Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/115

Rh nominative, as "I come." Even here dialectic decay asserts itself in the colloquial "says I." Pure Northern are such forms as "we wuz" for we were, "some speaks o' lords," &c. The apparent solecism, often heard even from young people educated entirely on English, "Thae wurr a man," for there was a man, is very interesting. "Thae," not the article here, is far older than there. In German the two forms exist together as da and dort. "Wurr," again, is just was, pronounced wuzz, with the usual change of s to r between vowels. This favourite Northern usage has given us are and were for the older is and was in plural as well as singular. The infinitive of purpose keeps its old preposition "for" in Soots as persistently as "pour" in French or "um zu" in German. The subjunctive has quite gone now, but it is regular in Shakspere and in Burns, though these are so far apart in time. In the "First Commonplace Book" Burns writes, "Nobody can be a proper critic of love compositions except he himself in one or more instances have been a warm votary of the passion." Here we have the subtle Scotticism in the use of except as a conjunction instead of unless. His editors sometimes presume to tamper with this subjunctive.

In recent years we have witnessed a change of venue in philological pursuits. Investigation used to be concentrated on the structure of words, so as to get at historical development. But increased attention to dictionary-making, to style, and to international intercourse has brought to the front neglected phases of word growth, such as the import of words, the mental attitude of those who have either coined new metaphors or diverted old ones to suit modern wants. This line, if pursued, would provide educational discipline as fertile as it is novel. A French writer, M. Bréal, devotes a recent work to this new and most interesting development of philology, his "Essai de Sémantique."

In this connection comparative idiom throws light on the Scottish way of looking at things. Significant are such buried metaphors as to "straucht one's legs" for to take a walk, "change the feet" for putting on fresh stockings, "break one's word," "he's no himsel the day," or "he's cairrit," to express a delirious condition, "to feel a smell," "to have a want or to