Names
Sikupilli (Sikupill)
Bagpipes, lit. goat’s instrument. Named after nearby inn. What is a shopping center today was a prison in the late-19th C and, prior to that, a hospital, but its damp limestone walls didn’t do the patients’ health much good, which didn’t seem to be an issue for the next occupants. It also had its own loop of railway passing in and out, allowing the reasonable deduction that the favored occupation of, or rather for, convicts – breaking stones – was not to provide ballast for ships to which, being a port, Tallinn naturally lends itself, but stabilizing railway lines. While local by-ways add weight to the argument, railway engineering takes it away (I bet nobody saw that one coming…), track ballast is smaller and lighter (see Pallasti). Well, it was a women’s prison... Renamed (1960-1990) as Killustiku during the Soviet occupation. One of a rock-based neighborhood. See Tuha. Alternative name of Torupilli.
Sikuti (Sikuti)
Traditionally, the combined short rod (very short for trolling through ice holes in winter), line and trolling spoon (i.e. hook(s) with fish- or spoon-shaped lure), sometimes translated word-for-word from mänguõng as playing-hook, but nowadays more commonly just the business end. In southern (and eastern?) Estonian dialects, notably around (or on...) Lake Peipsi, they tend to say sikuska (and sometimes tirk, see Tirgu) perhaps due to Russian influence with communities dating back to the 17th C when Old Believers migrated there following the religious schism, раскол (raskol, hence Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov) of 1666. Part of a fishing-tackle group, see also Sumba.
