Studies in Lowland Scots/Field Philology
III.—Field Philology
1. Village Life in Fifeshire
The vernacular is, properly speaking, the language of the verna or "household slave." In all old societies the ruling and propertied class entrusted the infant to a foster-parent, and the work of the household to a crowd of famuli, and in both cases these were drawn from the lower and dialect-using classes. All, even moderately civilised, peoples were, and in a sense are still, bi-lingual. The "clerk and the lewed man" are equally required for the business of life. From the dawn of literature it must have been so. Whenever expression is consciously artistic it becomes selective and creative. The first to use verbal embroidery must have been the first stylist. One of the many indirect effects of printing has been to emphasise and fix this duality. The schoolboy, a keen observer of character, like the natural man, has a just horror of "the fellow that speaks like a book." His own diction is never recklessly original, being largely a medley of coterie words, as "horrid," "awful," "cheeky," "beastly," caddish," "dashed mean," with an occasional "jolly" or "bally." More striking is the effect of hearing the average man, schoolboy, or even preacher read aloud. At once all naturalness is lost in a monotonous, high-pitched sing-song. To these the art of using book language is an acquired taste, and retains scare a feature of that tongue which gives to social intercourse its perennial charm.
Macaulay argued that as civilisation increases poetry declines. It would be easier to maintain that as reading and education spread, a true vernacular must gradually disappear. It loses historic continuity, and becomes a mixture of malapropisms and slang. Fashion, worst of all, taboos it as vulgar. Like divination, and poor relations, and last season's millinery, it keeps in the background. Mrs. Calderwood, a grand lady of the old school, travelling in Holland in 1758, describes to a friend a visit to a synagogue, where the priest officiated with a harn clout on his head. No lady would nowadays adopt such a style, even if she could understand it. And what university reformer would express himself as Lord Cockburn did, who observed that "when a professor grew doited he became immortal"? Vulgar is, after all, but a relative term, and the essence of vulgarity lies in its associations. Now all modern associations are against the vernacular. In the absence, then, of a historic vernacular how is the plain person to express himself? The style is the man, and the modern man is nothing if not stylish. He assumes the virtues of his better-class neighbour, but wears them with a difference. The suburban young lady, who is reported to have commented on the beshed condition of Jeck's het, disguised her true self in what she took to be the accent of fashion, but her choice of words betrayed her. Not so the street boy when he asked the shopman for "a happ'ny worth o' baasht plooms." His style was in perfect keeping with his pretensions. Sometimes the plain person will make quite a praiseworthy attempt to swim out of his depth in expression as when a workman, reporting on some choked drain pipes he had been asked to lift, explained to his young master that "Thae pipes wuz clean sedimateesed."
To the imperialistic gaze of the average Englishman all Scots speak alike, and all are equally unintelligible to him. He cannot see how anyone should fail to understand him. If observant, however, he would find that even at home environment differentiates speech as much as plant or animal growth. In Old Scotland intercourse was limited, and racial or imitative peculiarities became persistent. To say nothing of the Gaelic and the Norse districts, one could not travel over many counties without discovering differences by ear alone. A traveller of the seventeenth century notes the scolding pipe of the Aberdonian and the monotonous click-clack of the Lowlander. He has the sense to see that the good English tone of the Highland districts is not confined to Inverness, but is really that of a language grammatically taught and never heedlessly employed. Their very choice of words has a literary flavour, like Baboo English.
Burt notes the peculiarities of that Edinburgh dialect, which, despite Parliament House and an earnest determination to be as English as possible, still persists. The waiter offered him for supper "a duke," "a fool," or "a meer-fool." In Fife this "duke" would be "juck"—a modification heard also in the verb, as in the proverbial caution, "Jook and let the jaw gae by." the broad a of the Lothians, especially if near a liquid, is as decided a shibboleth as the slurring of t wherever possible betrays an early familiarity with the "Sautmarket" of Glasgow. The long-drawn drawl, "Cauff for beds!" used to be familiar in the Canongate of Edinburgh; and in the Cowgate, which the Modern Athenian forgets to call the "Coogate," for an older "Soo'gate" (Southgate), they still "baur the dore," "hing up the umber-ellie," or take "a dook at Joapie." Glasgow equally ignores historic continuity with its "Bew-kannan" Street. In its early days it was "B'whannan" and, later, "B'kannan" Street. The native loves to leave the convenience of the Broomielaw "wanst a week a' least, on Se'erday afternoon." The Borderer, again, has his shibboleth, the burr which comes out when Ridley speaks of his friend Rutherford at Chollerford or Chirnside. He of Kelso, if a clegyman, preaches about "radamption." The same vowel is heard in the local name of the town, "Kal-so," or the neighbouring Salkirk. Here local pronunciation of the place-name is, as usual, correct. The ancient seal of Kelso bears the inscription, "Sigillum Monasterii de Calco"—referring to a height near which, in olden times, was a "clak-heugh," or quarry. The Galloway man has long known the Irish "trogger," so if you ask your way of him he directs you to a short cut "farder on" by a "footpad," as "neerder" than the highroad. All round the Fife coast you hear the long, high-pitched drawl of someone battling with the east wind. The St. Andrews man goes into the "ceetie," or down to the "herr-burr." In rural districts the Fifer says, "Whaur arr ye gaun, maan?" in ore rotundo tones that fitly accompany heavily-laden heels crushing clods at leisure. Between the Tay and Moray Firths we hear nothing but thin vowels and piping tones. The distinctive feature is the f sound of initial wh. Here we are among an alert, canny folk, of keen intelligence, whether we spend a day in prosaic Dundee among "mill-fuds" and "corks," or an "'ouk" in rural Garioch with "gudges" and "getts."
These dialects, fast giving place, the school inspectors tell us, to a mongrel, characterless medley, have suffered the neglect that overtakes the familiar. Local story-tellers and versifiers have used them as literature of a kind, but they have received no study worthy of the name. Jamieson—storehouse of much that is valuable—is here very defective. From Burns we do not receive much aid. He has given a local character to a good deal that passes for Ayrshire simply because he has used it, but, in his vernacular at least, he was not "the singer of a parish." We know too little of the sources of his vocabulary. Where his vernacular is not common to comparatively modern Scotland—that is to say, is but English with a provincial look about it—its source is the poet's reading in Ramsay, Fergusson, Hamilton, and hte treasures of ballads and popular verse. He is so little vernacular as never to use the characteristic relative "'at"—witness "Scots wha hae" for "Scots 'at hes," or such a common colloquialism as "div" and "divna."
If we turn from the diction of dialect to the grammar and accent we have nothing to guide us but Dr. J. A. H. Murray's monograph on the dialects of the South of Scotland. There is, indeed, no work on the phonetics of dialects in the United Kingdom. And all is passing away of the old and only the new and the vulgar remains. Yet what a wealth of national character, social customs, folk-lore, lies in dialect! It represents the operation of individual enterprise in language, rapidly being crushed out by the Juggernaut of collective trading through literature and education. To gather up what remains is not the work of one, but of hundreds. Germany devotes imperial funds and the marvellous philological instincts of an academic people to such work, and even little Denmark has kept a student for months in the Fair Isle observing and collecting.
The sturdy survival of a vigorous vernacular, alongside of a language of books and of education, must go far to account for the fact that Scotland's contribution to English literature has been, both in quality and quantity, out of all proportion to her size and position. Her authors have never needed to strain after such artificialities as characterise the Renascence period, or the efforts of educated Hindoos in our own day. Thus it is that men so markedly in touch with the vernacular as Burns and Carlyle, stand out prominently among all English writers for the actuality of their vision, the mingled virility and veracity of their style. For a healthy vernacular is constantly evolving itself under the natural influences of dialect growth. The effect of education on the literary speech is to develop expression by the hard and fast rules of imitation, by "the days and nights devoted to Addison" and his kind. But a vernacular lends itself naturally to local environment in the selection of words, the meaning put into them, the idioms, the tones of voice, the vowel system, and all that gives to style its colour and individuality. Scotland, from the archaic character of its development, from the fact that a vigorous race found its native tongue early shouldered out of general literature, presents a specially rich field for the study of dialectic growth.
The intelligent observer cannot fail to be struck with the substantial resemblance that runs through the main stock of vocables in vernacular use over the Lowlands, combined with well-marked difference of tone and accent. This is a field of study that one might say has never been worked. To show something alike of its variety and extent, let me present gleanings from two such far-sundered districts as Campbeltown and East Fife. As is well known, the Argyle family not only gave its name to the thriving burgh of Kintyre, but transferred in making it a fresh population from Ayrshire, in thorough sympathy with its pronounced Covenanting proclivities. The result has been to produce such a curious blend of Celtic and Saxon as we find in the following specimen, the phrases of which, though now almost extinct, were in common use in Campbeltown in the earlier part of last century:—
Flory Loynachan (Flora Lonie, as a diminutive.)
O, it buitie be an ogly thing
That mougres thus o'er me,
For I scrabed at mysel' thestreen,
And could not bab an e'e.
My heart is a' to muilins minched,
Brye, smuirach, daps, and gum,
I'm a poor cruicbach, spalyin' scrae,
My horts have struck me dumb.
Dear Flory Loynachan, if thou
Thro' Saana's soun' wert toss'd.
And rouchled like a shougie-shoo.
In a veshal with one most;
Though the nicht were makan' for a roil,
Tho' ralliach were the sea.
Though scorlins warpled my thowl pins.
My shallop would reach thee.
Gloss by a Native of Campbeltown.
- Buitie, must be. Sc. bude, behoved.
- Mougres, creeps over.
- Scrabed, scratched. Celt, sgrob, a scratch, furrow. Cognate Lat. scribo, I write. Eng. scrape.
- Bab, close, Ayrsh.
- Muilins, bread crumbs; minched, Go. mins = small.
- Brye, pounded sandstone. Cf. briz, bruise, bray, snaw-bree.
- Smuirach, very small coal. Sc. and Celt. cf. smoor, smore, smother.
- Daps, for dabs, small flounders.
- Gum, coal dust. Fifesh. coom.
- Cruichach, crooked and bent. Cf. cruck, crook.
- Spalyin' flat-footed, splay.
- Scrae, skinny fellow, a shrivelled old shoe. In the Boer "Tarn o' Shanter " the witches are skraal, lean.
- Horts, hurts.
- Soun=sound, or Strait of Sanna.
- Rouchled, tossed about. Cf. roch, rough.
- Shougie-shoo, cf. Ger. Sheuchel-stuhl, a rocking-chair.
- Ralliach, slightly stormy.
Thou'rt not a hochlan scleurach, dear,
As many trooshlach be;
Nor I a claty skybal, thus
To sclaffer after thee;
Yet haing the meishachan, where first
I felt love's mainglin' smart,
And haing the boosach dyvour too.
Who spoong'd from me thine heart!
O! rhane a Yolus Cronie—quick—
Across this rumpled brain!
Bring hickery-pickery—bring wallink,
Droshachs, to sooth my pain!
Fire water—fire a spoucher full—
These frythan stouns to stay!
For like a sparrow's scaldachan
I'm gosping night and day!
- Scorlins, slimy, cord-like seaweed.
- Thowl pins=rowlocks.
- Hochlan, slack in dress, walking clumsily. Cf. hobble.
- Scleurach, untidy in dress and gait. Celt, sgliurach, slut, gossip, young sea-gull.
- Trooshlach, worthless thing. Cf. trash.
- Claty, dirty. Sc. clarty.
- Skybal, worthless fellow. Celt, gioball, chap, odd fellow. Banffsh. Glossary—Skypal, not having a sufficiency, e.g. "A'll be some skypal o' seed corn."
- Sclaffer, go slipshod, to sclaff.
- Haing, a small swear. Hang.
- Meishachan, subscription dance. Cf. minsh, a change-house.
- Mainglin', crushing, mangling.
- Boosach, drinking, boozing.
- Dyvour, poor looking individual. Lat. debtor. Fr. devoir.
- Sponged, stole deceitfully.
- Rhane, rhyme. Orcadian reen, to roar vehemently; exclusively of a pig in distress: reening, squeaking as a pig.
- Yolus Cronie, a charm (in words). Celt, eolas, knowledge, eoisle, a charm.
- Rumpled, confused.
- Hickery-pickery, tonic bitters, Ἱερός, sacred. πικίς, a bitter herb. See Chamb. Encyc., Art. "Hiera Picra."
- Wallink, brooklime speedwell.
- Droshachs, doctors' drugs.
Were I the laird of Achnaglach,
Or Kilmanshenachan fair,
Crockstaplemore, Kilwheepnach,
Foechag, or Ballochgair;
Did I inherit Tuyinroech,
Drumgary, or Ballochantee,
Creishlach, or Coeran—daing the bit
I'd fauchat them for thee!
O, the Clabbydhu, it loves the Trinch,
The Crouban, the quay-neb,
While the Anachan and Brollochan,
They love the Mussel-ebb.
The Muirachbann the Dorling loves,
And the Gleshan, and Guildee,
They love to plouder through the loch;
But, Flory, I love thee!
Spoucher, wooden ladle for baling a boat. Sc. spud, spade. Cf. Celt.
spuidgear, a baling ladle.
Frythan, cook in a frying-pan.
Stouns, sharp pains. Cf. a stoond o' love.
