Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/129

Rh better of him, when someone was described as "having a mant" (a stutter), an expression quite new to him. Few have done so much for a knowledge of Old Scotland as Dr. Robert Chambers. His "Domestic Annals," "Traditions of Edinburgh," "Popular Rhymes of Scotland" will for ever keep his memory fresh. Yet when noting, in the first of these works, the account given by Law the diarist of the earliest exhibition of an elephant in Edinburgh (1680), he adds a query to the graphic phrase in his author, "lowged like twa skats"(?). Singular that a Scotsman should have any difficulty in reading this as ears like two skates. He also confounds staigs (colts) with stags. So experienced an editor and so loyal a Scot as the late Dr. Grosart occasionally went far astray in his glosses. Here are some examples from his edition of Alexander Wilson, one of the many poetical lights of Paisley. In one of those severe satires on the Paisley corks (small employers) of his day which soon made the town too hot for him, he has occasion to say,—

This peculiar spelling of the quite familiar darg tempts to the gloss, "day's work (before dark)." Surely a comical attempt to throw light on the origin of the word! In a humorous elegy on a tailor, Wilson says,—

No one who knew what a brock is could read this as serve instead of savour, to say nothing of its defiance of grammar. The very word is in the Buchan dialect: "He got a sawr (disgust) wi' that, and geed awa'" (Gregor). Further on we have,—

Incredible to relate, labrod, the "harmless but necessary" implement by which the tailor is here facetiously described