Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/131

Rh examples of the climax of absurd glossing sufficient to make "the judicious grieve, the unskilful laugh." Near the close of the former poem we read,—

We are here told that a rantin kirn is a "churning in which the butter does not gather rightly." If any unhappy Southron should have difficulty in visualising a churn ranting, he must feel grateful to the editor. I had a teacher once of the old, and much over-lauded, school whose favourite compliment to the troublesome dullard, among a variety, was kirn-stick. It was no "ranting-kirn" for him. In reality the poet was referring to the revelry of the harvest-home under its usual designation of the kirn. Again, in "Tam o' Shanter," occur the hard lines,—

The two obscure words here are thus glossed—rigwoodie, straddling; and crummock, cow with crooked horns. Alas! "stands Scotland where it did?" Why hags, above all people, should have occasion to straddle, and why in that condition they should be chosen to spean foals, are known only to the editor. To discover what a rigwoodie is he should try the alternative which old Polonius was ready to face—"keep a farm and carters." But these wonderful hags not only straddle when speaning foals, but loup and fling on a cow with crooked horns. Poor Crummie has cruelly tossed the editor here. Even Burns shows us that crummock need not always be appropriated to a cow. It was an obscure Ayrshire poet who sang in his "Carriek for a Man,"—