Page:Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland - Volume 10.djvu/841

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IV.

ON CERTAIN BELIEFS AND PHRASES OF SHETLAND FISHERMEN. ARTHUR LAURENSON,

The native population of the Shetland Islands is Norse in blood and origin. There is not, nor has there been, any appreciable Celtic element in it. To this day the Norse physiognomy of the people is distinctly marked; nowhere do you find the Celtic type. The language, now rapidly merging into English, has for the last three hundred years been departing from the old Norse which was once the tongue of the islands; but still the traces of the ancient speech are clearly manifest. An hundred years ago they were yet more so; at that period, in the remoter islands, old people might still be found who could repeat some corrupt Norse which tradition had preserved. Now, however, the relics of the old tongue consist of isolated words and phrases of Norse derivation still in daily use, of the substitution of the singular personal pronoun for the English plural form in all conversation, and of some peculiar modes of expression more Norse or German in idiom than English.

The fishermen retain more of the old words than any other class in the islands. Perhaps from boats and all pertaining to them having been in 