Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/127

Rh "he buist to do it" (Jam.), might have suggested that we have here the well-known "bu'd to be," behoved to be, under the influence of an analogy with must, which latter is properly in Scots "mun or maan," as in the proverb, "Him 'at wull to Cupar maan to Cupar." The expression is also Orcadian.

We ought all to be proud of such a work as the English Dialect Dictionary. On every page it throws light from England on Scottish vocables, thus emphasising the fact of an essential kinship in vernacular speech from the Humber to the Gaelic Border, and westwards to the Presbyterian colony in Ulster. Thus there seems to be some original racial heredity to account for dike meaning, south of Humber, a ditch (cf. Ger. Teich, a pool), and north, a wall. If, as I am told, dike in Ayrshire means ditch, this may be due to the fact that when enclosing began there last century the common fence, in the absence of stone, was a ditch with a thorn hedge planted on the top of the bank that had been made higher by the soil thrown out to form the trench. In Holland a dyk is a wall, while graben is a ditch. Northumberland, too, has surprising links with Scotland. My friend, Mr. Atkinson, mining inspector for the North-Eastern District, tells me that the word is familiar to the Northumberland collier. The spiteful mischief done in the pit is set down to the cutty-soam, a goblin that haunts mines and cuts the tackle for the hutches. So far good. Professor Wright has done a notable work in the English Dialect Dictionary, but he must perforce give a poor account of Scotland from the Scotsman's point of view. The partner is here as elsewhere too predominant. For one thing, the work shows an unwise dependence on Jamieson. This must explain the inclusion of Scottish law terms in an English dialect dictionary, though these are all good English words used in a special archaic sense. Even in such disguised forms as cayshin and cayshner it is easy to recognise caution and cautioner, for which the Englishman now uses security, and the surety who pledges it. This dependence on Jamieson is doubly unfortunate, since he is specially weak in dialect. Nor will the defect be altogether made good by gleanings from what might be called the parochial muse of the minor singers, however rich as this undoubtedly is in local words. Moreover, dialect is ever shifting, ever growing. It is