Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/157

Rh with salt, and hung up over the fireplace to make "ernin" (rennet). Coagulation took place sometimes when not wanted. Lapper," to co-agulate, explains Grigor's Banffshire phrases: “The thunner hiz lappert the milk,” “The loans (lea fields) wir pleut weet, an' they a' lappert in spring fin (when) dry wither set in.”

The pig was of less interest to the boy, unless perhaps it was the wee wrig (a variant of wry) or last-born (puny, puis-né) member of the litter, and therefore less perfectly developed. His name is local. In the Gothic Gospels (Luke iii. 5), where part of the work of John the Baptist is to make the crooked paths straight, we have—“wairthith thata wraiqo du raiht-amma," lit. set the crooked or wrig to-rights. This Fifeshire form is akin to the Orcadian raaga—the same word indeed—otherwise known as the water-droger. In England he is St. Anthony's pig, in Perth and Angus the shargar (weakly, scraggy; Orcad. sharg, petulant, teasing), and in Aberdeen and Moray the carneed or cureedy. “I jist got the carneed at a wee pricie.” Grigor glosses crine, to cause to grow stunted, as, “Y've crinet yir caar (cattle) by spehnin them our seen (soon). Connected with carneed is carn, to soil, e.g. “I earned ee aa' wi' the jice” (gravy). Beginning life as a "grice,” the pig, when weaned (speaned), became a “shot," and, while thereafter in process of assuming a douce obesity, was familiarly addressed as Gus-gus ! or spoken of as Sandy Cam'l, a name widely spread over the Lowlands. The Orcadian “grici-fer” (swine fever) is the distemper that deprives swine of the use of their hind legs. I have seen many of these thrown out from a distillery into the brimming tide. The popular philosophy of proverbs took a purely material view of this worthy. The old folk capped the incongruity between pearls and swine with: “What can ye expec' o' a soo but to grumph?” The last scene of his uneventful history was the bustling one of stickin' with the gully, ploatin' in the big tub to get the hair off, scrapin' and disembowelling.

Spare hours in the busy day were given to watching the joiner, ever popular if good-natured enough to turn “peeries” (spinning tops), or the mason swinging his heavy mell (Shet. a large broad fist). Not so popular he, to judge by his derisive