dougall distinguished himself by his valiant services.
1935 — Seumas MacManus, Bold Blades of Donegal, Frederick A. Stokes Company (1935), page 15:
[…] into a rickle of a cart that made a noise you might easy hear a mile away.
Rab Tull keepit a highland heart, and bang'd out o' bed, and till some of his readiest claes — and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca' the high dow-cot, (a sort of little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a rickle o' useless boxes and trunks,) and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi' the tae foot, […]
"I hear nae stir in the howe," said the beadsman, "and see naething but that rickle o' a house standing on that eerie pinnacle, like a craw's nest on the tap o' a tree in a glen. […]
"Na, 'deed, Alisoun Begbie," cried Mistress Crombie once more, from the check of the door, "believe me when I tell ye that sic a braw city madam — and a widow forbye — doesna bide about an auld disjaskit rickle o' stanes like the Hoose o' the Grenoch withoot haeing mair in her head than just sending warnings to Clavers aboot the puir muirland folk, […]
Noun: "a rickle (any object in poor condition)"edit
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1863 — David Wingate, "Address to an Ass", in Poems and Songs, William Blackwood and Sons (1863), page 92:
Thou kicks thy rickle o' a cart
Wi' angry heels.
1881 — William Alexander, Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk in the Parish of Pyketillim, David Douglas (1881), page 249:
[…] they've gotten a secont-han' rickle o' a piano in o' 't noo for Miss Birse, an' twa three bits o' beuk laid doon here an' there.
1896 — William J. O'Neill Daunt, A Life Spent for Ireland: Being Selections from the Journals of the Late W. J. O'Neill Daunt, Unwin (1896), page 391:
"A braw thing to mak' a boast of!" said this censor. "What had he to leave? A wheen auld nets, and an auld rickle of a boat!"
