Wrastle

A devout lady, to whom some friend had presented one of my books, used to say when asked how she was getting on with it, 'Sal, it's dreary, weary, uphill work, but I've wrastled through with tougher jobs in my time, and, please God, I'll wrastle through with this one.' It was in this spirit, I fear, though she never told me so, that my mother wrestled for the next year or more with my leaders, and indeed I was always genuinely sorry for the people I saw reading them.

"I reckon you won't care to wrastle long with my old hand o' write.

The Shetland texts examined are James Stout Angus: Eels (poem, 1877); Basil Ramsay Anderson: Auld Maunsie's Cru (poem, 1888); three short stories 'A Wrastle Wi' a Hen', 'Lowrie Buys a Ford', and 'Lowrie At Da Exhibishon' from the collection Lowrie by Joseph Gray (1991 edition, but first published 1933) and John Graham: Shadowed Valley (novel, with Shetland dialect dialogue, 1987).

Holing, on television's Northern Exposure, once had to go wrastle a bear--"put himself in harm's way," is how he put it.