Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/108

84 now prefers the softer z. The Elizabethan, however, used the Scots hard s, as in Raleigh's "Soul's Errand,"—

But he is, under Southron influences, sibilating where he ought not. Lord Kames said that the sibilating of z in Menzies, Mackenzie, and the like was enough to turn his stomach. This letter is not really a sibilant at all, but the softening of an original g such as we have in the English equivalents of the German Menge (a crowd, many) or gefallen, Chaucer's i-fallé (cf. yclept). This whole subject of Scottish and English comparative phonetics has never received anything like adequate treatment.

While the primary rocks of a Scottish phonetic system will long resist the denuding effects of English reading and converse, time will work its wonders here too. The young Scot will go on "beshin his bet" out of recognition, mouthing his kind, and cake, and Mary to his own satisfaction, and tripping over his -ng, wh-, ch-, and -r, with bated breath and studied imitation. His speech will lose in weight and distinctness, but will flow down the smooth stream of tea-room prattle and the gabble of the comic stage.

The Scots "mis-chievous" is accented, however, in his fashion, by the Elizabethan writers, as this example from Spenser's "Epithalamium,"—

Equally hazardous is the attempt to use "kenspeckle" words in the grand style as contermashous for contumacious, protticks for projects, or the Highland cook's query to her mistress, "Should I delude the soup or sicken (thicken) it?"

A little knowledge is in language a dangerous thing, as when Mrs. Parvenu is in search of a "tempery cook" and is careful to "libel" the luggage when she travels, has to put on "mournings" when a bereavement occurs, is at a " non-plush"