Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/114

90 it constantly, as here, "You must carry this alongst with you." It is also in ballads like the "Battle of Harlaw,"—

The modern vernacular admits also wanst and twicet. The equally faulty whilst has quite superseded whiles in good English. While is really a noun (Ger. Weile), whiles is its genitive case used adverbially, to which t has been added by a false analogy with superlatives. Whilie is the Scottish noun; the monosyllable while, pronounced whill, means until. After comparatives than has become fixed in English. Scots prefers by, meaning in comparison with, nor, and as, reserving than for the sense of then: "He's an aulder maan by me," "She's better nor she's bonny," "I would rather go as stay." It has nothing corresponding to the faulty conjunctive use of like instead of as, so marked in English, e.g. "He feels like I do," but it uses the prepositions without and except for unless as a conjunction. The adverbial like in Scots, as "He did it that way like," is still a common German idiom. Another Teutonism is the admissible use of any adjective as an adverb. This is very common in Shakspere, but would be condemned now. Equally characteristic is the use of that for so: "I'm that thrang the noo." The expression for negation shows the surprising persistence of the original Indo-European particle nā exactly as in Sanskrit nā, Greek and Latin ne with imperatives. This strong form is like the German nein. As a strong negative, equivalent to an affirmative here, it is preferred to not—e.g. " That's no bad," "It's no a good day," "She's no bonny," "'Deed no." The enclitic form is well marked: "Ye mannă bide lang." In compounds the Saxon un- is preferred to the Latin in- just as we find it in Shakspere. Scots delights in words like "oncanny," "onbonny," "onneat." Distinctively Northern are thir and thae for these and those. It is in his sparing use of such forms that Burns shows either unfamiliarity with the vernacular, or more probably the chastening influence of his English education. He more frequently resorts to the most characteristic of Northern idioms, the declension of the verb present with s throughout, except immediately preceded by the personal pronoun in the