From the Scots sonnet: > Zour father biddis zow studie heir and reid It becomes easier to decipher if you know that it's actually Y, not Z. By various accid

From the Scots sonnet: > Zour father biddis zow studie heir and reid It becomes easier to decipher if you know that it's actually Y, not Z. By various accidents of history, printers of the time used Z for the antiquated letter Ȝ (yogh), which itself came from another antiquated letter-form (ᵹ) and stood for a variety of sounds represented in modern English spelling with Y, J, etc.