Scree screw scradjum, anyone?

[Richard Gage]

The British viewpoint may be exactly what I need -- since I've been
searching for years trying to discover the meaning, history, and usage
of a word I believe to be of English or Scottish origin.

When I was a little boy my father, my brother, and I played a game his
grandfather had taught him.  Dad would lie down on the living room
carpet and close his eyes as if sleeping -- which was the signal to my
brother and me that the game had begun, for this recumbency was in
actuality the issuance of a challenge -- we were being dared to try to
creep up and tickle "the sleeping monster" (without being caught).  The
name of the game and the sleeping monster were the same -- "Scree Scru
Scradjum." (This is probably not the correct spelling, but this is what
it sounds like).  For years I thought this word was just something my
father or his grandfather had made up, but then when I was in college I
came across this word again in a book on etymology -- and like an idiot
I failed to write the reference down.

In recent years while reading my grandmother's memoirs I came across
several references to what she called "old time" words, words that were
in common usage when she was a child, but now no longer part of the
vernacular.  (For example, diapers were called “hippens” then.)  Like
most of the people in the small Pennsylvania farming community where she
grew up, my grandmother is of mixed English, Scottish, and German
descent. (Quaintly enough, the section of Montoursville, Pa., settled by
the English is even today still referred to as "Tea Town.")  Using the
Oxford English Dictionary, I was able to trace the origins of many of
Grandmother's "old time" words, and in quite a few cases the OED
etymology cited a glossary of Northumberland words.  Hence my suspicion
that "scree scru scradjum" is of Scot-English origin.

Any light your scholarship could shed upon this "family mystery" would
be greatly appreciated.  But, in any event, thanks just for reading
along this far.  The name “scree scru scradjum” has a great sound to it,
don’t you think?  For me, it conjures up the picture of a Grendel-like
monster shambling down the slopes of a scree covered mountainside.