Scaldachan, unfeathered nestlings. Norse and Sc. scalled, bald.
Gosping, gasping
Daing, a small swear.
Fauchat, to throw up a thing. Cf. feech! expressing disgust.
Clabbydhu, black bivalve, a large mussel still quite faruiliar on the
lower Clyde estuary. Dhu is the Gael. black.
Crouban, a crab, with suffixed article (an): neb, end, nose.
Anachan, bivalve used for bait.
Brollochan, similar, with a little difference in shape.
Muirachbann, white shellfish got near the ebh. Celt. maorach, a shell-
fish, and baan, fair.
Dorling, line of shore joining isle to mainland. Celt. doirling, isthnius,
beach.
Gleshan, coal fish.
Guildee, young of the saithe.
Plouder, plouter, plunge.
For the Celtic of this gloss I have to thank Mr. Alexander Macbain, M.A., author of "An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language" (Inverness, 1896); and the verses, a cutting from a local newspaper, I owe to my friend, the late Mr. Matthew Dunlop, of Dunlop Brothers, Bothwell Street, Glasgow.
The Great Exhibition and the horrors and heroisms of Sebastopol must mark, to those of us who are now middle-aged, the first note from the external world that came to disturb the placidity of what seems now an idyllic youth, spent in the far back fifties in many a Sleepy Hollow with which the bicycle is now enabling us to renew a pleasant acquaintance. It must have been then when such pen-artists as Mr. Barrie and "Ian Maclaren" were "making themselves." The demands of fiction as "the warp and weft" of human passion lie outwith my present quest, which is indeed a much less ambitious task, no other than the attempt to recall the local colour of the village story, the manners and customs of the rustic mind as revealed in its vernacular, and especially the amusements of youth "when all such sports could please." Like the cognate attempt at reminiscence in the "Deserted Village," the task has its limitations as a genuine bit of realism. Most dealings of this kind with rustic life and its vernacular have a tendency to give a false impression to the superficial reader. Firstly, the very shallow suggestion of vulgarity as inherent in the vernacular has to be discounted. Further, such vernacular is really often more old-fashioned than it seems. Much of Burns, not in diction alone but in matter, was half-consciously archaic in his day, and fully intelligible only to the old people whose sympathies with a familiar past he aroused. If we are to believe his biographer, Currie, Burns himself used but little of what now passes for the dialect of the "Kailyard." Of course the accent remained in his case as in that of Scott and Carlyle, though such an unfriendly critic as Samuel Johnson admits that even that may be got rid of "wi' a fecht." "There can be no doubt that Scotsmen may attain to a perfect English pronunciation if they will. We find how near they come to it" [nearer in his day than now, however, for English is more changed relatively than Scots]; "and certainly a man who conquers nineteen parts of the Scottish accent may conquer the twentieth." Pity companies that tour in Scots plays could not act up to Johnson's conviction, and come enough the ultra-Tweed accent to spare us Rab Dow ("The Little Minister") in a tone that rhymes to "now," instead of near the genuine Rob Dow (pronounced Doo) as the reader of Burns knows,—
"But, as I'm sayin, please step to Dow's,
An' taste sic gear as Johnny brews,
Till some bit callan brings me news
That you are there,
An' if we dinna bae a bouse
I'se ne'er drink mair."
They would surely never speak of Roderick Dhu in such a tone, though it is substantially the same name. The Scots long vowel, as in Rob, always presents difficulties to the Southron. Thus the Englishman thinks his absurd "Rabbie" Burns quite to the manner born. A somewhat similar misrendering of Scottish vernacular is the impossible "Babbie" of the "Little Minister." Barbara is familiarised as Baubie. The elided r always lengthens a contiguous vowel.
Let me endeavour in the following sketch to visualise a Fifeshire village at a time when its folk were still bi-lingual, when they had not long had to part with their handlooms, to welcome the iron horse, and to forget the turmoil of the Disruption. The scene is a kirk toon, red-tiled like the East Coast villages, and straggling in one street up the rough ascent called the Paith, and over the school hill, to disappear into the open country round one side of the churchyard. Where the bairns romped between lessons, pre-historic villagers had laid their dead, only to be gradually exhumed in toothless chafts and crumbling harn-pans (skulls), that, from time to time, revealed themselves in the cosy nooks among the stone coffins, where the lassies played at selling sugar and tea with the crisp, bony soil. On the crest of the broad knowe stood a newer God's-acre, but even it so old that the accumulated soil concealed the sculptured base of the thirteenth century tower, beloved of artists and architects. Those Goths, the parish heritors, left the unique apse to the betheral (sexton) for his shools and coffin-trams, and obliterated its exquisite Norman arch with a lath and plaster partition so as to complete the eastern end of their own barn-like structure, a hideous post-Reformation Church. The back walls of the houses, thriftily built hard against the abodes of the dead, had their window-boles looking out on these silent neighbours through a screen of nettles, dockens, apple-reengie, and heather-reenge, as the fragrant southern-wood and showy hydrangea were called. To eastward the kirk hill dropped abruptly, to be imperceptibly lost in a long reach towards the open sea, across a wilderness of bent and sward, of heather and whin and broom, till it ended amid miles of golden sand, where the swish of the white crests as they broke mingled with the moan of the bar when the turn of the ebb brought in the rush of billowy foam to hide the mussel scaups and lagoons, dear to the flounder and the heron, the mussel-picker and the whaup (Oyster-catcher and Greater Curlew).
To westward the school hill sank to the trough of a wide valley which drained to nowhere in particular, but of old its countless lochans and forest of seggs and reeds must have been a paradise to the falconer and fowler. Tradition, indeed, made of it a royal forest in the palmy days of Falkland Palace. It was the favourite hawking ground and sporting estate of James V. (see "Exchequer Accounts," vol. vii.). How Petlethy, as it is called in the "Accounts," fell into the Crown is explained by an obscure episode of 1537, in which year Lady Glamis or Strathmore, of the hated Douglas line, was accused of plotting the King's death by poison and burned at the stake on the Castle hill of Edinburgh. Her son, a lad of sixteen, was left in prison and the estates forfeited, of which Petlethy formed a part. Here there was a fine old castle, built by the Mowbrays. The "Accounts" (1539-40) show frequent charges for household stuff carried between St. Andrews and Petlethy or Glamis by the "ferry of Dundee." After the death of the King, Glamis was restored to liberty and his estates. More precise historic links were few. Archbishop Sharp regularly journeyed by the kirk toon on his way to and from his rural retreat at Scotscraig, overlooking the estuary of the Tay, and that dear lover of a bishop, the great Samuel, trundled gravely past the old church in his progress northwards with the admiring Boswell. Out of the wilderness of marsh over against the kirk hill rose an artificial mound, on which stood for centuries a stronghold of the Earls of Strathmore. The last laird, like the other impecunious but very faintly Jacobite Fife ones, went out in "The Fifteen," and the forfeited estate fell as a realisable asset to the Yorks Building Company, which tore down the venerable pile, noted for the painted ceiling of its hall, to make cow byres. The quaint sun-dial of the castle is now at Glamis. Nothing remains but two rows of yews, terror, as a poison, to the farmer and his stirks, and a portion of the ditch that once drained the moat. Its name, the Water-gate-aillie (alley), suggested the fact that here had been a raised causeway that communicated with the kirk toon across the swampy hollow. This sluggish ditch was a favourite haunt of tadpoles, the "gellies " of the boys. This was also the name for the sliddery leech. A Falkland man was using a leech for swollen tonsils, when suddenly a neighbour woman looking on exclaimed, "Goavy-dick! he's swallowed the gelly." In time the estate was bought by a "nabob," a Scot who had made a fortune in the East at a time when, as Lord Rosebery neatly puts it, the all-powerful Henry Dundas was busy "Scotticising India and Orientalising Scotland." The improving laird ran a deep-cut canal from end to end of the marshy bottom, turning it into fields of the richest loam.
From the foot of the Paith or steep ascent to the kirk hill the village street was continued across the drained valley by a newer line, where the feuars reared their trim cots on the edge of the highroad in the hideous fashion of the orthodox Scottish village. There they plied the shuttle and reeled the pirns in sweet content in the pre-Malthusian days, when a lying-in brought a welcome bread-winner,—
"The weaver said unto his son,
The day 'at he was born,
'Blessins on yer curly pow!
Ye'll rin for pirns the morn.'"
The brisk times of the great French war, when Osnaburgs kept all hands busy, were followed at a long interval by two disturbing elements. A great railway tore its ruthless track across the smiling hollow, and buried its placid, canal-like stream deep down in a gloomy condie (conduit), the home of eels and puddocks and drowned kittlens. The old-fashioned gardens, with their brier, elder, and rizzar (currant) bushes, their artless clumps of bachelor's buttons, gardener's gairtens, dusty miller (auricula), balm, spinks, apple-reengie, speengie (peony) roses, spearmint, and lily-oak (lilac), gave place to coal bings (Fife knew not coal-rees) and lyes for trucking tawties and nowt. A still greater upheaval in the moral world was the new broom of Dissent, with its out-crop of unrest and bad blood. Down at the lower end of the village rose a rival subscription school, where a learned unfortunate, some licentiate under a cloud, starved on £10 a year, school pence and non-Intrusion principles. His successor, a man of many secular activities in spite of a lame leg, came to the village with this ambiguous recommendation: "The character of Mr. A——— B——— is well known in this parish." Near this nursery of Dissent a barn-like Free Church opened the door of its gavel-end on the high road to welcome the swarm from the Erastian hive. The tailor's wife eagerly took the new road, coveting the eldership for her man. Discussing church politics amid a circle of her "cummers," she stoutly maintained that the days of auld Babylon on the school hill were numbered, assuring them that "ye min gang doon the toon if ye waant to hae yer sowl saved." A local variant of a saying, conceived in a similar spirit, credited a Dissenter with the remark, àpropos of the future happiness of a parishioner lately deceased, "I hae my doots; ye see she didna gang to oor meetin' at Lucklaw Hill."
Those were the days, consule Planco, of sunshine and gladness, when the worry of the great world was far remote. There were no big dailies then, only a threepenny bi-weekly, and the one copy that came, franked by its stamp, went round its circle of readers in turn. The circulation was managed by the Sergeant, a veteran of the Kaffir wars, and a striking contrast to Sandy Awrnot, a battered, one-armed wreck from Chilianwallah and Sobraon, who had nothing more interesting about him than a rusty blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons, a passion for snuff and the speediest liquidation of his pension. The Sergeant was intelligent and interesting, as when he told a thrilling tale of the wily Kaffir crawling up to assegai the sentry at his lonely post by the laager, amid the stillness of the "veldt" and 'neath the passionless gaze of the Southern Cross. His thick guttural tones, as if he spoke with a stone in his throat, heightened the effect. He was indeed a gentleman, tall, straight, and broad shouldered, with bronzed, clean-shaven face, broad leather stock for collar, striped blue-and-white shirt with pearl buttons, blue fatigue jacket with brass buttons, and corduroys of the pattern known then as California, a name due to the late outbreak of "yellow fever" on the Pacific coast. He was a bachelor and lodged with the tailor, whose long, ill-girt figure had got for him, from some wit in the village, the nickname "Deuteronomy." The Sergeant mainly employed himself in digging up barrowloads of fir-tree roots, highly resinous, and excellent for kindling or eeldin, as the old folk called it. Nor should I forget the station-master, cheery, good-natured, obliging. As a man of many freits and fancies he was dear to the natural boy. Hens, bees, pigs, dogs, goats, and a donkey in turn ruled his energies. A stranger, making inquiries at a native, was referred to my friend as "the omnifeeshint man in the place."
