Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/161

Rh callant, the loon, or the haflin. Too much assurance was rebuked with "Ye're no blate." The impatient call for dinner elicited the diplomatic rejoinder, "It's braw to be hungry and ken o' meat," or, "It's on the hettest pairt o' the hoose." Such dainties as tea and white bread were reserved for elders, and remonstrance was met with the proverb, "Corn's no for staigs" (colts). Grown-up folk held the young with a ticht hand, dealing out "skelps" and "paiks" with liberal allowance as a necessary aid to growth, morally and physically. The "owreblate" youth was voted a "sumph," a word still used by colliers to denote the, as it were, swampy hollow at the bottom of the shaft. The tomboyish girl was condemned as "roid," a corruption of rude, and the light-headed as "giglot" in the fashion of Cowper's office pastime, "giggling and making giggle." The mischievous (with its Elizabethan accent on the penult) boy was a "monkey," or a loon-lookin' dog, or a limb of Sawtan, an expression like Burns's rundeils or clippings off Auld Nick. His glossarists, by-the-by, have not looked very narrowly into this graphic word, a run' or rund, the selvage of cloth or whatever goes round. It is the too-familiar Rand of the Transvaal, or reef of hills round Johannesburg where the gold-mines are. The throo-gaw'n mother could not endure sloongin over work, the couthie one had no patience with gloomin', stoomin' (Ger. "stumm," dumb), or dortin', while the furthie housewife had nothing "near" about her hospitality. Throo-ither-ness in house affairs was odious to the purpose-like goodwife. The ill-set rascal, the ill-doin' waffie, and the wairdless vagral body found no favour, and when someone had to go anes errand on a particular service, no mercy was shown to him that said he was "deid sweer" or would be "seek sorry." Gossip was condemned as clashing, an essentially feminine weakness. The severest criticsm of conduct, indeed, was directed to the frailer sex, backsliders being progressively characterised by the uncomplimentary epithets—gilpy, besom, hizzie, herry (Ger. Herr, master, cf. virago), randy, limmer. To get into debt was to tak on, and to become bankrupt was to fail, a social catastrophe linked with insanity and suicide as among the sorest of fortune's buffets. To run the cutter (whisky bottle) betokened a confirmed habit of tippling. A sand-bed o' drink graphically described the