Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/262

 330 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9-s. iv. o™ 21, m SIR WALTER SCOTT'S SCOTTISH DIALECT. (9th S. iv. 242.) DURING the period in which I was acquainted with Swiss and Swabian village life, rather less than twenty years ago, I associated with educated people who habitually used the broad local speech when conversing with each other, although they spoke ordinary German (with a marked southern accent) when addressing foreigners. Notwithstanding the use thus made of Swiss- German and Swabian-Germa.n by professional people and small landowners residing on their estates, these idioms are considered by philo- logists to be simply variants of the classical language, and the books written in them are treated as dialectic literature. It may be remarked that in these southern dialects of German the pronunciation of many words differs from the received speecli just in the way that North-Country English and Scotch differ from the language of our cultivated classes. For instance, a Swiss peasant would agree with the Yorkshireman and Scotchman in preferring the sounds hoose and moose to house and mouse. G. W. Lowland Scotch, according to Dr. Murray (' Chambers's Encyclopaedia ), was the lan- guage of a court and nation for several centuries, but long before Scott's time it had become obsolete in official and literary use : and though revived in the lyric poetry of Ramsay, Burns, and their fellow-singers, and in the prose fiction of Scott "as the character- istic speecli of local characters," these uses are only dialectal :— " They must be classed with the similar use of Lancashire, Cumberland, Dorset, or Devonshire dialect, by English poets and novelists, as the appropriate language of the local Muse, and of local dramatix pewonte; with this difference, that Scottish, having been a literary language, has pre- served a certain literary status which is wanting to these English dialects. Probably MR. BOUCHIER would contend for nothing more than this. C. C. B. As the language of Scotland, Gaelic cannot be superseded. Mere verbal variations of English do not constitute a language, and if educated people occasionally drop into dialect, by doing so they do not turn one language into another. With regard to Scott himself one is led to inquire if dialect pronunciation of vowel-sounds did not account for some of his defective rimes. An incident that occurred in Paris some years ago is an ex- aggeration, but none the less an illustration of MR. BOUCHIER'S second point. It is a fact that a visitor from New York asked a French- man, " Do you speak New York 1" The lan- guage has not been evolved that would do justice to that circumstance. ARTHUR MAYALL. "ORSIDUE" (9th S. iv. 248).—Halliwell, in his ' Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,' says arsedine is a kind of ornamental tinsel, sometimes called (issady or orsadi/, which last is probably the correct word. Ben Jonson mentions it in his 'Bartholomew Fair.' Halliwell also refers to astidtie, which he describes to be a species of yellow tinsel, much used by the mummers at Christmas, and by the rustics who accompany the plough or ploughman in the rounds through the parish, as part of their fantastical decoration. He also adds that the word is used in the cutlery manufacture of Hallamshire. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road. Neither the correct form nor the etymology is known. Various spellings arc arsedine, arsowde, assidue, asideiv, orsedew, orsidue, orsade, orsiidy, assndy, assridi/n, assaden, orsden, arsadine. See Arsedine in the ' His- torical English Dictionary.' Perhaps from Arab. (Had, a lion, used by the alchemists to mean "gold"; see Devic. Hence might have been formed a Low Lat. form asnd-initii. This in a wild guess. WALTER W. SKEAT. "KAROO" (9^ S. iv. 105, 156, 236). — This word is spelt Karroo in South Africa, and I was credibly assured, when there last summer, that it was a Hottentot one, meaning "a dry place." There is the Great Central Karroo, as well as the North and South Karroos, the trip giving a total area of Karroo plateaus exceeding 100,000square miles. The highest Hat-topped peak (the Kompass Berg) has an elevation of 7,800 feet above the sea level. Dordrecht (with a population of about 1,000 souls) stands at an altitude of 5,500 feet. It is situated higher than any other town thereabouts, and is in the Northern Karroo. The Karroo bush has a terribly dried-up appearance, yet the people claim that the land is as fertile as any in South Africa. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter. CHURCHES WASHED AWAY BY THE SEA (9th S. iv. 249).—I copy for MR. ANDREWS'S benefit the narrative of one who (so far as his fears permitted) was an eye-witness of the de- struction of Fleet Church, Dorset. This account was received from Mr. H. J. Moulc,