Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/109

Rh when she has not another trump, or asks if the tea-cakes are "pennies each." But the task of such "sedulous apes" is laboriously slow. It is otherwise with the stock of old Scots vocables. There are ample resources of expression in English, yet evolution in language does not always secure the survival of the fittest. In many cases the vernacular seems to carry more than the literary speech. What Scot would exchange the revived Greek nous for his time-honoured gumshon, or Yankee 'cuteness for smeddum, or the very modern go for through-pit, or a quick intelligence for gleg i' the up-tak. The modern man is rather proud of his smart hanky-panky, but it cannot compare with the severe but kindly jookery-pawkery. Even that phonetic nut umhm! is preferable to its English form ahem! which he never pronounces. Could tenderness surpass dawtie, hinny, doo, or contempt be more withering than gawpus, gomeril (Cumb. "Thoo is a gert gommeral, to be sure"), tawpie, sumph, or opprobrium arm itself with severer epithets than besom, limmer, randy? Is there more perfect visualising than Burns's scorn for the sordid sons of Mammon?—

Or Chalmers's obiter dictum, "Jacob was too much of a sneck-drawer and Esau was the snool about the pottage," or his delight when "an auld wife hirsled aff a dyke to curtsey to him." Chalmers took a real delight in the Doric to which his oratorical instincts prompted him—witness these, "There was great chivalry in David pouring out the water before the Lord. I would e'en have ta'en a willie-waucht. As a student at St. Andrews I remember with what veneration I regarded the Professors. When I was one myself I used to wonder if these gilpies could have the same feeling towards me." Good, too, are Aytoun's splendid Fozie Tam in "How I became a Yeoman," or Donald's description of his mare, Mysie, in "Robert Urquhart," a truthful tale of Fifeshire life, "She's a real frake when she's wantin' onything," where frake is so different from its German cognate frech. The Orcadian frack describes a weak, delicate person. Fraykin was a favourite with my mother, used exactly as in "Robert Urquhart." Nor is Scots wanting in a rich