What the 'eck are kecks?

kecks noun pl. slang and dial. L19
[Alt. of kicks]
Trousers, knickers or underpants.

I feel you deserve some sort of explanation concerning the omnipresence of my “Merseyside cousins” in the postings so far. It's a bit of a surprise to me and, on that basis, I’m guessing you didn’t see it coming either. Their constant mention seems to beg a lot of questions and so, for the sake of all involved, it’s probably just best for me to just get it all out the way now...

Mum grew up in Liverpool. Eldest of four in a small terraced council house. Muirhead Avenue, Liverpool 13, in the fifties and sixties. My grandparents still lived in the same house and we’d visit frequently when I was young. The five of us would squeeze into a brown Renault 12 and, clutching presents, traverse the Pennines over the Snake Pass in the snow for the Boxing Day clan gatherings. Mum and I would go in the summer too. The train through the Peak District and then a dash over the footbridge at Piccadilly to make the connection for Lime Street. Sometimes Mum and I might stay two or three weeks at a time.

Gran and Grancha’s place was a riotous cacophony of ornaments, trinkets, chintz, cheap porcelain horses towing miniature drays laden with barrels, brasses, lino and mass-produced iconic homewares of the fifties. Vying for your nostrils’ attention were Old Spice, fry ups, a coal fire, home brew and “The Dog” (first “Whiskey” and then “Brandy”). There was a cat later, but I don’t recall the name. Out back was a small square of grass, a greenhouse, its panes straining to contain burgeoning tomato vines and, next to it, a rosebush encircled by a white-walled tire embedded in the ground.

Auntie Pam and Uncle Pat lived ‘cross the Mersey with cousins Christine, Helen and David. New Brighton and then later in Wallasey Village. David and I were both the youngest of three and he was just six months older than me. Mum and I stayed some of the time at their place in the summers and they’d visit us at half term or at Easter. In short, Mum stayed close to her family, we saw our cousins frequently and they had an accent and vocabulary very different from our own.

David and I were close and spent a lot of time together. Fantastic times skiing at Sheffield’s dry slope and twice with our dads we stayed in a remote cottage on the west coast of Scotland - just the four of us. I can still picture his bedroom at the back of the house in Wallasey Village. A series of mental snapshots from different years: a ZX80 on his desk; nunchucks and a punch bag in the corner where there would later be a shower cubicle; the half light and the hush with the curtains drawn on the morning of Auntie Pam's funeral. We drifted apart after both our mothers succumbed to cancer before we made it out of our teens, but I've fond memories of hedge-hopping, illicit drinking at family dos and football and frisbee in Scotland.

To come back to the point, I remember words as well as images. I’ve already mentioned alleys and butties, but the main one which sticks in my head is “kecks” - what Dave called his trousers and, sometimes, his pants. I like this word. I don’t have a Sheffield alternative to offer or to hold out as the “correct” form. I just called trousers, well... “trousers”. I’m aware that “strides” is used in some places and elsewhere "kicks", but there are surely a host of other words which some kindly soul might tell us about in the comments section?

Two final points. Firstly, I was a little over-zealous in my defence of "gennel" and I should apologise. I wouldn’t want you to think of me as a prescriptive linguist. I love regional variations and the plethora of words English and its dialects gives us. Secondly it would be unforgivable to discuss synonyms for trousers without including the below excerpt from a doyen of the prescriptive grammarians, one Henry Watson Fowler. As is so often the case with prescriptive grammarians, language becomes a battlefield laden with value judgements. Rarely, however is there such wit as this:

...Breeches has returned and, with the help of jodhpurs, plus-fours, shorts and trunks, has ousted knickerbockers which, in its curtailed form knickers, has been appropriated by women. Bloomers was short-lived for cyclists, but survives for schoolgirls; drawers is falling into genteel obsolescence, and even the highly respectable trousers is menaced by slacks and jeans.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd Ed, OUP, 1965

Anyone confused by “grancha” will be relieved to learn that this is a word I’m almost certain to return to along with granddad, granda, gramps nana, nain, gran and the rest…