The meaning in the second line is obscure. The old man (*kall, man) in great excitement? bambirr and bambirl (Un.) means hurry-scurry or excitement. “käᶅɩ” might also be accepted as O.N. kalla, vb., to call, cry; but if this definition should point back to the cat, the latter has, at any rate, not seen the mouse. The two first lines must go together, considering the rhyming of tirl and birl.
luta kussa, ledi kossen and “Ladyco” may denote the mouse. The verbs hilter tilter and hilka doubtless mean to trip, walk lightly and quickly (No. hultra, hykla and høkla, vb., to trip, Shetl. tilt, vb., No. tylta, vb., to walk lightly), and must then denote the movements of the mouse. “hilkie toonie”, tripping in the farm-yard or in the home-field, near the house. kussa, kossen may be the same word as Sw. dial. kuse, m., sometimes bug-bear (= No. kuse), master, sometimes name for various kinds of beings both large and small: vermin; beetles; worms; bears; wolves (Rietz). In Shetlandic this word would easily be merged in kussi (calf), young cow, which might possibly explain “co” in “ladyco”.
luta and ledi, “lady”, stand as a closer definition of kussa, kossen, “co”. It can hardly be a question of Eng. lady, as luta and ledi preferably must be explained from one and the same primary form. ledi may have arisen from O.N. hlaða, f., barn, hay- or corn-barn, with anglicising of a [ā] to e [ē]; cf. N.Eng. dial. lade, sb., barn. luta then might be a *luda, *ludu, developed from O.N. hlǫðu, gen. of “hlaða” (cf. Norw. forms, such as “loda, ludu”, besides “løda”, a barn, by assimilation of vowel). The periphrasis "barn-animal", animal living in a barn, would be a suitable periphrasis for “mouse”.
under a kongalu, under a heather-bush, “roonin oondie conggaloo”, has run under a heather-bush, O.N. runninn undir *konglu. kongalu, in this verse, is handed down in sense of heather-bush, but is doubtless a periphrasis.
bā hɩ‘lki tuni probably means the cat sneaking about in the field (the tun) near the farm-yard. bā may be an abbreviated form of Lowland Scottish badrans (baudrons, bathrons), sb., cat, also used in Shetland, where it is pronounced [bādrəns]. hilki, in that case, is here doubtless a verb denoting the cat’s gait, corresponding to the above-mentioned häilki as a periphrasis for cat. häilki, Sw. halka, vb., to slide, haalk (dial.), vb., “smyga sig in, fram” (Ri.), to sneak in.
ledi may be Icel. lœða, Fær. løða [lø̄a], f., tabby, orig. *lœða.
luta in lutakussa (variant a) must be the same word as ledi in ledikossen (variant b). It may stand for *luda and be developed from a form *lóða without i-mutation = lœða.
As häilki, in variant c, acc. to the connection must denote the cat, and as hilka, hilki in the other versions, as a substantive or verb, must correspond to this häilki, and moreover as tilta (Mod. Shetl. tilt), to walk on tiptoe, connected with hilka in the main version, corresponds better to the cat’s gait than to that of the mouse, lediko, in the combination lediko hilka tilta, and ledikossen, in the com-
