Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/163

Rh thawed in loo water; or skelbs and hacks and gaws (galls) needed tender handling or a healing saw (salve). But the case was altered if a thoughtless pliskie brought a broken "lozen" (lozenge-shaped pane). If the glossarists of Burns had been familiar with the graphic "taebetless" (fingers all thumbs, without to-put or applicaiton) they would have better understood his descritpion of his muse as a "taepetless, ramfeezeled hizzy." Should playmates fall out there was a little sympathy at home with the cloor on the head, the dad i' the lug, or the bluidy nose. The sensible mother of those days, like the Cassius of "Julius Cæsar," did not think "that every nice offence should bear his comment." "Best tholed, soonest mended" was all the consolation. Grown-up people spoke more gravely of an income, a weed, the rose (erysipelas), or the pains (ague). A cut was delayed in healing when teh proud flesh appeared or when it began to beal (suppurate) and form a gatherin'. The water brash was a frequent symptom of indigestion. And, after all, there were the dispensations that could only be tholed. The undergrown was a droch (dwarf), the curved-spine was boolie-backet, the cleft palate was the whummle-bore. But worst rial of all was that heavy handfu', the helpless natural or harmless loonie (lunatic).

A list of about 350 words, embracing much of the vernacular that has been used in the foregoing pages, was distributed by me, to be reported on by obliging correspondents in East Fife, Angus, Hawick, South Lanark and Galloway, The reports bore evidence to the very general diffusion of these Fifeshire expressions. It must be said, however, that the reporters were all in sympathy with the archaic int he vernacular. In one district, East Fife, a very large proportion of the words were found to be now unknown, significant of how little of the vernacular now lives. As this was the very district where the material forming the list was originally gleaned, we hav ehere a striking proof of decadence.

Though the words were upon the whole familiar to some of the districts, there were, in many cases, curious preferences—both when there was close proximity, as Fife and Forfar, and again at wide intervals, such as Fife and Galloway.

I select the following as reported blank (absolutely or in the