Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/101

Rh though for long afterwards this was commonly applied only to Gaelic, the Erse of Burns's poems. Gaelic itself was universally known in Scotland as Irish. The first Marquis of Argyll had his son, Lord Lorn, fostered (educated) under Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, to whom his mother writes: "I heair my son begines to weary of the Irishe langwadge. I intreatt you to cause hold hime to the speaking of itt, for since he has bestowed so long tyme and paines in the getting of itt I sould be sory he lost itt with leasiness" (Willcock's "Argyll," p. 26). For many centuries the common features of one and the same Northern speech prevailed from Humber to Grampians. The Tynesider or Yorkshireman of to-day has a vernacular far more in touch with Lowland Scots than the man of Lincoln and the Fens. Reformers like Knox and Melville had no difficulty on the score of language in consorting with the English Puritans. Shakspere is not very complimentary in his allusions to Scotland, but he notes nothing so distinctive in Northern speech as he does in Welsh. It must have been in the rôle of "schoolmaster of the nation" that James VI., addressing the Estates at Edinburgh in 1617, said reproachfully that "the Scots had learnt of the English to drink healths, wear coaches and gay clothes, take tobacco, and speak neither Scotch nor English." Nor, again, did Baillie and his fellow-presbyters find any difficulty—quite the reverse—in preaching with the utmost acceptance to the Londoners in Cromwell's time (Baillie's "Letters"). It would be hard to find much that is distinctive in the diction of Northern writers after 1603, although the speech of the people retained its national features. The later Union of 1707 was accompanied by a growing consciousness of a distinction between the Northern and Southern vernaculars. The Jacobite risings introduced a fresh disturbing factor in the shape of the Celtic element, and forthwith Scotland was blunderingly thought of in the South as a Celtic country. Then the Englishman travelled northwards, taking with him his prejudices and insular lack of curiosity. The extension of the Empire carried Scots all over the world, and these discreetly said little about their origin; but their clannishness, push and success still further emphasised distinctions in speech. Such were never observed, however, in the literary speech, only in the vernacular. Thomson, Hume,