Oh! those glorious days in that wood where the Sergeant's long-drawn pech accentuated the mattock's every blow. Heavenly were the sloping glades where one beaked (basked) in the sunshine among bracken and blaeberries and bell-heather, while whin and broom pods plunkt their peas on ruddy cheeks, and the fir-cones, known only as "taps," that were scattered around, turned out their recesses to the birsling sun, and the foggie-toddlers (yellow humble bee) hirpled about over the warm turf, among golacks (beetles) and clip-sheers (ear-wigs). The hum of bees and the chorus of birds mingled overhead in the sough of a languid breeze, and everything made for righteousness but the buzzing flies, the nagging midges, and the quiet but thorough prod of the glegs (gadfly). The lotus was too much in the air to tempt one to risk a joabing (jagging) by prying into the whin-buss for the mouse hole entrance to the rannies' (wren's) nest, to sclim the branchless stem of the fir for the keelie's (sparrow-hawk's) eyrie, or even to disturb the sugar industry by cutting into the bark of the birches to suck the sweet sap that seapt out on the sunny side. How poor and imperfect is "trickle out" beside its equivalent seap! An Aberdeen professor of the old school used to tell a slow student to keep a "gleg" ear, and just let his prelections "seap" in. The Orcadian sab means to saturate. Pieces were eaten to the last crust, and pouches "reipet" for mülins (crumbs), while the shady banks of the ditches were searched for soorocks (sorrel), and the dank spots in the woods for Caliban's earth-nuts, or lucy-awrnits, as they were called. For botanising was pursued with the practical purpose of the primitive man, and spoils secured for use or pleasure. Pet rabbits, our mappies, claimed the sookies (clover blooms) and the grundie-swallie, for groundsel was known by its Anglo-Saxon name of "grunde-swyligie," or "grunde-swilie" (what swells over the ground). "Little goodje" (sun spurge) was plucked for its astringent, milky juice, infallible against warts, while the benty dunes were searched for the roots which passed for the savoury liquorice (Common Rest-Harrow). The elder furnished a boon-tree gun or tow-gun, the elm a whistle, the hemlock a spoot-gun, while the brown, withered leaves of the tussilago or colt's-foot—"dishie-logie" it was called—were eagerly utilised as a substitute for tobacco, and smoked, "with diffeeculty," in a "partan's tae." When the girls played at shops the seed-capsules of the docken passed for sugar and tea, while the sweeties were the "nirled" catkins of the alder, since they resembled the genuine "curly-andrew," or sugared coriander seed. More serious was the midday divination with that humble weed, the rib-wort. When the leaf was broken off the exposed ribs were held to forecast the number of pawmies to be faced in the afternoon. The long seed-tipped stalk of this plantain, the "curly-doddy," furnished a weapon for mimic cuts and slashes—in the effort to break off each his opponent's stalk. More formidable sword-play was done with a kail-runt or a clump of the malodorous weebie, as the yellow and ever-assertive rag-wort was called. The name "weebie," seemed to have been strictly local. In the north-east the plant is the "stinkin Elshender." Of old it was called bun-weed. Thus in Holland's "Buke of the Howlat" (circa 1450) the Jay as the Juggler could carry the cup from the king's table, "syn leve in the sted hot a blak bun-wed." The name is still used all over Ulster. Can it be that "weebie" is just "bunwede" inverted? Such a careful philologist as M. Amours, in editing Holland (Alliterative Poems, Sc. Text Soc.), explains "bun" in his author's "bunwed" as M.E. for the long hollow stem of some plants. It is therefore akin to "bone" (Ger. Bein), and woodbine. This syllable certainly accounts for the Fife name for the elder, the boon-tree, a Northumbrian term also, which the "English Dialect Dictionary," not very wisely, explains as the "sacred or lucky tree." A dialect variant is boor-tree, probably bore-tree, as if from its hollow stem. Generally it served as a fence round the old kail-yards, which gives a sort of colour to this suggestion. It was not alone a proof against evil spirits, but the cows refused to touch it. The distribution of this term "bun" or "boon"—Fife, Northumberland, Ulster—well illustrates the vagaries of dialect. It is represented in German as well as English dialects—in the latter always in the sense of a hollow stem, as of flax or hemp or any umbelliferous plant. It is also in Celtic, as "bun," a stock, trunk; "bun-ach," coarse tow. Macbain finds in the Gaelic "bun-tata" (potato) a piece of folk-etymology suggested by applying this descriptive term to the dried stems of the plant. In Irish the ragwort is rogaim, sneeze-wort, from rag, stiff, unwilling, borrowed from Norse hrak, wretched.
The animal world was closely observed. Keen was the zest in the chase of a whittret (weasel) or the smeekin of a wasp's bike. These were the only noxious beasts known. Among birds, the yellow yite (Emberiza citronella) met with scant favour, relic of a medieval tradition that its yellow robe suggested the hated Jew, probably Judas Iscariot himself. In the cabbage rows a pit-fall (a "faw," German "Falle") was set for him. This word faw as a mouse-trap is of very limited range in dialect. In Orcadian we have moosfa', a mouse-trap, Norse mus-föll. When snow covered the ground the barn "wecht" or close sieve was the favourite snare.
There was no thought of egg-collecting. The herried spoils were merely set up on a dyke or stonewall as a mark in the sport called "prappin." A cushie's (wood-pigeon's) nest, or still better a paitrick's (partridge), was prized. Sunny hours were spent out on the moors in search of "dunter's" (eider duck) or "strokannet's" (burrow duck) eggs, hid away in rabbit holes. I can find no trace of either of these terms elsewhere except about the head of the Solway, where the boys know the strokannet. This kannet is a form of gannet, while stroh probably refers to its variegated plumage. Eerie it was to follow the "teuchat" (lapwing) as it wailed out, in tumbling circles round the intruder, "Pease-weet, pease-weet, herry my nest and gar me greet!" the boy's call to the wailing spirit on the wing. Rarely did success follow the rearing of small captives. The young "gorbets" (callow brood) were fed on crowdie till their "gaebies" (crops) if not their nebs, cried "Hold! enough!" Sparrows or "spyugs" were the favourite innocents for such experiments, but we never were Herods, such as the Border herd-boys with their "spung-hewet" or spung-taed (toad) pranks, which consisted in placing a frog or toad or young bird on one end of a stick balanced on a stone, then striking the other end smartly, so as to send the victim high up into the air, to fall neatly cleft in two. Spung, as spang (Norse spong, to stride), was our familiar form of span in playing at bools (marbles). Some of the old herd-boys' sports were kept alive, however, such as the flauchter-spade and the divot-fecht. We still find boys in spring-time cutting out bits of turf to throw at one another, quite unconscious of the origin of the sport in a long-obsolete industry. The herds in rival parishes or "lands" used to have regular pitched battles. The word "flauchter-spade" as a game would seem to be peculiarly local. It consisted in one boy lying on his back, while another stood on the out-stretched palms and leant on the feet of the first boy, held up to him for the purpose. The game was to see which pair of boys would make the biggest leap by the aid of their combined forces. In Lanark and in Moray the boys know the game as the sawmon-loup. The true flauchter-spade, of course, was used in the old days of bad farming to pare turf from the moor, or outfield, to make the compost known as "fulzie," and is still employed to cut large turfs to cover the potato-bings in the absence of straw. The Orcadian flaa, Icel. flaga, is a thin turf, cf. Boer, vlei.
Here let me "divagate" so far as to versify the kindly reminiscence of those days when, as a boy was left to learn "Nature knowledge" at the feet of the mighty Mother herself.
THE SKYLARK.
Lae-rockie—lae-rockie-lee,
Up i' the lift sae hie!
You soar frae the grun', up there to the sun,
An' hing like a mote i' my e'e,
While frae your free throat, on wastlin winds float,
The charms o' your ain melodie.
You fondly look doon whaur your wifockie broon
Sits broodin' sae mitherlie,
'Mang the bluebells an' beather, the yow an' the wether,
An' the hee bummin eidentlie.
It maks my heart wae when I think on the day,
On the bent-brown links by the sea,
How, a loon like the rest, I herried your nest,
An' brocht the bit tear to your e'e.
Owre aften sin syne I've owrestapit the line
Whaur frail mortals dauner agee,
But never I ween done ocht half sae mean
As stealin' your broon bairnies three.
But harder the heart o' the moneyed upstart,
Clay-cauld to a' true poesie,
To roast on a spit, as a denty tit-bit,
The bard o' the muirland an' lea.
Noo shake aff the stoor, the dew an' the shoor,
An' lilt your bit innocent glee,
Ye can cock up your tap or sit lown on Earth's lap,
Ye'll ne'er get a mischeef frae me.
This warl o' care still has joys to share,
'Boon a' maun your sang bear the gree,
An' it heartens to feel, i' the land o' the leal,
Your liltins aye sownin shall be.
The pleasures of the garden, the playground, and the farmyard bulked largely in the village boy's year. Delicious it was to "speel" (climb) the flat-topped garden wall, and strip the pleasantly-tartish "rizzars" from their pendulous stalks. The name is now little known, though Cunningham of Craigends (Scot. Hist. Soc.) tells us he bought rizzars from the garden of a Paisley change-house for 4d. Scots. This was during the Killing Time of the seventeenth century. It denotes anything growing on a branch, from Ger. "Reis," a twig. An Elizabethan street-cry was, "Cherries on the rise!" The rizzar berry is an old name for the currant. A "stake and rise" hut or "wattled cot" was a primitive but inexpensive abode. Still more attractive were the "geans" and "grozers," the latter better known in the West as "grozets," and sometimes grossarts as in James VI.'s application of a homely proverb—"When he heard of the tocher, then, by my kingly crown, he lap like a cock at a grossart." There was the usual round of games—hi-spy, smuggle the gag (never geg), tig, craw-flee. In their due season came bools, peeries, carrick, draigens (kites), girds (hoops). The Border expression "ca' a girr" was never heard. A hoop for any purpose was always a gird. The shinty term, carrick, I find to be quite local. It is only a modification of the word crook, and, like the similar Gaelic term "camanachd" (cam, crooked), properly applies to the stick used. Football and cricket were unfamiliar, so also was rounders. Nothing, therefore, was known of that interesting survival amid the wreck of old words, the "dulls" or "dools" of Allan Ramsay and Fergusson, and still in common use. Girls chose the quieter sports of merry-my-tanzie, jing-ga-ring, or the ever-entertaining palall, the "beds" of Edinburgh, and the peevor (from Fr. paveur, a pavior) of Lanarkshire. Playmates and playthings were known as playfares. The term has nothing to do with fairplay, but is from an Anglo-Saxon "gefera," a companion, the gaffer of a working squad. We have it in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Two Noble Kinsmen"—"Learn what maids have been her companions and play-feers." If "by-ordnar thrang," they were reported to be "cheef" or intimate—not so graphic as the Tweed-side "thick as dugs' heads"—but when they fell out they parted with a Parthian shot, "I'm no' freends wi' you the day." Poetical justice was gleefully noted with a "cheatery's choket you!" or "ye're weel cheap o'd," when Nemesis brought ill luck. "Fair hornie" was the euphemistic appeal for fair play. "Chaps me that!" was enough to secure first choice of a good thing. All enjoyed giving each other "fichils" (Gael. dialect, fachail, strife, and quite local), or challenges to difficult feats—the "brags" of Edinburgh and the "coosie" of Arbroath. Hiding in the crap-wa' or coom-ceiled recess of the hay-loft, where floor and joists meet, was much enjoyed. To be called "bairnlie," "fugie," "coordie" (the "coordie, coordie custard!" of Edinburgh), or to be sent home with a torn "daidlie" (pinafore) was justly shunned. "A carrier of clypes," dreaded in the West, was never heard, though "clippy" for pert was quite common. To settle sides in a game the lot was cast by the inevitable decision,
"Nievvi-nievvi-nik-nak,
Which hand will ye tak?
Be richt or be ye wrang,
I'll begowk you if I can."
Glorious were the June evenings, when the bairns were as happy on the green as the gowans that nestled in a sleep which their tread did not disturb! As the gloamin' from the East chased the azure day to far Western seas, the golden moths flitted over the breer-busses, the corncraik scraiched among the skellocks (wild mustard) in the haugh-land, while the bat circled overhead, easily evading the bonnets tossed up to catch it with the seductive cry, "Bat, bat, come intill my hairy hat!" But all this paled before the delights of "hairst." Eager was the look-out for the first stook as authority for demanding the vacations (Fr. vacance). Rapidly gleamed the hyucks (sickles) in sturdy hands when some forward shearer began "kempin" (Ger. "kämpfen," to contend),—
"This wicked flyte being laid at last,
Some rig now strives for to get past
The ithers, and wi' flaring haste
To show its strength;
This sets the lave a-workin' fast—
They kemp' at length."—
The grieve (A.S. "gerefa," reeve, officer) looked on with mingled feelings, divided between a desire for snod stubble and a speedy arrival at the rig-end. Sweet was the midday meal of baps and beer by a stook-side, varied by a chase for the youngsters after a scared rabbit or a hirplin' maukin (hare)! One ill-set prank I remember. The scene was a hairst rig on a Perthshire farm. The idle boy, stravaiging round, saw among the stubble some nice, plump toads (taeds he called them). Tucking one into a shearer's shawl that she had left on the sunny side of a stook, he waited till the owner came to sit down with her neighbours for her "twal oors," and enjoyed her squeal and fright as she caught sight of the "laithly beast," an expression illustrated in Grigor's laidlick, a loath (tad-pole and leech). The leadin' of the well-won thraves (stooks of twenty-four sheaves) appealed to the boy's love of horses. He took little interest in the gleaners that followed, making up their "singles" out of the scattered ears,
"O' gatherers next, unruly bands
Do spread themselves athort the lands,
And sair they grien (yearn) to try their hands
Amang the sheaves;
For which they're ordered far behind,
To mak' sic singles as they find."—
Winter brought its own sports. Frozen pools in the woods resounded to the clang of the "skaetchers" (skaters). Open snow-clad stretches were seamed with the sheen of slides, whereon in gleeful rows the boys careered, erect or hunker-tottie (crouching), the "coorie-hunker" of other dialects. "Faht," Grigor quotes, "wiz the auld bodie deein fin ye geed in? She wiz crulgin on her currie-hunkers at the cheek o' the cutchick." All went well till a thaw made the ice "bauch" (dull). The long evenings favoured such pranks as Tammy-reekie, Ticky-molie, and Guisin'. For the first a kail-stock was chosen, the pith within the custock extracted, and the space filled with wet tow. Then the process of smeekin some unsuspecting household through the front door key-hole went merrily on. Hallowe'en brought its supper of "stovies," "a pound of butter champit in," said champing being effected by a vigorous use of the porridge-stick, or "theel," the "theevil" of the North-east. There was high revelry when the pig was killed. The blood, in view of black puddings to follow, had to be switched with a bundle of twigs to remove the fibrin, and so prevent clotting. Then the carcase was plumped into scalding water, to ploat (soak), so as to admit of the scraping process. In due course followed the feast of puddings, made from the "pluck," and cracklins, the chitterlings of the English villager. The lard that was extracted was "weel-hained" under the name of swine's "saim," a bit of dialect which appears in "Troilus and Cressida"—"The proud lord that bastes his arrogance with his own seam." The metaphor anticipates the historic one, " Stew in their own gravy." Lastly there were such special aids to friendship as "clack" (cf. Ger. Klecks, a blot), or clagum, the "gundy" of Edinburgh youth, "pawrlies," and "ha'penny deevils" (gingerbread figures, arms a-kimbo, currants for eyes), each offering a more popular fate for spare bawbees than the "pirlie-pig " or nursery savings bank. Gundy is still a favourite of youth. A village rhyme runs thus,—
"Adam and Eve gaed up my sleeve
To fess me doon some gundy;
Adam and Eve cam doon my sleeve,
And said there was nane till Munday."
