Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/111

Rh The English presentation of negative qualities wants the vigour of these:—

The more one studies English historically the more is one convinced that what Gavin Douglas called the Scottis tongue was substantially one with what his predecessors named the Inglis tongue. Certainly crowds of old words and expressions ceased to be intelligible to Englishmen long before they died out in the north, but this is only to say that literary culture and social development lagged there a full century behind the pace of the south. This element, so long archaic to Englishmen, has now almost disappeared from the Scottish vernacular. Alongside of this, however, there are uses of the common living English stock of words which are essentially idiomatic in Scotland. These idioms are generally of great antiquity. Take the common word greet. There is no doubt that its meaning in Scots, to weep, is much older than the modern, to welcome. In the Gothic Gospels (fourth century), "When the cock crew, Peter, going out, wept bitterly"—"Usgaggands ut gaigrot baitraba." If we remember that the reduplicating preterite here, gaigrot, became a monosyllabic strong preterite, this Gothic is good Scots, "Gangin oot he grat bitterly." Similarly cry, to call—to "Cry on the maan"—better preserves the sense of its cognates, écrier, scream, screech, than the English. Hamlet's town-crier was not expected to weep. The forensic expression, to challenge a juror, preserves a meaning of the word which is vernacular in Scots from the "Him 'at chalengis the gudis" of the "Ancient Burgh Laws" to the current, "I was never challenged for that afore," It has always meant, to call in question, accuse, reprimand, and never been like Lat. provocare, to call to combat. The verb learn ought never to do duty now for teach, but the Scoticism, "learn the boy his