SIR - Re the correspondence about the origin of the word "siling", I hadn't heard the word used in relation to rain until I came to live in Yorkshire but had vaguely connected it in my mind with the "sile" and its part in the dairy on the farm in Scotland where I grew up in the Thirties and Forties.

Frank Morris's detailed description (T&A, July 4) of the process of cooling and filtering milk brought back memories of a time before mechanisation.

My father's farm was connected up for electricity in 1939 but the treatment of the milk remained the same even after milking machines were installed.

There was no means of refrigeration and the filled and sealed milk churns stood overnight in the cool diary to await collection of the "milk lorry" and thence to the creamery for bottling and distribution.

Interestingly, on consulting my Scottish dialect dictionary "sile" is defined as a milk sieve (noun) to strain.

In the Chambers dictionary, as a noun it's a strainer and as a verb to strain or to rain heavily!

The origin of the word appears to be Scandinavian.

Is this something the Vikings brought over with them?

E Craig, Coniston Grove, Bradford