The farm, its ways and animals, were ever interesting to the boy, himself a stock-raiser on his own account. Knowing in the breeds of doos and rabbits, the "niffering" of the progeny or the "swauping" of the cleckin (litter), with knives and bools as buit (luckpenny), prepared him for a commercial career. The two terrors of the farmyard were the turkey and the billy-goat. The latter was treated, across the wall, to sham offers of tobacco, while the former was greeted with the execration, "Bubbly-jock, your wife's a witch, and a' your bairns are warlocks." But the boy was proudest of all of the friendship of a horse. He knew his "monk" or head-stall (confined to Fife and Aberdeen), his haims, brecham, britchen, and rigwoodie, the necessary items in the harnessing. To walk alongside when he was in the theats (traces) or to hold the reins beside the swingle-tree when he was in the plough was a coveted distinction. A ploughman, appealed to one day by a boy to let him hold the stilts, with the self-recommendation that the candidate "held a plough afore" (before), replied: "That's niver the wye, mannie. Ye min aye hud a ploo ahint, niver afore." The man had served with a Dundee cowfeeder or dairyman, and therefore was "gleger than usual." In the smiddy the horse was equally attractive. The "flaws," or ends broken off the shoenails when driven home, were prized to aid in joiner work. The "treviss," or framework for restive horses, quite a local use of a common term, served as a sort of gymnastic apparatus. A plain farmer, at a banquet met the waiter's frequent change of plates, to suit the development of the menu, with "Thir's nae trevisses in my stammick." One smiddy treviss (Lat. trabs, a beam) I well remember. It was a popular gymnastics apparatus for the boys. Two of us had planted the "dool" or mark for quoits in front of it. I had tried my best but failed to hit it. Unfortunately the other boy was at the moment swinging on the treviss, when the quoit (a disc of thickish slate) caught him. As he was three years my senior, and had a fiendish temper on occasion, I made off instanter. For some days I managed to evade his nursed wrath. Homewards from school one day, however, I caught a back view of him as he was proceeding down the street. I had hoped to jink him and gain the shelter of home before he turned around, but, alas! luck was against me. He turned, and—I had to pay up at compound interest.
With the cow there was acquaintance, not friendship. The old custom of taking all the cows to a common pasture under a common herd was dying out, though practised as late as the fifties. The picturesque feature of the horn-call was absent. More frequently there fell to the lot of the boy the bother of grazing crummie on "bauks" (green narrow paths between fields) for weary hours by the branks, and the terror of bringing her home "hefet" or "hovin" ("swoln with wind and the dank mist they draw"—Lycidas), the result of indiscretion among wet clover. In Orcadian ger-bick is the strip of grass between the corn-rigs in the days of small hordings. It is a compound of ger (gerss or grass) and bauk. In the stall she was secured by the "baikie," or upright post—a term applied in the North-east to the peg that secured the tether in the field, and itself but peg in the guise of the favourite diminutive. The open trench or "gruip" (Ger. Graben, a ditch) made the byre unsavoury. The term is common for a ditch in the fields in Ulster, in Kent, and even in the Transvaal. Arthur Young says that the roads a little way to the north of London were in his time (1780) made troublesome and even dangerous by the “grips, trenches cut across the road to keep it dry before the advent of Macadam. It has lived in popular verse, as here,—
"The muckin' o' Geordie's byre,
An' shooling the gruip sae clean,
Has aft gart me spend the night sleepless,
An' brocht the saut tears to my een."—
The calving was momentous, for on that hung the milk supply. If the cow was "yeld" (in calf but not in milk), or "foarrie" (not in calf), there was no milk, but only a poor substitute, "treacle-peerie," made of sweetened water mixed with barm (yeast) to produce a perfectly harmless ale, feebler even than penny-whaup. "Peerie" (small) is a strange survival from Norse times in the East coast. It is very common in Orkney. There the infant school is the "peerie squeel." Scott in his Life says that "Stevenson, the engineer, landing at N. Ronaldshay, was forced to rout out of bed a mannikin of a missionary whom, because he was so peerie, the Selkies suspected of being a Pecht or elf" (quoted by Tudor). The "beist," or first milk after calving, was too strong to be palatable. When the milk was drawn in the cog it was "sie'd" (sieved), laid away in "kimmins" (shallow tubs), and reamed (Ger. Rahm, cream; Cape Dutch, room) for the churn. Rarely was the sweet or unreamed milk used for drinking, a substitute being found in the skimmed or in the butter milk, known as soor-dook (cf. dough and the Sauer-teig of "Sartor Resartus"). The bappy-faced nonentity was graphically but unkindly described as "daichie" (doughy). The Edinburgh schoolboy, recognising in the Militia the ploughmen that brought the milk to town, derisively christened them "soor-dook sogers." For cheese-making the stomach of a calf was held in reserve, filled with salt, and hung up over the fireplace to make "ernin" (rennet). Coagulation took place sometimes when not wanted. Lapper," to co-agulate, explains Grigor's Banffshire phrases: “The thunner hiz lappert the milk,” “The loans (lea fields) wir pleut weet, an' they a' lappert in spring fin (when) dry wither set in.”
The pig was of less interest to the boy, unless perhaps it was the wee wrig (a variant of wry) or last-born (puny, puis-né) member of the litter, and therefore less perfectly developed. His name is local. In the Gothic Gospels (Luke iii. 5), where part of the work of John the Baptist is to make the crooked paths straight, we have—“wairthith thata wraiqo du raiht-amma," lit. set the crooked or wrig to-rights. This Fifeshire form is akin to the Orcadian raaga—the same word indeed—otherwise known as the water-droger. In England he is St. Anthony's pig, in Perth and Angus the shargar (weakly, scraggy; Orcad. sharg, petulant, teasing), and in Aberdeen and Moray the carneed or cureedy. “I jist got the carneed at a wee pricie.” Grigor glosses crine, to cause to grow stunted, as, “Y've crinet yir caar (cattle) by spehnin them our seen (soon). Connected with carneed is carn, to soil, e.g. “I earned ee aa' wi' the jice” (gravy). Beginning life as a "grice,” the pig, when weaned (speaned), became a “shot," and, while thereafter in process of assuming a douce obesity, was familiarly addressed as Gus-gus ! or spoken of as Sandy Cam'l, a name widely spread over the Lowlands. The Orcadian “grici-fer” (swine fever) is the distemper that deprives swine of the use of their hind legs. I have seen many of these thrown out from a distillery into the brimming tide. The popular philosophy of proverbs took a purely material view of this worthy. The old folk capped the incongruity between pearls and swine with: “What can ye expec' o' a soo but to grumph?” The last scene of his uneventful history was the bustling one of stickin' with the gully, ploatin' in the big tub to get the hair off, scrapin' and disembowelling.
Spare hours in the busy day were given to watching the joiner, ever popular if good-natured enough to turn “peeries” (spinning tops), or the mason swinging his heavy mell (Shet. a large broad fist). Not so popular he, to judge by his derisive name, "dorbie." The long winter evenings were often devoted to technical education of no mean kind amid the bustle of the craftsman's shop. The handloom weaver, a comtemplative artist whose craft had by this time almost disappeared, was coaxed into sparing the ends of his warp to make strings for "draigens" (kites), or the tow from his yarn to supply shot for spoot-guns. The former was known as "thrums," the thrummy cap of the ballads, and, of course, the cognomen of Mr. Barrie's native Kirriemuir. The tailor was voted a windy buddy, much given to blawin' or boasting. Odd uses were found for his runds (selvage of cloth), and there were sly pilferings of his keelivine or pencil. The Orcadian rands is the edge of a shoe-heel: rynd is a long strip of cloth. Interesting was it to watch the hot "goose" hissing along the damp seam over the "lawbrod." A Glasgow bailie who had been familiar professionally with the flat-iron of the tailor and how he used it, diverted the Town Council by remarking that an opponent's criticism was no more to him than "a skite aff a tailor's goose." Every way more entertaining was the sutor as he beat the bend-leather on his lap-stane, drew his thread across the roset (Gael. rosead, resin), deftly birsed a fresh lingle end, or passed the gleaming elshon (awl) through his hair. In those days there was no lack of variety or interest in village industries, as yet little affected by machinery or the rush town-wards. All this is commemorated in the Fife toast,—
"Here's life to men and death to fish,
The pirn and the ploo',
Horn, corn, linen-yairn,
Tups and tarry 'oo'."
Around the ingle-neuk character was both formed and best studied. Lessons played a small part in the evening economy, for school passed for little, and the "maister" was held in no great esteem among the monotonous drudgery of "coonts" (sums) and Catechism, and the mechanical sing-song drawl called reading aloud. For the well-doing the highest praise was: "Ye'll be a man before your mother yet," while for the be-fogged bungler were reserved the choice epithets, "kirn-stick," or dunder-head, and the ever-ready "pawmy." Neither the Edinburgh boy's pandy (mediæval dominie's "pande palmam," stretch out your palm), nor the Saxon "loofie" of the Glasgow one, was known in Fife. Village education was at a low ebb then. Too often it was a poor choice between the antiquated stickit minister who couldn't teach and the bumptious "laddie in a jekkit" from the Normal, who knew little that was worth teaching. Not much effort was made to put any soul or meaning into what was read. A boy of those days, encountering in his text-book the lines,—
"Around the fire one wintry night
The farmer's rosy children sat,
The fagot lents its blazing light"-
and so on—had a vision of an untidy drudge "troking" about the kitchen, for such was the import of the mysterious "fagot" in the local vernacular. The kitchen was the common room of humble households. The door, secured by a sneck, opened upon a short passage, the trance, connecting the butt and the ben. Against its wall stood the trap (Ger. Treppe) or ladder leading to the garret. The wily, pawky flatterer was familiarly known as an "auld sneck-drawer." The centre of the kitchen was the well-caumed fireside, the saut-girnal in the jambs, the goodman's settle (bink) between the lowe and the crusie, and pussy bawdrons, or cheetie-pussie, not far from the warmth of the ace (ashes). Thrift prescribed a big gatherin' coal backed by chows (small coal) or, at the worst, coom (dross). On the mother's knee began the knowledge of the vernacular. How the peekin', dwinin' bairn was brightened up by "Creepie, crappie, &c.," or "Bree, bree, brentie, &c.," or,—
"John Smith, a falla fine,
Can ye shoe this horse o' mine?"—
"Yes, indeed, an' that I can,
Juist as weel as ony man.
Pit a bit upon the tae
To gar the pownie speel the brae,
Pit a bit upon the heel
To gar the pownie pace weel,
Pace weel (presto), Pace weel" (prestissimo),
"This ane biggit the baurn,
This ane stealt the corn,
This ane stood and saw,
This ane ran awa'-
An' wee peerie-winkie paid for a'."
The goodwife was an authority in minor morals, keeping careful watch over her flock as maturing years expanded character. An awkward girl was "a muckle tawpie" (Fr. taupe), a foolish boy was a "haveril," a "gawpus," or a "gomeril." The simpleton was a "cuif" or a "nose o' wax," while mental smartness was esteemed under the names of "gumshon," or "smeddum," or the "rummle-gumshon," of everyday common-sense. The elder sister, "fikey" and "perjink," was severe on a younger brother's hashiness, but the douce mother was wisely tolerant. "Auld maid's bairns are never misleared" (lair, lore), she would remark. She tholed much from the wheengin, raenin (Gael. ran, roar, cry, Norse, reen) bairn, but soon got out of patience with the thrawn, contermashus (contumacious) youngster. The "gansel" or insolent retort of the pert "smatchet" was sternly rebuked equally with the airs of the upsettin' brat. In Henryson's (1462) "Town and Country Mouse" the latter retorts thus: "Thy guse is gude, thy gansell sour as gall." In illustration Morley quotes the proverb, "A gude guse indeed, but she has an ill gansell," and explains the word as a severe rebuke (from agan, again, and sellan, to give), but in living use it is rather the equivalent of a "cheeky" retort, a speaking back impudently. A Morayshire phrase is, "Jist a gansellin creatur." Wright ("Dialect Dict.") says, "Originally a garlic sauce for goose, but now only figuratively, a saucy speech." Thrift was strictly inculcated, especially in the sparing use of best clothes. "Ilka day braw maks Sabbath a dilly-daw," or seedy-looking idler. Many a bien (well-to-do) good-wife went about in a short-gown and wrapper while her drawers were well-stocked with apparel.
