Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/137

Rh or the efforts of educated Hindoos in our own day. Thus it is that men so markedly in touch with the vernacular as Burns and Carlyle, stand out prominently among all English writers for the actuality of their vision, the mingled virility and veracity of their style. For a healthy vernacular is constantly evolving itself under the natural influences of dialect growth. The effect of education on the literary speech is to develop expression by the hard and fast rules of imitation, by "the days and nights devoted to Addison" and his kind. But a vernacular lends itself naturally to local environment in the selection of words, the meaning put into them, the idioms, the tones of voice, the vowel system, and all that gives to style its colour and individuality. Scotland, from the archaic character of its development, from the fact that a vigorous race found its native tongue early shouldered out of general literature, presents a specially rich field for the study of dialectic growth.

The intelligent observer cannot fail to be struck with the substantial resemblance that runs through the main stock of vocables in vernacular use over the Lowlands, combined with well-marked difference of tone and accent. This is a field of study that one might say has never been worked. To show something alike of its variety and extent, let me present gleanings from two such far-sundered districts as Campbeltown and East Fife. As is well known, the Argyle family not only gave its name to the thriving burgh of Kintyre, but transferred in making it a fresh population from Ayrshire, in thorough sympathy with its pronounced Covenanting proclivities. The result has been to produce such a curious blend of Celtic and Saxon as we find in the following specimen, the phrases of which, though now almost extinct, were in common use in Campbeltown in the earlier part of last century:—

A most pathetic ballad, the composition of Dougie Macilreavie, of Corbett's Close, in the Bolgam Street, Campbeltown. Inscribed, with affection regards, to the members of the Kintyre Literary Association, as an illustration of 18