Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/130

106 is glossed, "mill-stream at work." The "Abbotsford Series of the Scottish Poets" has the merit of being a commendable attempt to popularise the neglected study of our old literature, not without serious faults of execution, however. From the last, and what ought to have been the easiest, of the volumes, "Scottish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century," I select a few points out of much that "comes in questionable shape." In Alexander Watson's droll story of the "wee wifikie comin' frae the fair" the line "Somebody has been felling me" is given thus without note of explanation, and the reader is left to imagine the pedlar knocking her about like a football, so that she must have been almost comatose. Clearly the poor body is simply saying in her best Aberdeen accent, " Somebody has been feelin me"—that is, making a fool of me, as the narrative graphically bears out. Here is a verse from Skinner's epistle to Burns that aptly illustrates this distinctively Aberdeenshire vocalisation,—

As a specimen of Fergusson, again, we have the "Leith Races," where the poet winds up his humorous narration with,—

Here we encounter the extraordinary gloss, heal the pains. The editor, misreading hale, recalls quite ineptly the common ballad word, dule (Fr. deuil), and misses entirely the point of Fergusson's witty metaphor. This is an example of the dangers of mere book knowledge, yet Allan Ramsay uses the very phrase in question. Any Scottish schoolboy ought to know what it is to hale the dules, or dulls as he terms it. Few Scotsmen will admit that Burns is ever obscure to them. They "smile and smile" with a knowing look as most of us do when we listen to a longish Latin quotation or a drawing-room song. In the Abbotsford Series the editor very properly includes "Hallowe'en" and "Tam o' Shanter," and here we have