Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/126

102 more than a century old now and themselves imitative. The true Scottish form is dicht (strong guttural), in general use and in various meanings. It is now simply a vulgar term, to wipe up, clean, though farmers still "dicht" or clean the corn in winnowing. Greater dignity attaches to the word in German, where Dichter is a poet, cf. Scots makkar and Greek Poiētes. The very common chows for small or smiddy coals is noted as obsolete Scots, no fresher illustration of it being given than a reference to the Statistical Account of a century ago, as quoted by Jamieson. The same mistake is made with the well-known cirsackie, a workman's coarse overall, "obs. Scots, Tennant's Poems," while the rarer form carsackie appears as Fife (Jamieson) and Ayr. Cirrseckie, not the impossible carsackie, is the Fife form. Then we have such surprising bits of information as this: "Brether, a plural for brothers, is in everyday use in Fife. In towns it has in some degree given place to brithers, but in the country it still holds its own." No doubt plurals such as childer and brether were at one time distinctively Northern, "but children and brethren only are found in writings from the sixteenth century." An entry in Chambers's "Domestic Annals" under the year 1600 gives a very late example of brether. "In Edinburgh this day at nine hours at even a combat or tulzie was fought between twa brether of the Dempsters and ane of them slain."

The omissions, also, are not a few. Bunker, not in Jamieson, is absent here, as well as such familiar words as carblin=wrangling, carcidge=carcase, chops me!, clack=gundy, cripple as an adjective. The word doach for a salmon trap or cruve is given, but not localised, as it ought to have been, on the Galloway Dee. The unknown daver=stun, stupefy, is given as Sc., Ir., N.-country, though the true form is doaver, to be in a dose. Professed omissions—kept back from want of information—are caddle, four in the game of cherry-pip or papes; cip, to play truant; cruden, a partan or crab. The first used to be known to most Edinburgh lassies, cip is the "playing kip" of the Glasgow boy, and cruden is a corrupt form of the Ayrshire and Campbeltown cruban, i.e. crab, with the usual suffixed article. The boost of Burns, "boost to pasture," appears under the sense of to guide, with a query. The usage, quoted from Wigtownshire,