Table manners were attended to, if at all, in somewhat blunt fashion. The hasty eater was warned not to ramsch his food. To snotter or slaver was no less objectionable in the callant, the loon, or the haflin. Too much assurance was rebuked with "Ye're no blate." The impatient call for dinner elicited the diplomatic rejoinder, "It's braw to be hungry and ken o' meat," or, "It's on the hettest pairt o' the hoose." Such dainties as tea and white bread were reserved for elders, and remonstrance was met with the proverb, "Corn's no for staigs" (colts). Grown-up folk held the young with a ticht hand, dealing out "skelps" and "paiks" with liberal allowance as a necessary aid to growth, morally and physically. The "owreblate" youth was voted a "sumph," a word still used by colliers to denote the, as it were, swampy hollow at the bottom of the shaft. The tomboyish girl was condemned as "roid," a corruption of rude, and the light-headed as "giglot" in the fashion of Cowper's office pastime, "giggling and making giggle." The mischievous (with its Elizabethan accent on the penult) boy was a "monkey," or a loon-lookin' dog, or a limb of Sawtan, an expression like Burns's rundeils or clippings off Auld Nick. His glossarists, by-the-by, have not looked very narrowly into this graphic word, a run' or rund, the selvage of cloth or whatever goes round. It is the too-familiar Rand of the Transvaal, or reef of hills round Johannesburg where the gold-mines are. The throo-gaw'n mother could not endure sloongin over work, the couthie one had no patience with gloomin', stoomin' (Ger. "stumm," dumb), or dortin', while the furthie housewife had nothing "near" about her hospitality. Throo-ither-ness in house affairs was odious to the purpose-like goodwife. The ill-set rascal, the ill-doin' waffie, and the wairdless vagral body found no favour, and when someone had to go anes errand on a particular service, no mercy was shown to him that said he was "deid sweer" or would be "seek sorry." Gossip was condemned as clashing, an essentially feminine weakness. The severest criticsm of conduct, indeed, was directed to the frailer sex, backsliders being progressively characterised by the uncomplimentary epithets—gilpy, besom, hizzie, herry (Ger. Herr, master, cf. virago), randy, limmer. To get into debt was to tak on, and to become bankrupt was to fail, a social catastrophe linked with insanity and suicide as among the sorest of fortune's buffets. To run the cutter (whisky bottle) betokened a confirmed habit of tippling. A sand-bed o' drink graphically described the constant boozer, chronically "on the ball." A crack over the stoups filling at well or pump was accentuated with such expressions of surprise as my certie! my san! losh peetie me! goavy-dick!
The inborn habit of thrift led to fine distinctions in expressions for small quantities:—
- Tate=Eng. tit, tot, teat.
- Cum=Orcad. "a curney o' piltacks" (large number of coalfish).
- Stime=a speck, "canna see a stime."
- Bittock=little bit.
- Puckle=a little "picked up."
- Wheen=piece broken off, akin to Lat. cuneus, a wedge.
- Feck=a good deal.
- Hantle=handful.
- Gowpen=what one can scoop up.
- Nievefu'=a fistful.
- Wee hue (Renfr.)=a small portion as a tasting, "a wee hue mair," anither drappie.
An obsolete word, haet (cf. Boer lets, ocht or anything, niets, nocht) is in Burns's "Twa Dogs,"—
"But Gentlemen and Ladies warst,
Wi' ev'n down want o' wark they're curst,
They loiter, longing, lank, an' lazy:
Tho' deil haet ails them, they're uneasy."
The "hale apothick" expressed what is vulgarly known as "the whole bilin." I do not think the word, as thus used, had anything to do with the legal "hypothec." Besides, it would be very awkward to have two initial aspirates so close together. The term is the Greek apotheke (a granary), very early adopted in Germany and Holland for a shop or general store. Both in sense and sound this form is preferable to "hale hypothik."
The best qualities of the goodwife came out in distress, as when a glisk o' cold or a groosin (cf. Ger. "grausen," to shudder) brought on a hoast, or foreboded the nirls (measles), or maybe the more serious broonkaidis; or taebetless fingers had to be thawed in loo water; or skelbs and hacks and gaws (galls) needed tender handling or a healing saw (salve). But the case was altered if a thoughtless pliskie brought a broken "lozen" (lozenge-shaped pane). If the glossarists of Burns had been familiar with the graphic "taebetless" (fingers all thumbs, without to-put or applicaiton) they would have better understood his descritpion of his muse as a "taepetless, ramfeezeled hizzy." Should playmates fall out there was a little sympathy at home with the cloor on the head, the dad i' the lug, or the bluidy nose. The sensible mother of those days, like the Cassius of "Julius Cæsar," did not think "that every nice offence should bear his comment." "Best tholed, soonest mended" was all the consolation. Grown-up people spoke more gravely of an income, a weed, the rose (erysipelas), or the pains (ague). A cut was delayed in healing when teh proud flesh appeared or when it began to beal (suppurate) and form a gatherin'. The water brash was a frequent symptom of indigestion. And, after all, there were the dispensations that could only be tholed. The undergrown was a droch (dwarf), the curved-spine was boolie-backet, the cleft palate was the whummle-bore. But worst rial of all was that heavy handfu', the helpless natural or harmless loonie (lunatic).
A list of about 350 words, embracing much of the vernacular that has been used in the foregoing pages, was distributed by me, to be reported on by obliging correspondents in East Fife, Angus, Hawick, South Lanark and Galloway, The reports bore evidence to the very general diffusion of these Fifeshire expressions. It must be said, however, that the reporters were all in sympathy with the archaic int he vernacular. In one district, East Fife, a very large proportion of the words were found to be now unknown, significant of how little of the vernacular now lives. As this was the very district where the material forming the list was originally gleaned, we hav ehere a striking proof of decadence.
Though the words were upon the whole familiar to some of the districts, there were, in many cases, curious preferences—both when there was close proximity, as Fife and Forfar, and again at wide intervals, such as Fife and Galloway.
I select the following as reported blank (absolutely or in the sense or form given here) from all the districts, except, of course parts of Fife:—
- Gellie, leech.
- Tiki-molie, boys' trick.
- Gutter-gaw, sores between toes of bare-footed walkers in puddles.
- Fichils, feats.
- Pennart, tin case for penholders.
- Seek sorry, unwilling.
- Chows, small coal.
- Speengie-rose, peony.
- Cummins, in malt. Jamieson has "Cumin, wort.”
- Hagg, man who tends fat cattle.
- Treviss, frame to shoe horses; common in other sense.
- Flauchter-spade, boys' game.
- Hunker-tottie, cowering slide.
- Monk, horse's head-stall.
- Nose o' wax, ninny.
- Sand-bed o' drink, drunkard.
- Giglot, laughing girl.
- Whummle-bore, cleft palate.
- Onbonny, ugly.
- Shelly-coat, tortoise-shell moth.
- Meedge, mark to steer by.
- Thro-pit, go.
- Rüenin, wbimpering.
- Fuggy-toddler, humble bee.
- Peeler, soft crab.
- Ringle-e'ed, wall-eyed.
- Stoom, to look sulky.
It might also be said that these are not in Jamieson either, if one might speak positively on such a point. Upon another set of these words corroboration was got only from Jamieson:—
- Coo-baikie, pole securing cow in stall.
- Dunter, eider-duck.
- Strokannet, burrow-duck.
- Poddlies, young saithe.
- Gurthie, nauseous, what "staws."
- Flaws, ends of horse-shoe nails.
- Fraekin, wheedling.
- Wrig, puis-né grice, or young pig.
- Golack, beetle.
- Kimmen, a milk-pail.
- Carrick, shinty stick.
- Furthie, liberal.
- Bauk, grass walk in a garden.
- Gansell, insolent retort.
- Spar, close a gate.
- Keelie, a sparrow-hawk.
These lists are given merely as specimens of what are purely local and, in some cases, lost words.
The bulk of the foregoing specimens of the vernacular, regarded as an object-lesson in popular philology, is the common property of that bygone phase of village life in Lowland Scotland which has been dubbed, by unsympathetic critics, the "Kailyard." As the result of the observation of actual usage within a special area, it has features of its own that might be valuable for comparison and suggestion. Such studies do not call either for book knowledge or profound scholarship. Be it always remembered that philological research has these distinct fields—(a) The genesis or kinship of a word; (b) its various applications; (c) its distribution, if vernacular. These are precisely analogous to the great departments of research in the natural sciences of observation. The scholar must be left to discuss the first in his dictionaries. For the other two, “the plain man may well be a valuable and competent witness, but to gather his evidence demands wide observation and generous co-operation. The foregoing pages have attempted to show that the “plain” man’s field of observation possesses a broad, human interest, in which mere dictionary-making must be deficient.
2. Farm Life in Moray.
It is a hopeful sign of progress that education is at last recognising the value of Bacon's two-fold instrument for the acquisition of knowledge—observation and experiment. In the natural sciences we readily concede a place to this method, but in the study of language we are still devoted to books. The naturalist explores sea and land in search of truth, but human nature offers a still wider field in recovering the fading traces of old customs, manners, and beliefs, embedded in obscure terms and proverbial sayings. And the joy of following up one of those survivals and garnering the crowd of associated recollections which it suggests is of far more vital, because more human, interest than the accumulation of “specimens,” stuffed or dried.
The following study is designed as a specimen of what might be called field-philology. The invention of printing has helped to make us all forget that the spoken, not the written, word is the true phase of a living language. This is specially true of the vernacular. If we wish to get into intimate touch with its diction we must catch it from the lips of those who think and feel in it. And if the listener is in a similar position, there will arise a real bond of sympathy and a fruitful stimulus to the imagination. With a view to such study I prepared a list of terms familiar to me as the general vernacular of my youth in East Fifeshire and utilised it in interviewing my living subjects."
While holidaying at Stonehaven one summer I had the good fortune to fall in with a most interesting specimen of the countryman of the olden time, unspoilt by town, by school I might almost say, and certainly by college and books. He was a Mr. Ross, and was spending the autumn of his days with his son, who had the leading photographic studio in Stonehaven. For fifty years and over he had lived amid rural surroundings, and not only had much to communicate but took a real pleasure in communicating it. The delights of reminiscence, to one even moderately endowed with imagination, are a real compensation for declining age and powers. What I gathered from this observant and intelligent informant I have amplified from my own stores. His native district of Morayshire lay in the western comer of that north-eastern shoulder of Scotland which is, philologically, perhaps the most interesting in the country, surrounded as it is by the Celtic west and the North-Anglian south, and ever open to the influx of the hardy Norsemen who came on the wings of the snell Nor-easter, The Celtic elements are extremely, but quite accountably, few, but the Norse abound, and therefore I have made ample use of such material as lies to hand in Edmonston's “Dictionary for Orkney and Shetland,” and, still more largely, in the late Dr. Grigor's “Glossary of the Buchan Dialect.” To these I add the two volumes on the “Dialect of Cumberland," a labour of love on the part of three dalesmen and excellent philologists, Messrs. W. Dickinson, S. Dickson Brown, and Dr. E. W. Prevost. Theirs is quite a model of what Dialect Glossaries ought to be. The interest of these volumes in this connection lies in the fact that the dales, through the Solway and Irish Sea, offered a welcome home to the Norsemen. For the Scottish side of this Norse influence I have also used the glossary in Shaw's "Country Schoolmaster,” a Nithsdale observer. Including my own native Fife, therefore, on its coast side, my survey embraces all the Norse influences ever brought in Scotland to blend with the older North-Anglian, excluding those on the Western Isles, the effect of which last on the native Celtic was neither extensive nor persistent. My friend's memories went back almost to the first quarter of last century. A Morayshire man, he had spent his youth and most of his manhood in the beautiful vale of Pluscarden. It is cut off from the plain of Moray by the long wooded ridge of the Heldon Hill, forming a welcome screen from the north, while southwards across the vale the ground rises away up to the moorlands of Badenoch. Through the vale flows the Black Water on its way to join the Lossie near to Elgin, six miles off. The cyclist, climbing the easy ascent of the valley, makes his exit from the vale to westwards by the base of Cluny Hill into Forres. The return journey to Elgin on the North side of the Heldon would take him by the mystic sculptured stone of King Sweno and the ruined abbey of Kinloss.
Early in the thirteenth century the Cistercians planted their picturesque priory here in a secluded vale (vallis clausa) that might well remind them of their own Italian Vaucluse. Alexander II. (1230) was partial to the Cistercians. He planted them in other two secluded retreats — Ardchattan and Beauly. Scotland owes them an unrecorded debt, for they were the farming monks who brought to the wild Celt land the arts of the sheep walk, the garden, and the meadows rich with corn. They chose out, as here and at Newbattle beside the South Esk, a spot embosomed among the hills, on the generous soil of the haugh land, where the clack of the mill might blend with the matins. The scene now breathes a singular calm—the solemn approach between the files of thickly-grown hollies, the stately eastern gateway through the lofty precinct wall, the silent mill, the deserted cloisters and the grey walls of the roofless pile looking out at intervals from their mantle of ivy. The lands came to the Duff family about 1710, but were sold by the Duke of Fife to the late Marquis of Bute. When I saw the priory the ivy was being removed, and the usual diggings and drawings of the Marquis's restorations were in progress. Early in last century (1821) the Earl of Fife contemplated the fitting up of the choir as a church for the district, but, instead, the monk's Calefactory was roofed in and set up as a Chapel of Ease, which ultimately was handed over to the Frees at the Disruption. Above this low-ceilinged place of worship is the Dormitory, usually chosen from the warmth afforded by the kitchen beneath. It is now roofed as a ballroom and a shelter for the trippers.
