Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/273

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FARTHER AFIELD
249

pensation for manslaughter, wor-ld is O.E. wer-old, the age of man, a seculum and sum of human experience, affording curious comparison with other modes of expressing such a wide generalisation. The third (c) is entirely awanting in Teut. and Slav. In Oscan ner was applied to the nobles in the State. The fourth (d) is not in Sans., and has had little vitality in Teut. The Go. guma Wulfila applies to Zacchams.

3. Home.

House=builded, S. damà, L. domus, Sl. domu, C. dam. Go. timrjan (build), timber, Gor. Zimmer. Door.—S. dvar (dhvar), θύρα, L. fores. Lit. durys (pl.), Go. daur. Straw-bed.—S. stara, L. torus, C. srath, Sl. straje. Go. strau-ja. Hamlet (1)=abode (viç=enter), S. veça, vaika, οἴκος, L. vîcus (veicus), Sl. visi, Go. weihs,—wich. (2) Fenced place.—(a) S. vara-ta. Worth (village), (b) O.E. tûn=town, Ger. Zaun (hedge), (c) S. pur (strong place), pura, πόλις, Lit. pilis, S. puru=plenus, plebs.

As the names for man show that the primitive Aryans had advanced far beyond the simple concepts that clustered round the hearth and child-life, and could cope with epithets that implied considerable powers of reflection and generalisation, so do those for house and home show a stage of comfort very different from that of the neolithic cave-dweller or the nomad Eskimo. One fancies in the terms for hamlet a distinction between northern and southern Aryans, due probably to the condition of the country over which each set had spread. In both cases a simple enclosure constituted a hamlet—outside, the village mark or common pasture land, and within, the homes. To this day in many parts of Germany the scattered homestead is unknown, the farmyard being a Hof in a village. The Sans. and Greek terms, however, add to the notion of a defended place that of a busy crowded populace that made its acropolis the rallying point for a more lively civic development in street and agora. Significant in this connection is the commonest later Sans. for a man, puru-sha, literally a townsman. The favourite Teutonic town, on the other hand, points to a more scattered backwoodsman kind of settlement. The North German plain is one vast monotonous expanse of wood and water, within whose