Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/12

vi great Indo–Germanic unity of speech; the latter shows its unmistakable kinship with a band of brothers, following a serious, rural life so remote in time and space as Bulgaria in the fourth century of our era. The treatment is novel in so far as it is done from this Scots point of view. While we are all Indo–Germanic, it is impossible to affirm, in any precise sense, that the Lowland Scot is a lineal descendant of the Moeso–Goth, but what I have tried to make good is, that the speech of Bishop Wulfila's flock is as intelligible to the Scot now as, say, that of the Cumberland dalesman. Among the Low-German tribes—Dutch, Frisian, Norse—who must have early made themselves free of both shores of the North Sea, I do not venture to affirm which formed the link of connection and blood-brotherhood between Lowlander and Goth. That there was such a vital link is indubitable on the evidence of speech. Within these extremes will be found a mass of illustrative matter drawn from comparison with the kindred dialects of Cumberland and the Scots Border, and from the South African Taal, which has preserved so much of what was once the common stock of shrewd, Bible and home-loving Hollander and Scot.

Finally, and forming the kernel of the whole, the section entitled "Field Philology" gathers up the reminiscences, in phrase, folklore, and social customs, of a mid-Victorian rural Scotland at a time when home industries still lived, when railways were a wonder, and scientific inventions a dream. Here will be found much in idiom and vocable that has never yet been recorded.

To the genuinely patriotic Scot, at home and abroad, I venture to appeal for recognition of the fact that this is, at least, a praiseworthy effort to preserve somewhat of his rare bi-lingual inheritance, and to offer an incentive to kindred workers in the field. Nor should it fail to interest also the student of English, which, on historical lines, owes so much to comparison with Northern speech. Such comparison the philological expert might also fitly welcome as the true method of scientific progress.

JAMES COLVILLE.