The precincts are enclosed within a high wall pierced by the principal gateway, which one approaches along an impressive avenue of solemn-looking holly. The ancient mill-lade skirts the wall here. The nave never was built. The choir and two transepts of the chapel still stand. When old St. Giles' in Elgin was pulled down (1826) its pulpit was secured for the chapel here.
The centuries have rung their changes on this haven of spiritual peace. Through the rough medieval ages the lay brothers ploughed and planted in the vale, while the monks plied their pious round of book and bell, of plain song and mass. The storm of the Reformation passed harmlessly by. The last of the monks lived here in peace till 1586. The Presbyterian Church was for generations too poor to do much for rural districts like this, so that not till the beginning of the eighteenth century was the Evangel again heard in the valley. Once more (1843) was there a moving of the waters, when almost the entire flock came out, and the tiny Chapel of Ease was handed over to the Church of Chalmers. Lastly came the Marquis of Bute, with his devotion to the beautiful past of the Old Faith, and swept from the sacred walls the kindly mantle of green within which the centuries had enfolded them. If anywhere in Scotland the imagination could plant the ideal retreat of Milton's Il Penseroso, surely it would be here,—
“But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy-proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies."
But the contrast of to-day had little that was ecstatic in it for me as I wheeled away from the hallowed precincts on a summer Saturday evening to the strains of the tripper's melodeon and the wry-necked fife.”
Some fine trees in the haugh are probably patriarchs of the pre-Reformation period, but the dense coverts on the surrounding hills, closing in far to west with the vast woods of Altyre beside the Findhorn river, are the growth of last century. Till then all these north-eastern parts were the bleakest and barest in Scotland. In the youth of my friend the picturesque counted for little. Above stretched the monotonous brown of the moorland, in the bottom of the vale were the frequent miry hollows where the sheep got drowned or the cow “lairdet." Rutty, stone-strewn tracks led to the frequent clachan or humble homestead. Over the Heldon, on the great north road, the “Defiance” rolled on its way to Inverness, a daily excitement to Elgin, where it brought the London letters late in the afternoon of the third day after posting. Life in the vale was purely agricultural. Ploughmen had up to £10 a year, with board; such artisans as got jobs made but half a crown a day. A weaver, working his longest and hardest, might have ten shillings a week.
It is significant that the minister and the schoolmaster found no place in my friend's narrative. Naturally his ideas grouped themselves round the farm. A large proportion of his words belong to the common stock of Lowland dialect, so I select only the more novel ones, passing over, at the same time, any comment on his own interesting personality. I knew the term wrack for the refuse of weeds from the fields, but he called it brintlin (burnings). This refuse of the fields was mainly formed of “ quickens" or couch-grass and knap or knot-grass, as in “Comus"—“with knot-grass dew-sprent.” This latter was red with knobs or knaps at intervals on the stalk. One of my own boyish diversions into wild life was to bury potatoes in the heap of burning wrack, and to pull them out when roasted and eat them piping hot. New to me was his term, a wining, for "a bittie o' a field.” “Fou arr ee gettin' on?” “O, I've jist a wining to dee.” So, too, his "fleed,” a head-or end-rig in a field. The obsolete thig, to beg, once in general use, was applied to the thriftless ones who would go from house to house for “pucklies o corn” at sowing time, or for a sheaf when reaping was in progress. Originally it was the begging of seed oats to sow the first crop on entering a farm. The hay was done up first in colies, then tramp-colies, and last in hey-soos or trances. In Shetland the head-koil or koil-tett is the top sheaf on the haystack. The sickle was the hyuck, either the ancient toothed ind, requiring no sharpening, or the syth-hyuck, a very capable implement in the hands of an active lass, specially if kemping or striving with rivals for speed. There were a few odd terms for implements. A rake to clear out manure from a cart was a hack or a drag, the latter, curiously, a North of England word. In Cumberland a drag is a three-pronged fork, known in Fife as a graep, for dragging or drawing litter out. Hack is another form of howk, dig out. "Sunshine mead him throw his cwoat off when in 'hackin' he grew warm " (Cumb.). A drill harrow was a shim, known not only in Banff and Moray but in Yorkshire. In Kent it goes bodily between the rows of hops. Winnowing of old was done on the sheelin (shelling) hill. An enormous saving was effected when a machine for it was introduced near the close of the eighteenth century. Many worthy folks thought it an impious thing thus to raise wind by art and man's contrivance. The fanners, as the machine was called, was in Moray named a winister.
These verses express the scruples of the straiter sect that objected to 'novations,—
"But the priest o' the pairish,
Sae godly and richt,
Got word o' the wark
'At was done that nicht;
And cam to oor mailins
An' made muckle din,
'Bout the corn at was windet
Wi' ungodly win'."
A minister's wife, having made an effort to have her daughter "finished" in Edinburgh, was naturally a diligent matchmaker. Entertaining an eligible young farmer at the manse one evening, she made much of the young lady's piano playing. The farmer, appealed to for a compliment, confessed that to him the best music was the sound of the fanners.
The management of the domestic animals produces many-special terms. My Morayshire friend distinguished three stages in the life of an ox—calf, stirk, stot. A colt was a clip and not the usual " staig " (Gael, cliob, explained by MacBain as anything dangling; cliobach, hairy, shaggy; cliobog, a colt; clibeag, a filly). In German, Klepper is a pony. It is certainly surprising to find any word like the German Klepper in Morayshire. Kluge suggests that Klepper—akin to our clip, what catches by an embrace — may be from the little bells on the harness, or from the short, clipped action in running. The Celtic sense, as MacBain gives it, seems preferable to this. The tether which secured the cow in the stall or at grass was the baikie. In Fife an upright pole, secured to the floor of the byre at one end, to the roof at the other, had a sliding ring on it, to which the collar of the cow was attached, so that its head could move freely up and down. This was the coo-baikie. The word was never used in any other connection. In Northumberland the collar was a bent wooden band shaped like a horse-shoe, and called a f rammelt or thrammelt. This was attached to the upright baikie. Here we probably have the name for the apparatus that occurs in "Johnie Gibb," an Aberdeenshire story, viz., sells and thrammles. Sele or sale is a word widely diffused over the Indo-European tongues, and always in the general sense of a rope. In Moray the rope which passed over the cow's head and connected the two wooden cheeks of the branks or headstall was the iver or over-sell. Compare the Go. in-sailjan, used where the bearers of the paralytic lowered his bed by ropes through the roof, " in-sailidedun thata badi."
The expression, hovin, for a cow swoln up after eating wet clover, has such variants as heftet (Fife), and boutent (Moray). For Nithsdale Shaw gives us an unusual application of "heftet "—domiciled as of sheep used to a pasture, evidently a metaphor from haft or heft for a handle. But the Gothic Gospels (Luke XV. 15) say that the Prodigal Son gahaftida sik, hired himself. Boutent is from the Buchan bowden to swell, used always in this connection. Dialect is rich in tool and implement terms. The Fife deeple, a variant of dibble, is in Moray dimple, used in planting "neeps and kale." "It took," said my friend, "three men to dimple an acre a day." A variant, again, on snod, neat, is the peasant's sned, to head and tail turnips. Such terms often preserve obsolete farming processes, such as cannas (canvas), used to catch the winnowed corn. Hence the Buchan proverb for independence, "I can win (winnow) i' my ain cannas." A cannas-breid was a familiar expression for size, as, "A cot wi' a cannas-breid o' a gairden." Mink is a Morayshire variant on monk (Fife), the head-stall of a horse. Grigor's " Glossary " gives the act of coiling up a rope as minkan-up, and a rimin-mink as a slip-knot. " Mink up the coo's tether," is one of his phrases. Call-names for domestic animals are wonderfully persistent, such as Trooie (Moray) to a cow, for the Fife Prooie, or the Buchan Treesh. The duck call, Wheetie, and the pigeon, Peasie, are both widely spread. My friend was not so famUiar with geld (to castrate, hence gelding), as with its variant lib, of which he had an odd application. If one was getting in new potatoes, before starting to lift he would say, " I'll gae an' lib twa or three to see what kind they are."
Similarly plants and animals had their special names. My friend did not know the Fife name for the ragwort, the weebie, or the Ayrshire bun weed, but called it stinking Willie, just as in Ulster, where it is the stink-weed. From a strong and persistent root it sends up a cluster of tall stems crowned by a mass of small yellow flowers. One variety of the plant, the tansy, has a peculiarly pleasant odour when pressed. My friend had the usual old "freit" about the weed: "It liket a bit good ground and did na grow weel in Buchan," for instance. It is certainly evidence of disgracefully bad farming. I have seen a small paddock beside a County Down homestead so covered with the growth as almost to hide the grazing cow. The farmer let himself be cheated out of two-thirds of his grass, when he could have scythed down the weed within an hour. Eagwort grows freely in ill-drained, poor pasture. The cornfields were equally impoverished by what in Moray was called the gool. The pretty yellow of the wild chrysanthemum is tolerable enough on a small scale ; of old it must have been odious to anyone but the sluggard. The yaar or corn-spurry is not quite so obtrusive. It grows low but spreads far and thickly. Both were pronounced to be " very bad, very destructive." He had the popular aversion to the harmless newt—"abominable critturs. I've seen them in damp hoossis." It has been suggested that this prejudice was due to a confusion with the poisonous asp of Scriptures. The newt is widely known as the ask, esk in Fife. It is really the same as the river name, Esk, Celtic for water. In Cumberland the newt is the wet or water ask, the lizard the dry. Another creeping thing that he shunned was the earwig, which he knew, not as the clipsheers of my youth, but as the flachter golak. Properly the golak is the clock or beetle. The "flachter" is explained by the old man's distinction between a divot and a feal. The former was a long thin turf "cas'n wi' a flachter spade" for roofing or covering potato heaps ; the latter a thick turf, "cas'n wi' a common spade" for building the dykes that formed the universal fences or for the walls of houses, layer of stone and feal alternately. The only one that practises flachterin now is the golfer. The garrie-bee was more attractive than any golak. It was described as striped and about the size of the foggie, but having a lot more honey. The "human boy " of old, like Caliban, the primitive man, loved " the bag o' the bee." The foggie, also known as the foggie-toddler, is the small yellow bee that seems to crawl, baby fashion, over the soft, yellow fog or moss. Gar, or gor, as a prefix in plant and animal names, denotes what is large and coarse, as in gyr-falcon, gor-cock. Fozie is foggie through age from lying on the ground. In Shetland fog is fjugg, airy stuff.
In the domestic series I gathered a few fresh specimens. The gizzened tub, rendered leaky through drought, is quite familiar. Not so the Morayshire expression for correcting this fault by soaking in water again. This was known as beenin. "Deed, ee'll hae to pit that tub to been afore ee get muckle eess o't." The feeling for a telling metaphor is keen in Scottish dialect. A genial host, pressing a cronie whose drouth was of more cautious type, said, "Dod, man, yer no beend yit." The word is specially North-eastern in habitat, and so may be akin to the Danish bolner, to swell. The loss of the l is quite regular. The word lends itself to the expression of a loud, full noise, and in this aspect may be recognised in the Bullers of Buchan, where the waves make a terrific bullerin among the rocky caverns. Shaw's "Dumfriesshire Dialect" also notes the Bullers in this connection, as well as the figurative application to a great growth under an accession of heat and rain—“Everything's bullerin out.” Norse influence is very notable in the river valleys running up from the Solway. On the other hand, Gaelic had surprisingly little influence, even in Moray. I gathered but one notable specimen, greesh, an old-fashioned fireplace of clay, built against the "gavel” of the cottage. Just such an one Bums's father set up in the “auld clay biggin.” It is the early Irish gris, fire. Shaw notes the diminutive grushach, hot, glowing embers, and Chambers, in the delightful “Popular Rhymes,” gives it in a Dumfriesshire variant of the “Wee Bunnock": “There was an old man and an old wife, and they lived in a killogie. Quoth the auld man to the auld wife, Rise and bake me a bannock.' So she rase and bakit a bannock, and set it afore the greeshoch to harden.” The Orcadian kiln-huggie is the fireplace of the kiln. To these may be added a very common Morayshire word, doubtless of native origin, howp, a mouthful, as in the expression, "Let's see a mouthfu' o' watter."
