“Runts” is a Scots Dialect word for the tough central stalks of kail, a leafy cabbage-like vegetable commonly grown in Scotland. In traditional Hallowe’en customs, children might carry or use kail stalks while guising, playing pranks, or making noise at neighbours’ doors. The word gives Violet Jacob’s poem a strongly local, rural Scottish setting and evokes the rough, energetic play of Hallowe’en children.

Kail is a Scots word for cabbage or a cabbage-like leafy vegetable, especially kale. A runt can have other meanings in English, such as the smallest animal in a litter, but that is not the meaning here. The phrase is connected to older Scottish Hallowe’en traditions, in which kail plants, nuts, apples, fires, disguises, and fortune-telling games all had ceremonial or playful roles. Related Scots words in the same stanza include bairns (“children”), guizards (“children in costume or disguise”), and skreichs (“screams”).