Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/149

Rh about the head of the Solway, where the boys know the strokannet. This kannet is a form of gannet, while stroh probably refers to its variegated plumage. Eerie it was to follow the "teuchat" (lapwing) as it wailed out, in tumbling circles round the intruder, "Pease-weet, pease-weet, herry my nest and gar me greet!" the boy's call to the wailing spirit on the wing. Rarely did success follow the rearing of small captives. The young "gorbets" (callow brood) were fed on crowdie till their "gaebies" (crops) if not their nebs, cried "Hold! enough!" Sparrows or "spyugs" were the favourite innocents for such experiments, but we never were Herods, such as the Border herd-boys with their "spung-hewet" or spung-taed (toad) pranks, which consisted in placing a frog or toad or young bird on one end of a stick balanced on a stone, then striking the other end smartly, so as to send the victim high up into the air, to fall neatly cleft in two. Spung, as spang (Norse spong, to stride), was our familiar form of span in playing at bools (marbles). Some of the old herd-boys' sports were kept alive, however, such as the flauchter-spade and the divot-fecht. We still find boys in spring-time cutting out bits of turf to throw at one another, quite unconscious of the origin of the sport in a long-obsolete industry. The herds in rival parishes or "lands" used to have regular pitched battles. The word "flauchter-spade" as a game would seem to be peculiarly local. It consisted in one boy lying on his back, while another stood on the out-stretched palms and leant on the feet of the first boy, held up to him for the purpose. The game was to see which pair of boys would make the biggest leap by the aid of their combined forces. In Lanark and in Moray the boys know the game as the sawmon-loup. The true flauchter-spade, of course, was used in the old days of bad farming to pare turf from the moor, or outfield, to make the compost known as "fulzie," and is still employed to cut large turfs to cover the potato-bings in the absence of straw. The Orcadian flaa, Icel. flaga, is a thin turf, cf. Boer, vlei.

Here let me "divagate" so far as to versify the kindly reminiscence of those days when, as a boy was left to learn "Nature knowledge" at the feet of the mighty Mother herself.