Small communities tended to foster the personal, and generally uncomplimentary, form of familiar criticism. My friend had several peculiar specimens of this class, which I give at random:—Be-gyte, a variant of the more usual be-gowk, to cheat, e.g. “I was terrible be-gytet," said a man who had unwisely married a second time; dirdum, a scolding, overbearing dame, but usually a disturbance, blame; galsh, rubbishy talk, e.g. “A galshin crittur, only a lot o galsh an' nae eediefaction in't;" gutty, as a big-bellied bottle—Wright quotes from the Ayrshire story, “Dr. Duguid,” “A gutty we chiel that gaed aboot the toon wi' knee breeks on"; pee-akin, sickly, puling, e.g. "Yer like a deein chicken, a pee-akin thing," a variant of the West of Scotland peel-wersh, sickly; peerie-weerie, “ terrible weak stuff,” a variant of the Glasgow peelie-wally. In Lanarkshire the little finger is peerie or peerlie-winkie. In Banff “peeack” is the chirp of a young bird, or any one with a small, insignificant voice, “Faht kyn's (sort) yir noo minister?” “He's jist a mere peeack. We hardly saw 'm i' the poopit, an'he cheepit an’ squeakit like a moos aneeth a firlot“ (corn measure). “Yir chuckies ar peeackin gey muckle, an' hingin thir wings, I doot they winna stand the kin (kain) lang.” Sclitter, uncouth, a lazy person ; scuddy, jimp, scrimpit, e.g. “ Yere terrible scuddy wi' eer mizzur; ee dinna turn ee bauk," or beam carrying the scales; dottrifeed, a variant of tabitless or thowless, handless, fingers all thumbs, e.g. “That dottrified he can dae naething, the fushin's a' oot o'im "—these are also very expressive. Shaw, it may be noted, has the peculiar" scuddy" above as Dumfriesshire, where it means naked, bare, as a child or nestling. While my friend used all these out-of-the-way words he seemed unfamiliar with such as hip, to miss, pass over; lippen, to trust to; lapper, to clot, as blood or milk.
The foregoing shows that the language of mutual criticism was not unknown among this rural community. To speak fast was to yammer, a variant of yatter. Mimp (a variant of mumble), in Cumberland to talk primly and mincingly, and properly meaning a small part, is applied in Banffshire to an affected walk: “She mimpit an' primpit throo the room.” Sclitter was an ill-shaped, lazy, indolent, slooterin person, while slabbery was used like the Fife hashy. The coward was the foogie, a wide-spread relic of the Candlemas cock-fight in school. “Gie 'm the foogie lick; that'll riz his birse," with which last. word compare Gaelic bairseag, a scold. In Buchan it usually is applied to playing truant: “The twa loons fugiet the squeel, an' geed awa to the widds, an' harriet craws' nests a' day." It is a relic of schoolboy Latin, from fugio, to run away.
Yankee 'cuteness finds its analogue in the North-eastern phrase, to take a nip of one. Apropos is Grigor's story: "Fin I wiz a bit loonie, him and me trockit (bartered, niffered) watches; an' he took a nip o' ma; for, fin I geed, she (the watch) geed, an’ fin I steed, she steed. A jist lost (so many) shillins, an'a thocht this was my last chance," said by an old sexton in excuse for an overcharge in digging a grave, the grave of a man who had “taen a nip o'm.”
Continuing the peculiar, but not necessarily uncomplimentary, terms, I note cothie, usually coothie, in the sense of very comfortable; Cumb."a varra cowthie body," i.e. kindly. From it came the odd expression cothie juke, cothie-guckie, a snug shelter, a cosy beild. Hare-shed, hare-lip, was the cleft in a defective upper lip. The effect on speech is to produce the "whummle bore." Jots is used for jobs, usually trokes, e.g. “The servan lass riz i' the mornin, did up her jots, and geed awa tee market." Jamieson has jotterie, odd or dirty work. The most general term for this sort of thing is trokes, trokin, but these were unknown to my friend.
Many of these expressions are due to the special phonetic system of the North-eastern counties. Of this I secured some interesting illustrations from my friend. He sounded initial k where it is now silent, as in the olden time over Scotland and as in German still. He called the ankle-bone the kynockel o' the queet (Ger. Knochel, a joint, our knuckle); queet here is very characteristic. It appears also as cüte, cuitt, always referring to the epiphyses or knobs at the lower end of the tibia. A Fife man, narrowly examining the impressive mount of the trooper sentry at the gate of the Horse Guards on his first visit to London, was astonished to hear the warning, “Tak care, freend, or mebbes ye'll git your cuitts cloored" (be kicked on the ankles by the horse). The Guardsman hailed from Anster, and retained the accents of the fisher-toon. Mr. Ross knew the foot of the cow as the hive (hoof): “Yir beast has lang hives.” The older term is clüte, akin to the German kleuz, split, cloven. The Orcadian clett is a rock in the sea, broken off from the adjoining rocks on shore; cf. skerry and scaur. A singular illustration of how the track of the stranger can be followed by words is the appearance of clett on an odd and isolated corner of the Fife coast. Such a cliff or stack as one finds on the Caithness coast overhangs the bathing place well known at St. Andrews as the Step Rock. It used to be a tour de force for a daring bather to take a header from the Cleet into the pool below, brimful of the tide. Clooty is a familiar soubriquet of the Evil One, as shown on the mediæval stage: “If black claes maks a parfyt inan, Auld Clooty beets the priest” (Northumb.). Somewhat similar was kyob for the usual gebbie, a bird's crop (cf. gob, gab): That kyobie o'ee beestie is crammed fou o' meat." This initial I found also in his kneef, meaning “in thorough sympathy," “rale cheef,” reminding one of Shakspere's gossips who“knapped ginger” together. The root idea is that of breaking into small bits, hence the usages, pinching (nip), cutting (knife), breaking stones for roads (knappin). In the Morayshire sense we compare the "kneipen" of the German students. Without the k we have nip, to outwit, as in the Morayshire expression, "He fairly took the nip o' me." In the South this would be "He took his nap aff me." The form ouks for weeks, general over Scotland in the seventeenth century, lingered long in the North, but is now old-fashioned: "Sax ouks o' a knee-deep storm i' the mid o' Mairch; it nivver devald" (ceased). On the same lines is the Aberdeenshire description of a spell of wet weather in the uplands of the county: " Up i ee Cabrach for sax ouks ther wizz an onding o' weet oena upalt (uphold) or deval." This is a good test of an ear for Scottish dialect, if spoken moderately fast. Grigor has a variant of this saying, " It dang on sax ooks delaverly on iver uppalt or dewalt." He glosses delaverly here as continuously, which looks very like Chaucer's " deliver," nimble, active, as "Wonderly deliver and gret of strenthe," though it seems strange to see it used in Banffshire. The word oena here is exactly the German without, ohne, and once in common use. It is the favourite negative prefix as in 5n-bonnie, on-neat. Grigor gives this interesting example, "The nowt are gaein' throo an undeembus thing o' neeps: ye see, th'ive nae up-stanan." He compares the Shetland undumous, immense, uncountable from un, without, and deman, to reckon. The once familiar deval, to leave off, is, in Cumberland, dwalla in the sense of wither, grow yellow from damp,—
"If it sud rain on St. Swithin's day,
We're feckly sarrat wi' dwalled hay."
To continue on this human side of rustic speech, expressions for feelings are stanner-gaster, dumbfoundered; "a grue, cauld nicht" as inspiring a shivering sensation; yuckie, an itching feeling. With reference to their source of the feeling we have fousom (fulsome), dirty, causing disgust; wersh, generally insipid, and probably a contraction of the Buchan walshoch, weak and watery. Dreich is tedious. Hamil, Fife haemit, is home-made. A few examples applicable to manners as the outcome of feelings will suffice. Fraising, used much like the Fife fraiking, is the wheedling manner of a "twa-facet creatur." As marking the lowest grade of manners we have the "tinkler's tung," better known all over the edge of the Highlands by his name of caird. Thus in Buchan, “Finevir the twa met, they wir in o ane anither's witters (withers), jist like twa kyard wives.”
The interest of dialect is not confined to the discovery of roots and affinities. It has preserved traces of many old customs. Thus the very primitive habit of beating down prices in bargaining, known as prigging, found no favour with my friend, who called it "a nashince (nuisance), just an ug," using in ug a very old word, still heard in the Border district. But it survives in ugly and ogre. He took an ug (dislike) at’s meht” is a phrase from Buchan. In Orkney and Shetland the bat is the oagar hiuuse, from a root, ogra, to frighten. Similarly the bauky bird of Burns is what bogles or frightens, such as a bat or a ghost.
Modern sports have done much to wean boys from the primitive delights of the monkey. A harmless amusement of the young was to pluck the long stalks of the ribwort, and, hitting each other's in turn, try which flower head would be first broken off. This my friend knew as playing at sogers with the carl-doddy. “We used,” he said, “ to fecht wi'd till wurr reegment was throo.” In Beattie's “ Arnha'," the work of a Mearns man (1820), we read,—
"I garr'd the pows flee frae their bodies,
Like nippin beads frae carl-doddies."
A red-letter day in the rural year was that of the clyack feast, when the hindmost pickle of corn was reaped, plaited together, and carried in triumph as The Maiden. The name is Celtic, cailleach, a woman wearing the caillie or cowl (Lat. cucullus). I was told that the farm hands always “hed a feastie at Clyack, getting leave, too, to spread butter on the pieces ad lib;" at other times the most they got was “a knottie o' butter.” And at Hallow-e'en, when the ingathering of corn and tatties was completed, “there was a big denner and a big tea." Another feast of a different kind marked the last sad scene of all—the lyk-wake. Lyk, a corpse, a word entirely gone unless as the affixly, was once in general use. In Shetland the leek-strae was the straw placed under the corpse in bed. “Calm as a leek,” still as the dead, was applied to the unruffled sea. In Moray it was a disgrace to have a corpse in the house with nothing beside it night and day. A Bible was placed at the head of the table, and in the centre the bottle with pipes and tobacco. This was a strange survival of Catholic times, and handed down through the service of the mass for the dead.
Fascinating bits of folk-lore linger in names occurring in the play-time of life. Of school, which had never meant much to him, there was but the phrase, "Foo munny pandies did ee get the day?" For the ferule or leather taws he knew taurds. The Aberdeenshire word is tag. The boys' slate-pencil was skylie, the skeelyie of Fife. Only two play-terms he noted—herryin the peer man, and duckie. The former is smuggle the gag, equivalent in signification, for to herry is to run off with, to plunder, the gag or pledge (Lat. vas, a surety; Sc. wad-set, a mortgage). The peer man is the little man, the counter in this game of prehistoric man-hunting. The English barley-break is but another name for it. In Thomas Morley's "Book of Ballets" (1595) is the couplet,—
"Say, dainty nymphs and speak.
Shall we play at barley-break?"
Duckie seems to have been a sort of variation of rounders. A pointed stone was placed on the ground, and a smaller one on top of it. Beside it stood duckie or man in charge, while the others (outs) stood at intervals around. Each tried to knock off the top stone (also known as duckie). None must run till duckie was knocked off. If hit off, the outs tried to pick up duckie, and run to pass out of play. Duckie in charge had to put on the stone again and try to catch a relief. The outs had to do nothing till he put on the stone. In "Elgin Kirk Session Records" (Dr. Cramond) there is an unexplained reference to this game under the name of Duchman, apparently for Duckie Man. In the domestic series the most important piece of furniture was of old the deas (dais). Mr. Ross knew it as the big seat at the side of the house, to hold four, and not as the fireside settle. The term is well known over Aberdeenshire: "Seated in the deeee in Johnnie Gibb's kitchen " (Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk). In the kitchen he noted the vessel-board above the dresser, the saut-backet, and the meal girnel, a large, oblong chest. Round the front of the box beds against the wall hung the pawn, Fife pawnd (Lat. pendo, to hang, through French). Of house utensils there were the bowie, a round barrel for the milk, and the scimmer "for reamin" or removing the cream on top. A smaller and shallower milk vessel was the bain, probably from the Gaelic bainne, milk. In South-western Scotland it is always a washing-tub. In Sackville's "Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates" (1555) there is an example of the word,—
"And Priam eke, in vain how he did run
To arms, whom Pyrrhus with despite hath done
To cruel death, and bathed him in the bayne
Of his son's blood before the altar slain."
Old-fashioned varieties of food lingered in sowens, and soor-dook. Soup maigre was barefit broth, of water, pot barley, and milk. Dainties were little known, such as in "the liths" of an orange, a word which he had never heard.
I did not test my friend much on the wide held of natural objects. He knew the Buchan for the lapwing, the wallop, evidently in both cases a visualising of the bird's characteristic flight. The rhyme,—
"Wallop-a, wallop-a weet,
Hairry ma nest, an' rin awa' weet,"
is a variant of the familiar
"Pees-weet, Pees-weet (Fr. dix-huit),
Hairry my nest and gar (make) me greet."
He knew the yellow-hammer as the yellow yorlin. From the frog's spawn he got an indication of the weather. " If the season was to be dry, it was in the centre of the pool; if wet, near the edge." He never saw this prognostic fail, but could give no guarantee for a period beyond three months, when the young came to maturity. In the plant world I note only his Thissilaga (colt's foot) and Peenie (peony) rose for the Fife Dishielogie and Speengie rose respectively.
