Definition of "brae"
brae
noun
plural braes
(Northern England, Scotland) The sloping bank of a river valley.
Quotations
Was it not Wat the Devil, who drove all the year-old hogs off the braes of Lanthorn-side, in the very recent days of my grandfather's father?
1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, page 77
Ye banks, and braes, and ſtreams around / The caſtle of Montgomery, / Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, / Your waters never drumlie!
1791, Robert Burns, “Ye Banks, and Braes, and Streams around. Air.—Katharine Ogie.”, in Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, volume IV, Kilmarnock, Scotland: […] James M‘Kie, published 1886, page 77
Degged with dew, dappled with dew / Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, / Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, / And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
1881, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, stanza 3, page 53
By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes, / Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon', / Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae, / On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomon'.
1899, “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”, in Robert Ford, editor, Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland: With Many Old and Familiar Melodies […], Paisley, Renfrewshire, London: Alexander Gardner […], page 161
(Northern England, Scotland) Any hillside or slope.
Quotations
You are directed to the particular part of the brae where the Covenanters stationed themselves, (at the time of my visit it was a field of pasture, on which some cows were quietly feeding,) and the eminence behind, [...]
1828 August 1, “A.”, “A Visit to the Covenanters. (Concluded.)”, in The Paisley Magazine, volume I, number 8, Paisley, Renfrewshire: David Dick, page 392