Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/134

110 school, travelling in Holland in 1758, describes to a friend a visit to a synagogue, where the priest officiated with a harn clout on his head. No lady would nowadays adopt such a style, even if she could understand it. And what university reformer would express himself as Lord Cockburn did, who observed that "when a professor grew doited he became immortal"? Vulgar is, after all, but a relative term, and the essence of vulgarity lies in its associations. Now all modern associations are against the vernacular. In the absence, then, of a historic vernacular how is the plain person to express himself? The style is the man, and the modern man is nothing if not stylish. He assumes the virtues of his better-class neighbour, but wears them with a difference. The suburban young lady, who is reported to have commented on the beshed condition of Jeck's het, disguised her true self in what she took to be the accent of fashion, but her choice of words betrayed her. Not so the street boy when he asked the shopman for "a happ'ny worth o' baasht plooms." His style was in perfect keeping with his pretensions. Sometimes the plain person will make quite a praiseworthy attempt to swim out of his depth in expression as when a workman, reporting on some choked drain pipes he had been asked to lift, explained to his young master that "Thae pipes wuz clean sedimateesed."

To the imperialistic gaze of the average Englishman all Scots speak alike, and all are equally unintelligible to him. He cannot see how anyone should fail to understand him. If observant, however, he would find that even at home environment differentiates speech as much as plant or animal growth. In Old Scotland intercourse was limited, and racial or imitative peculiarities became persistent. To say nothing of the Gaelic and the Norse districts, one could not travel over many counties without discovering differences by ear alone. A traveller of the seventeenth century notes the scolding pipe of the Aberdonian and the monotonous click-clack of the Lowlander. He has the sense to see that the good English tone of the Highland districts is not confined to Inverness, but is really that of a language grammatically taught and never heedlessly employed. Their very choice of words has a literary flavour, like Baboo English.