The scene of these reminiscences was the farm-toon of Willie Gallon. The "gudewife" was Leezie Harl—known, as married women of old were, by their maiden name—and their man or grieve, Rob Manson. "I was wi' them twenty years," said the old man. Like most aged toilers of those days, he had suffered from rheumatism ; but now, he said, "I wud a been i' my grave ten year ago, but it hed been for that baths," using in "that" here the old Scottish and current Dutch form of the article. There is no grammatical blunder in it. I heard a Stonehaven fishwife, delivering an order and explaining her difficulty in finding the place, say, "I've been a' roond that hoossis." Reeently I heard an Aberdonian joiner in Glasgow tell his fellow-workman that he "could get up be that steps." The idiom is common in the Gothic Gospels of the fourth century.
Mr. Ross gave me the interesting story of his early life under his own hand. His narrative forms a valuable sidelight on rural culture, or rather the want of it, in a secluded corner during the first half of last century, all the more valuable as the vocal expression of a class among whom the rise of such another mouthpiece as Burns recorded time will never know. I present it exactly as I got it, and in this guise it is rudely eloquent, nay pathetic.
Here is an intelligent youth, reared in a parish which is supposed to have had its share in those educational advantages with which the half-informed credit John Knox, and this is how he had to educate himself. Those responsible for national education have the solemn duty imposed upon them of providing for intellectual destitution, of affording to obscure incipient talent the opportunities it is impossible for it to provide for itself. But, as it is, how often do we find it true that "to him that hath [monied parents, leisure, tutors, books] shall be given" [bursaries, prizes, honours]! In every form of the world's wealth, be it intellectual or material, the problem ever crying aloud for solution is distribution in the proper quarter, not accumulation.
"Immediatly after the second Reformation, which was effected in 1690, there was a great wunt of Ministers of the Presbitury. Persevaging hence (Following from this) a great meny Parishes had none in those days the People mead a play day of the Sabbeth they meat on the Abbey green (I refere to my Natife Glen Pluscarden neir Elgin) in the forenoon & Plaid at the Ball with Clubs: in the afternoon they meat in Grups & chaised Bees to get there Beiks; in winter thay gathered in one anothers Houses cracked there gocks: on the other six dayes were employed in the work of the farm; up in the morning at the flalie by five A.M. thrashed till seven, then had Brackfast went to the fields Came home in the Glooming had Dinner. then went to some Center House Plaid at the Cards till eight oclock then home to Supper. kale & kale brose Torneeps & Torneep brose Sometimes brochen a thick kind of grouel: at Christimes thay would have taken a whole week Playing Night & day with a Dram now & again Some of them went home to there food, back as fast as possable thay had a most intense desire for playin Cards: a play thay termed three cart 1½d the dale: thay would sometimes taken a day at Hunting there were no Gam laws then thay fished after Dark with torchlight, firs split up into long Candls the fish Clustord around the light & thay then spaired them.
“The first Minister thay had in Pluscarden after the Reformation was a Mr. Hesbon his Stipon was eight pounds english, a small manse, with a but & ben with a Closet in the Center, he was vary much esteemed, the wives in the Glen, were allways bring som present for him it was like a Hevn below Minister & people were envloped in the Atmosphere of love; big Stipens dos not always mak loving Ministers he had no Beedel no Gown or bands no Manesript he went ben the pass[age] with his Bible below his arm, up to the Pulpet there Preached the Gospel with such power his flock listining so inteently to the Power of God's spirit Minister & herers souls being filled “it was the strongest Man that was looked up to in these days I will give you an instence of it: in Lochcarron: that Parish had ben long without a Minister at last there was a Mr. McLachlen ordained to go he went on a Sabbeth forenoon: got all the young men playing at the Ball with a Mukel Rorey as there Chef he saw at once except he got to be master of him he might go as he came: all there playgreens were beside there Churches: these were the Old deserted Epispicle Churches: thay did not all leave there comfortable homes for in East Aberdeenshire thay turned Presbiterian but to return: Mr. McLachlen joined in the play & ultematly got the better of Big Rorey: there were three ways of testing there Strenth the sweertree, wrestling & a battle with the hands Mr. McLachlen got the master of Rorie he then ordred him to take so meny of the people to the Church he douing the same, thay just got two halones by the tim they came for the third the remnant had fled : he then armed Eorie with a big Stick ordred him to alow none out. when he went up to the Pulpet & preached that Sermon was the mens of Big Eories converson he then became an Elder & the tow were the meanse in Gods hand of douing a great work; there was a deal of ignorence & Superstetion a relick of barbaresem: an old woman on hir Deathbed told hir Caretakers to leeve hir neir the Yet that she might have time to be up & away before the thrang Vass.
"Thay beleved in witchcraft & Feries Gosts all sudden Deaths were effected by feries caled Elfs whou were contunley prowing about on eviel intent; & sudden Deaths was an elf shot there were heard before death the shukkie mill: the noise a small insect maks in decayed wood: thay beleived in some sudden deaths to be don by a Witch casting a Cantertup in the path of one thay did not love or baited thay alse beleived in days of luck thay beleived in the power of Burtrie & roden tree thay put bits of these in the iverseals that bound there Cows & above there Doors : thay beleived in Witches having power to transform themselves into hairs (hares): thay could tak away the Milk of a Neighbours Cow.
"Between the eand of the eightteenth centurie up till the dawn of the Nineteenth was an age of great darkness Supper-stetion & opresion Agriculter was in a vary Eoad (rude) Condition; the Common people were all Serfs the Lards (who) had pot & Gallos in there own hands : the one for hanging the other for Drowing whoever offended them were taken into there Courts bound to a ston with an iron chain & then taken at the Lards pleasure & consined to the one or the other thay had stons all Bound there Courts for binding there victims two hence there Mota above there Gait in Laten gang ye forth in beast & fill the fetters.
"there were scersley any whisky it was strong Ale : but thay learned to extract whisky from the Strong Ale: the Goverment put on Excise offesries to catch & plounder then were the days of deseption falsehood & judasem the poor Crofters had vary sore time of it worken Day & Night: going ten twelve mils in a Dark night an out of the way Road with a Shoulty & a Coggie on each side of the Horsie: sometimes they would be taken from them: the way thay mead the Whisky thay had Sacks mead of Hair which thay used for steeping the Barley after it was steeped & dreeped it was then taken to some out of the way place there to foment & become Malt—it was then taken to a kill to dry & all don in the Dark: it was then taken & ground in a Quren a vary angeint Mill the same kind as Jesus speaks of when he says two Wemon shall be grinding at the Mill the one shall be taken & the other left: after being ground it was put into a Cask & there keept till it became strong Ale: it was then put into a pot & boiled & the steem deverted into a tube called a wirm which was laid amongst Coold watir hence the steem cam out Whisky."
Notes to Ross Narrative.
| | p. 158 — | brochen, name for porridge, Gael. prochan, brochan, gruel—akin to broth.
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| p. 158 — | sweertree, a trial of strength: two, seated on the ground, grasp a stout stick between them and try which will raise the other up. It is the Sweir-Kitty in Teviotdale.
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| p. 159 — | halones. Jamieson, hallion, a clown: a clumsy fellow, a sloven (Banff).
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| p. 159 — | roden=rowan: The most approved charm against cantrips and, spells was a branch of rowan-tree, plaited and placed over the byre-door—hence the rhyme,—
"Roan-tree and red threed In ploughing, the pattle or stick to clear the furrow, had to be of the rowan for good luck.
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As supplementary to the foregoing gleanings I may here refer to another subject of interview. The road between Banchory and Stonehaven is a typical bit of varied prospect and interest. A few miles out of Stonehaven the wayfarer dips down into the valley of the Cowie, and, crossing the burn by the old brig where the tumbling stream seems hushed under its canopy of trees, he commences the long ascent to what a Transvaaler would call the Neck or notch in the hill land that opens out to him the silvan landscape of Deeside. A little off the highway he will see a lone, low-roofed cottage, its sombre grey relieved by a wealth of trailing rosebuds and its modest garden patch. Here a sturdily independent pair, father and daughter, planted their lodge in the wilderness. How they did it I shall leave them to tell in the following verses, which I took down from the lips of the sturdy dame, preserving, as faithfully as I could, the pronunciation. Known to the country-side as Cissy Wood, she still survives, a septuagenarian, the brave and indomitable mistress of her own humble fortunes. The reader will observe that, though there is little of the archaic in the language, his ear will recognise in it a genuine example of the tones of the Mearns.
THE BIGGIN O'T.
Tune—"The Rock and the Wee Pickle Tow."
There wuz an' auld man tuke a bit o' yon hull,
An' he wud gae try the biggin o't.
He hidna a hooss 'at he cud bide intill
An' his first wark wud be the biggin o't.
He biggit the wa's wi' gweed clay an' steen;
Wi' heather he happit the riggin o't:
A cantier dwallin' wuz ne'er to be seen,
An' sorra a bit cam by thiggin o't.
He's plantit some tatties to full his auld wime,
An' sawn some neeps for the stainshin o't,
Wi' ingens an' carrots to gar them taste fine,
An' mak him mair fit for the trinchin o't.
He's sawn some corn his bannocks to be;
He delv't it an' dung't it, for eident wuz he;
The aul' carl kent brawly foo awbody wud see,
There wad naething be made by the flinchin o't.
Fin the day'd turned dreary, an' the rain doon did fa',
O! then he gaed in to the planin o't,
To win to's auld pooch a shillinie or twa,
As there's neebody cares aboot len'in o't.
It's seldom the rich man hes siller to spare,
An' ere the poor get it they mun trachle sair,
Altho' that the winnin' breeds sorrow an' care,
Ee'll get plenty to help wi' the spen'in' o't.
Fin the day lieht wuz deen an' him tired at the wark,
O! then he'd set doon to the tun'in' o't
An' the young in aboot flockt fin it wuz dark,
An' yokit to dince to the soon'in' o't.
They dinct and they jumpit till their legs they got sair,
An' it growin' late they hamewards repair,
An' thankt the aul' carl for biggin's cot there,
An' aye blesst the day o' the foon'in' o't.
For ance on yon hull-side grew heather an' trees;
The auld folk'll min' o' the plantin' o't.
An' in simmer it wuz swarmin' wi' birds an' wi' bees.
Which cheert his auld heart wi' the drintin' o't.
In the gloamin' the lads an' the lasses wud meet:
The whisperin' wuz fond, an' the kisses were sweet.
An' they leuch at the thing 'at wud weel gar'd them greet.
An' ne'er brak their heart wi' the thinkin' o't.
Bit noo there is naething bit scrabs to be seen,
The trees they're a' sawn for the wrichtin' o't.
Bit a' the tree roots they stuck fast to the green.
They gied him a sair back wi' the liftin' o't.
Sud the carl trincht a' he'll get muckle sweat wi't:
Ere he get it a' sawn, sud he e'er live to see't.
He'll hae twa simmer's suns yet an' ae winter's weet.
Afore he get wark wi' the dichtin' o't.
Bit may he yet live for to see it a' growin'.
An' a' stan'in' ready for reapin' o't.
Wi' twa breed-backit doddies to low i' the loan;
There's naething sae gweed for the weetin' o't!
An' may he ne'er wint fat his auld heart can tak—
A snufF till his nose an' a coat till his back,
An' an auld neeper cronie an hour wi'm to crack,
An' len' him a han' wi' the eatin' o't.
Though the words are almost all English, their vocalisation is significant and local:—
| hull | for | hill | | gweed | for | good |
| dwallin' | „ | dwelling | stainchin | „ | staunching | |
| Fin | „ | when | dinct | „ | danced | |
| foow'in' | „ | founding | wint | „ | want. |
Cissy Wood, the owner of the cottage, was a most remarkable specimen of the best type of the Scottish peasantry. She was born early in last century at the Limpit Mill, overhanging a brattling burn, one of many that have worn a steep descent for themselves into the North Sea through the cliff wall that frowns on the tumbling waves at its feet between Stonehaven and Muchalls. She had worked steadily since seven "intill the mull," as she put it. "Speak aboot half-timers! I wuzz ay a hail-timer." When the larder, never very full, was low, grumbling was met with, "If ee dinna tak that, ee can lick wint," equally significant whether we take the wint here for wind or want.
Her temperament must always have run to the masculine rather than to the weaker side. She was twenty-four before she learnt stocking-knitting, or shank-wiving as she called it, using one of the commonest of names for stockings, shanks, known at one time all over Lowland Scotland. Her time was devoted to her croft, her garden, and her workshop, for she has in her own fashion solved the problem of a self-contained independence on the land. She has been joiner, blacksmith, and general mechanician to the neighbourhood, her "neepers" as she called them. She could handle a hei-sned (scythe), turn a lay (lathe), or put together a meal-bowie with the best. Her two "freits" in gardening were raising potatoes from the "plooms" (seed-capsule) and growing fantastic walking sticks. The potatoes were, the first year, the size of peas, and could be "eatt 'gin the third eer." In colour they were daintily mottled, black, brokkit and white. Her "brokkit" is familiar Gaelic for anything, say a trout or fern, that is speckled or variegated in spots. The walking sticks grew freely from willow slips. The branches, as they developed, were ingeniously intertwined. When matured, smoothed, and varnished they formed a "quaint device" much sought after by the curio hunter. Kale-runts and thistle-stems were ingeniously turned to the same purpose. This worthy woman's boast was the converse of that male solitary's, Silas Marner. She could do everything that the mere male attempted. To cap all, she could, in her best days, inspire the rural dance on a fiddle of her own making.